81–90 of 115 posts
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Better: Download a fuckload of https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ photos, create social media accounts under your name, and bloat the accounts with these photos while tagging yourself.
All that work just to have your misinformation trivially filtered out.
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That doesn't prevent Google from collecting information about you. Even though you don't actively use Google on your Android device, doesn't mean it doesn't phone home and reports information to Google. For example, if you don't actively disable it, your phone sends the names of all Wifi-networks in your proximity to Google, so Google can tell you where you are faster and more accurate than with GPS. Even if you disa…
> For example, if you don't actively disable it, your phone sends the names of all Wifi-networks in your proximity to Google, so Google can tell you where you are faster and more accurate than with GPS. Even if you disable it, your phone will still fetch GPS positioning information from Google unless you change that to use another service. Nope. Sending this data to Google requires an opt in on Android (Google Locati…
https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...
Ads have been in Gmail for many years, they just became more obvious with their recent design changes.
>Joshua Greenbaum, of Berkeley, Calif., said he pays about $100 per year to use Microsoft Office 365 software that he says has better privacy protections than Google's.
At least he's willing to put his money where his mouth is, though he's probably still using Windows. If I had a dollar for everyone who complained about Google but refused to self-host or pay for someone else to host their email... (Also, people who use free VPNs to avoid tracking. It's free for a reason.)
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Incognito mode?
Incognito mode is mostly useless as an actual privacy tool. You're still exposing a substantial amount of information. The most basic would be your IP. Most IPs are of course dynamic, but there are two factors here: 1) The IP only changes when your lease expires or you manually renew it. This is not a normal part of starting an incognito session. Google has a confirmed identity (such as by being logged into a Google…
Well, of course. Just don't sign up for a Google account. When you get an Android phone new, there's a moment when it asks you to sign up or sign in with a Google account. There's a "later" option". Click that, and then remove the Google one-time startup program. Install F-Droid, and get your apps from there. The mail program on Android will talk to an IMAP server. Find one to use, and you don't need Gmail. No ads. O…
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All that work just to have your misinformation trivially filtered out.
Trivially how?
If your friends who have added you on social media also uploaded random crap and tagged you in it, it could fool the facial recognition for your group of friends, but if who has no mutual friends with you on social media tags you correctly in their photos, it probably won't fix it for your friends since it will probably assume they're 2 different yous.
" In the small South Carolina town of Newberry, Bob's Red Mill muesli cereal is hard to come by. That presents a challenge for resident Gregory Kelly, who can't get enough of the stuff. He'd rather not truck the 40 miles or so to Columbia to stock up on it, but he's also loath to buy it from the company's website, which he says is riddled with tracking software from Google" Somebody get this man a Firefox Privacy Tab
To get his cereal delivered the shop needs his address, doesn’t it? So google could know that the person at that address likes those cereals. Unless the shop is not sharing the address with google ( which it should not, but can you count on that?)
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> For example, if you don't actively disable it, your phone sends the names of all Wifi-networks in your proximity to Google, so Google can tell you where you are faster and more accurate than with GPS. Even if you disable it, your phone will still fetch GPS positioning information from Google unless you change that to use another service. Nope. Sending this data to Google requires an opt in on Android (Google Locati…
For any regular non-technical user locking down most Android phones (presumably some phones come with hardened settings and possibly with no Google services) and keeping the data away for Google is a huge challenge. The default settings are almost always very permissive, you have to dig down through settings to disable everything, and a lot of stuff isn't very obvious for anyone who doesn't expect such behavior. Oh e…
> Oh even when the WiFi is off it will still scan for nearby SSIDs to get your position?
Again, this is opt in even on Google-flavored Android devices. There is no digging through settings required — the opt in checkbox appears in the setup flow. On iOS, there is nothing you can do to stop your device from doing this.
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> Google tracking is baked into Android pretty deep Citation needed.
Google requires all apps that are on Google Play to use Firebase, which is baked into the OS, for notifications. Developers might make apps available on F-Droid or through individual download, but most of the time, those are just the same versions available on Google Play and configured to use Firebase. The problem is that while Android is OS, most apps use functions and OS-level API's available that are only availab…
Only for apps on the Play Store. This is much less restrictive than iOS, which requires you to use APNS for notifications without any workarounds. Also, Firebase is not "built into the OS" and doesn't exist at all in AOSP.
> The current versions of the stock keyboard, clock, calendar, contacts manager, and even phone dialer all have Google Play Services as a dependency.
Those aren't "stock." Those are Google's apps. Many devices don't even use Google's by default. The AOSP implementations don't use Google Play Services at all. It is trivial to install replacements on even Google-flavored Android devices that don't use Google Play Services.
Compare to iOS. Apple knows every app you ever downloaded, and there is nothing you can do about it. Every time you click on an address link, it sends the address to Apple, and there is nothing you can do about it. Any time an app looks up your GPS location, that location is sent to Apple, and there is nothing you can do about it. If you want to write apps for your own device, you need to give card details to Apple, and there is nothing you can do about it. That is what data collection built pervasively into the OS actually looks like
Unfortunately, Google is far from the only company that tracks users and collects data on them, so even if you were to somehow completely avoid Google tracking and data collection, you'd still be subject to tracking and data collection from others.