161–170 of 348 posts
I've had a string of Google phones going back to the Nexus 5x but, for the very reasons laid out in this article, my next phone will likely be from Apple. That will be my first Apple product.
I love Tasker, love automating boring repetitive work and other tasks out of my day. But is that worth losing all my privacy? Can't say...
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so an android phone without the store? intriguing. at that point you might as well switch to a dumbphone. are dumb phones still a thing?
aurora store is a thing.
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OK, but I don't find the distinction as stark as others on HN seem to. My location data being used by Apple-authored applications running on my device, none of which I've ever intentionally used, is not that different to me than my location data being used on my behalf by Google-written applications, many of which I personally enjoy, running in Google data centers. I like that I can see my location history in Google…
Apple collects location data solely to help you. They've built themselves no financial benefit to collect it, so they keep it only on the device and discard it as much as possible, while still providing all the features users want. If you want a location tracker on iOS, you can install one, but it's not a condition of using their mapping product. Google has a financial incentive to violate your privacy, and all of it…
The more I think about it, the more I suspect trusting another big tech company with my privacy with no material proof other than their word might have been foolish.
At the same time, Google think allways I'm in germany on work, because our company has just one large internet connection for all company users from the whole world. And google does not even let me change the country.
Googles forced country localization is IMBECILICLY STUPID. I am currently in a foreign country. My English OS laptop with English browser has been logging in to gmail in English for years, and I ask Google search to show results in English for 5 years and EVERY TIME it tries to show the local language. Going to google.com is IGNORED, why?? Google engineers are paid $$$$$$$$ of dollars to implement THE MOST STUPID COD…
I saw some people saying that this makes them want to switch towards iphones next. I'm not gonna lie, I considered it for a moment too, like a year ago... But apple is now engaging in its own share of dark patterns and is now collecting data too. There have been multiple articles on the matter shared here even. Thinking that apple is better than google for privacy (or, even if it is right now , that it will remain so…
what about users who don't sign into their android phones with a google account and don't actively use google apps like maps or chrome or whatever they have? i suspect they still have your data but it isn't tied to "you" unless you tell them by linking who you are so you should be fine?
so an android phone without the store? intriguing. at that point you might as well switch to a dumbphone. are dumb phones still a thing?
The problem here is that there are some apps that don't work without Google services, and those are the apps that you need the most: banking apps, payment apps, Uber, etc.
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> From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much Which research? From my experience, personalized ads perform ~50% better than non-personalized ads. This would also explain why Google and Facebook are fighting tooth and nail to keep their tracking infrastructure.
Here's one study - 1st link is a ZdNet summary about it, and 2nd is a direct link to the paper: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-research-shows-personalize... https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...
There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…
The trouble with privacy as a product is that it's _very_ hard to verify it. Apple has basically said "Trust us, We're Okay" and smaller fry are even harder to verify.
Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwi…
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Fair, though the comment above his was definitely asking in a more general sense.
I think it was pretty relevant nonetheless because by tweaking the UI and UX Google is actively harming their users abilities to implement the threat model they have chosen (no matter which one they choose).