A slightly orthogonal way to see this debate is that the standards that became dominant (tcp/ip, http, html, cookies, smtp, js, etc) became that way specifically because they were inferior in specific ways, such as privacy. This gave the opportunity to build varying levels of user exploitation into any desirable application without explicit consent or decision to pay for it. An Internet built on superior user-empowering technologies (there were and are plenty) would never have attracted the amount of investment that the exploitive web did. If the main metric that matters is growth, it doesn’t matter where it comes from; even highly exploitive use cases like spam and scams were some of the most aggressive accelerators of early usage.
A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
201–210 of 229 posts
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> want my location Location access attempts result in a prompt, asking whether you want the app to have access to your location. You can give it access once, only when it's active, or even in the background (the latter might make sense for a fitness app/ mileage tracking app/ that sort of thing). It's your choice.
I had an app (that did not need location to function) that refused to continue if location was not enabled fully.
Was it a Google app? If not I hardly think Google's to blame for that. There's a lot I'm concerned of with Google and I'm not happy with a lot of ways they're doing things, but it's really up to ourselves not to use such apps. At least they have to explicitly ask for your permission.
If you buy a Pixel, I don't think there should be such crap? A lot of times it's the manufacturers. Samsung is a terrible offender in this category, I regret my most recent Galaxy phone and will not make that mistake again.
Unless you run a self-flashed OSS OS, the least invasive choices for mobile seem to be Apple, followed by vanilla Android on Google Pixel (but then you might as well run GrapheneOS).
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
They absolutely sell the multi-feature profile of you from that data, and the data merchants absolutely tie it together then resell it to everyone. In turn, a bank can make or break your ability to buy a home with it. Fintechs helping make credit decisions get that from both, directly and indirectly, and even better when doing a bit of correlation for the bank. Microsoft and Amazon no real help, Apple even less. Note…
> They absolutely sell the multi-feature profile of you from that data I'd like to learn more. Do you have a source for that?
Not without breaking NDAs. Also not saying you’re in the know, but people in the know start source hunting when truth leaks.
FWIW, I’ve seen you comment on Google email and ads. From what I am aware of, your information on what was/wasn’t and is/isn’t done has been… optimistically colored. I stayed out of it. But you could be less confident in some of these and/or disclose more readily that you are coming with a pro-employer lens while (you say) being far enough from it you might not know for sure.
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
They absolutely sell the multi-feature profile of you from that data, and the data merchants absolutely tie it together then resell it to everyone. In turn, a bank can make or break your ability to buy a home with it. Fintechs helping make credit decisions get that from both, directly and indirectly, and even better when doing a bit of correlation for the bank. Microsoft and Amazon no real help, Apple even less. Note…
So you're saying that by tracking people we can avoid people buying homes they can't afford and causing a market crash?
Yes, so long as we don’t mind machines also getting that wrong.
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to run a Pi-Hole for a long time, but then I realized I was trading my day to day tech job, to screwing around with Pi-Hole (along with other RPi's in my house) on my personal time. And yes, I run a WireGuard VPN too and could/have turn on WG to tunnel back to my Pi-Hole. Switched over to NextDNS, so that my ad blocking is on the macro network too. I'm satisfied. My wife is not, since her trashy "click here" l…
Isn't that just shifting the tracking to another site? Now nextdns.io knows everything that you're doing.
And the SDK in your device knows, the hardware manufacturer knows, your cell carrier knows, etc.... just trying to clean up my experience in lessening ads on in my UI.
Until an EMP takes us back to the Stone Age, it is really hard not to be tracked on the internet.
Source - I used to work for a company that does the tracking.
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#206I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.
Well, good, but you traded one bad apple for another. Apple is in the process of locking down freedom. And while you might not be tracked by Google, your quality of life in a closed ecosystem is just as bad in other ways. How many people have to contend with iCloud endlessly begging for money because they took a few photos of their child? Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers? I'm pretty sure that means you'…
> Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers?
Honestly, this sounds like you are lying intentionally to spread misinformation.
You are clearly informed and have a strong opinion. I find it hard to believe that you don’t know that only Chinese users data is backed up on Chinese servers.
If I’m wrong and you didn’t know this, please accept my apology in advance.
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#207I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.
Careful. Your Apple data is being given away to Chinese dictatorships and the US government. You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught.
> Your Apple data is being given away to Chinese dictatorships
Only if you live in China, which is well known to be a surveillance state with access to all personal data.
> and the US government.
Yes, but only by court order, rule which applies to every US company. This is a problem, but not one with Apple.
> You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught.
True for every company in the world.
You make this sound like a problem with Apple, but these are problems with the US and Chinese governments.
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#208Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed. Browsing on my phone at home with all those ad networks blocked okay... until you go outside your home network and get all the ads again. It's almost made my stop using my phone outside of my home network.
For ad blocking outside the home, install WireGuard on the RPi and configure it to use pihole as its DNS server. Install script should prompt you to do this automatically if it detects pihole is installed. Then just connect your WireGuard client on your phone to the endpoint Use something like freedns.afraid.org for dynamic IP address support
If you already own a domain, you can also pretty trivially (In a nutshell: `update-dns get-my-current-external-ip-address $MY_DOMAIN_NAME`
You can have a subdomain like `vpn.yourwebsite.com` point to your residential IP. It may take a bit of fussing to get the ports and such right. But otherwise it's "just worked" for me, for the last 6 months.
Useful if you want to remove the dependency on yet-another-service-provider that can go out of business (the dynamic-dns people).
Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
The average user doesn't exist. It's an abstraction used by techies to make arguments they cannot defend.
The average user are all those people that are yet to bother with GNU/Linux desktop, despite the exodus migrations being profethized at each macOS or Windows version.
The average person has a fractional amount of children, friends, parents, even limbs. The average person exists no more than a spherical cow does.