421–430 of 619 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Also, our VPNs are useless"
_all_ VPNs are useless. They are the biggest security theater and a massive success of marketing. But really, it's completely bazaar to trust a VPN provider. They provide protection from your local network, but you they can do all the same things and more.
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The terrible crime of squatting, according to some comments in that thread
Has your home in France been squatted? No? Or maybe you do not own a house in France? If so, on which basis do you ironically call squatting a "terrible crime"? Squatters in your house in France means that you you have zero rights on this place until a lengthy process gives it back to you, ruined. You are then expected to be grateful and can forget about any reimbursement from the poor people who stole your property.
But the law allowed him, as a good landlord, to work on the outside of the house, for the good of his tenants. So he did.
He installed security cameras, and reported every minor infraction of the squatters to the police. The police loved it, and duly did everything. Oh look, a cm of your wheel is parked outside the allowed boundary. That's a ticket. Of course he duly tested the very loud alarm every evening, to make sure it works.
He did a paint job, first removing the old paint with the noisiest dustiest old tools he could find, then painting it in an old ugly pink he found on a flea market somewhere. Then decided the quality wasn't good and removed the paint again. One day, the squatters had enough and actually went to a court to demand he let their poor baby sleep. Judge just laughed, and told them all work happened before 22:00 so he was in his right.
Squatters ran away after a few months, which supposedly is a happy outcome, at least compared to what the law could do for him.
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In both cases exactly the same entities read your email: you, the sender, and Gmail. I don't see how you could go "yeah, this is a privacy improvement" if your information is still visible to exactly the same entities, but one of them isn't really mentioning it.
You don’t see the difference between “seeing an email” en transit vs training a ML algorithm on it and extracting values like when will your airplane depart, when is your vacation, etc and automatically propagating that to other google products? I mean, it sure is comfortable, but you can sure as hell know that they build an extensive profile out of your private emails and your ads are targeted based on that..
I do not see any difference between these parts, no. If a human read my email I would expect them to be completely incapable of not working these things out, so I'm not really too concerned if a computer does it either.
> training a ML algorithm on it
Also not really. If it were a machine learning algorithm that was trying to write realistic emails there'd be a reasonable concern of it revealing things about the training data, but when it's just generating ad recommendations based on only your data that only you see, I'm not too sure there's a serious privacy concern there. I'm unaware of any allegations that you could uncover private details about someone else's life by looking at an advertisement you received on your own email inbox.
> and automatically propagating that to other google products?
I would definitely perceive this differently depending on the product, as Google products are usually distinct enough that you can functionally treat them as if they were different companies (and often they either used to be, or eventually become so). So in this case there are now four entities that know the contents of the email: the sender, the recipient, Gmail, and e.g., YouTube.
But again, I've not heard any claims that Google are using the contents of your emails to decide what YouTube videos to recommend you. It's certainly not outside the realms of plausibility, but that seems like the kind of thing people wouldn't ever shut up about, so I'm surprised that I haven't heard about it if it is in fact happening.
> you can sure as hell know that they build an extensive profile out of your private emails
Oh absolutely, but I don't see how that's a privacy violation when you gave them your private emails. How much thinking does someone have to do about a message you gave them before it becomes a privacy violation?
> and your ads are targeted based on that..
This is the main reason I'm okay with it. Google's entire business model relies on them preventing anyone else from seeing that data, so that they're the only ones who can target ads that effectively. If there was a significant risk of data leaks then I can absolutely see why people would be concerned, but Google has some absolutely gargantuan incentives to avoid that.
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The difference is that protonmail, again, doesn't scan any data in my emails. Google does, then stores and tailors and sells ads. My privacy is violated when google scans my mail, and not when protonmail doesn't.
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with the word "scan" here, so hopefully this abstraction will be useful. Imagine you have a message written on a piece of paper. You intentionally show this message to two people, Alice and Bob, and are fully aware that they have both read and can perfectly remember the entire contents of the message. Now imagine that Alice thought about the message independently (not recalli…
Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs" In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself. Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be req…
I once tried to create a Protonmail account over TOR and I believe they require a phone number from 'malicious' IPs so if you want anonymity Protonmail is not the service for you.
I have two - both on MVNOs, not in my name, and sitting in my office doing nothing but relaying sms to email:
If you use gmail, It is my understanding that google ai will routinely read all your messages and add anything interesting to your profile so they can target you for ads. Law enforcement also has open access to everything in your mailbox all of the time.
ProtonMail don't read your email but will supply metadata to authorities in response to a lawful warrant.
That still feels like a difference between gmail and ProtonMail. I pay for that difference, your money your choice.
Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs" In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself. Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be req…
All the Protonmail customers out there, what did you do about this? For starters, I emailed Protonmail support. Here's mine: Hi, Your homepage reads "By default, we do not keep any IP logs..." This language is soft and misleading. Maybe in 2018 when I first began using ProtonMail it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. I expect better from ProtonMail. Replace immediately with something clearer. "By default we don't…
It always amazes me that there is this hardcore of people on hn who are so anti ProtonMail. If you use gmail, It is my understanding that google ai will routinely read all your messages and add anything interesting to your profile so they can target you for ads. Law enforcement also has open access to everything in your mailbox all of the time. ProtonMail don't read your email but will supply metadata to authorities…
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TBH in 2021 people engaging in potentially dangerous activities should be literate enough to understand, that no business will guarantee them full security and decline all requests from authorities to disclose their identity. The wording you suggest is equivalent of „do not dry your cat in microwave“ instruction - a legal protection from dumb customers, that does not contribute meaningfully to safety. For the non-Swi…
The problem is that engaging in "potentially dangerous activities" includes such a wide range of people. Think about a journalist in Afghanistan, a whisteblower in the USA, or a human rights activist in China. They're all engaging in potentially dangerous activities. Are they "dumb" because they don't understand all the ins and outs of surveillance? How about some empathy for them as users? The proposed statement abo…
The former's safe because no one's going to deliver IPs to Afghanistan and the latter are doomed, because the US and China are following a policy of total surveillance. That ship has sailed decades ago.