Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 210 posts

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#201

Post by bertman »

su2 wrote: post #125

Cool idea! I replaced the "teller" program part also with shell script, so that one would give you the clicking without the need to compile: sudo tcpdump -n -l dst host 8.8.8.8 $(for a in $(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berthubert/googerteller/main/goog-prefixes.txt); do echo or dst net $a; done) | while read; do paplay /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/dialog-information.oga; done Quite enlightening t…

Thanks! And people that don't have pulseaudio can replace `paplay` with `pw-cat -p` from pipewire.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#202

Post by kleer001 »

legacynl wrote: post #197
kleer001 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter point (and you're not wrong, this is just my take)... I consider myself privacy and security and convenience conscious, not at all paranoid yet as I don't expect I have aroused the interest of a State power (touch wood). I use what most people use and prefer less friction over philosophically and/or ethically pure services. This tool made me shrug. Sure, yea, that's not an unexpected frequency, I guess.…

"Rationally/ethically X sounds dangerous and bad, but I haven't seen any widespread disaster resulting from X, therefore X is fine/good enough, so I just try to not think about the ways X is bad and unethical"

No.

I never stated my ethics. I was only echoing the comment above, the statement of their ethics.

Working your way through life requires heuristics and stereotypes based on our personal experience.

If you have to think about which muscle to move and when while walking you'll fall down.

If you want to sacrifice your ability to move quickly through the world to dogmatism, knock yourself out. I'm going to stick with fluency and real time behaviour that allows me to act in the world in a timely matter.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#203

Post by sillystuff »

kornhole wrote: post #10

A common explanation I get from people with poor digital hygiene is that they do not see how it is affecting them. Making the imperceptible perceptible is a great concept for more innovations. I have sent the kids in my house logs for their devices from the DNS blocker I have running on our network, but it was too much for them to digest. Perhaps I should work on a visualization tool of all the data that shows impact…

> people with poor digital hygiene

The thing is, even good digital hygiene is not enough.

Via CCPA requests, I have learned that every data broker I've queried has a very extensive dossier on my life.

In one instance, a data point could only have one source. A print shop in San Diego that printed up some business cards with a gag job title in 2000-- that gag job title showed up at LexisNexis.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#204

Post by bogwog »

leodriesch wrote: post #45
7373737373 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come there isn't a single open source captcha solution?

I’d say captchas are reliant on not being open about their detection methods, otherwise they would be easier to game. AFAIK the image selection is only part of determining you’re a human, the other part is tracking your mouse movement and so to see if you’re real.

The image captcha isn't even the latest version. The one where you need to click on images is from like 2014, but recaptcha v3 doesn't require any interaction from the user at all. It uses some vague analysis of user behavior (and probably tracking data from other websites, shadow profiles, etc) to determine the likeliness that the user is a bot.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#205

Post by mixmastamyk »

UncleMeat wrote: post #177
mixmastamyk wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the quickest way to bend folks to your will? Apply pressure at their weak points. How would one find them? Anyone who shares information (even inadvertently) with a third-party, that info becomes government property. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32557745 Watch "The United States of Secrets" on Kanopy and sometimes PBS.

This feels more like "anti-libertarian" rather than "anti-democratic." The state having fairly tremendous power through warrants and other policing systems is largely orthogonal to the idea of government by the will of the people.

Splitting hairs, me thinks.

If individuals do not have the ability to disagree without ramifications, in absence of safety and security, will of the people can no longer exist.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#206

Post by mixmastamyk »

kylevedder wrote: post #181
water-your-self wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running. Your data is not worthless, and generally I consider data harvesting harmful because of the nation-state subpoenas it enables. If I attend a protest for abortion rights, and my geo data is bound to that event and then I seek an abortion in another state, ive now created a wonderful finge…

Your complaint is with the government, not Google. The FBI could just as easily setup a StingRay [1] and capture all cell information. The only protection against that is robust digital civil rights legislation protecting Americans from governmental over reach, not lampooning big tech companies for having data. It's not like Google is willing to just shovel data at anyone who asks nicely, they will actively fight the…

Some of us have the forethought to avoid issues before they happen. A "marshmallow test" for adults. We shun snitches for good reasons.

Data is never deleted (with fewer and fewer exceptions), so liability only grows over time.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#207

Post by scubbo »

kylevedder wrote: post #184
scubbo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "cost" of a company using info about me to run more efficient ad auctions is totally worth the benefit of having highly accurate maps with up to date business info with stuff like hours and direct links to their website/contact info. This is a perfect example of the "subjective statement that applies on a case-by-case basis" that I was referring to.

There's a free market of platforms without subpoena power, and people time and time again choose the free platforms powered by ads. I'm in the overwhelming majority with my statement when you look at people's revealed preferences.

Right - as I acknowledged by saying "[this] won't be true for everyone - perhaps, not many people"

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#208

Post by mixmastamyk »

hackernewds wrote: post #174
kylevedder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they do not see how it is affecting them I'm an adult who understands tracking tech and in particular Google's level of tracking quite well (I used to work on AdWords), and I'm one of these people -- tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running. Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an ar…

If everyone started blocking their data even when used in aggregate we would have no more free services. $10/month for video hosting (YouTube,), $50/month for GPS navigation (GMaps), $5/month for IM (Messenger) Is that the world we'd like to live in?

Yes, and am happy with the FLOSS alternatives and Netflix et al.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#209

Post by asdff »

kylevedder wrote: post #43
kylevedder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they do not see how it is affecting them I'm an adult who understands tracking tech and in particular Google's level of tracking quite well (I used to work on AdWords), and I'm one of these people -- tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running. Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an ar…

This a bit orthogonal so I put it in a separate comment, but let me be even more aggressive and do a bit of offense: I've read a lot of the "pro privacy/anti tracking" arguments over the years, and (outside of a few exceptions) they almost always hinge upon some aesthetic dislike for companies having this information, rather than having any material justification for why it's harmful. But attacking ads and ad trackin…

I would love a model where the fees you pay anyhow for internet access go to support the servers you are visiting.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#210

Post by autoexec »

t-writescode wrote: post #171
mrhands556 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has this happened before?

Well, the "before Google" was librarians, and they have a history, a long, long history of saying "no" to the feds when it comes to giving out reading and checkout lists of people. *Of course* Google and friends happily give that information out "pre-warrant".

> Well, the "before Google" was librarians, and they have a history, a long, long history of saying "no" to the feds when it comes to giving out reading and checkout lists of people.

In the US they lost that fight and now reading lists are handed over to the state.

Post reply on HN