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Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

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Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#171

Post by Raphmedia »

agentgt wrote: post #111

I'm curious what bothers people most about the privacy issues? Strangely I don't care that Google (and others) know about me. I probably should but I have just sorted have accepted the lack of privacy today. What really bothers me isn't the privacy its them using that data to create a completely unfair advantage to continue the oligopoly that is quickly consuming all markets. I used to be such a capitalist but as of…

This data stays forever. It will be there in decades.

What if Google tags someone as homosexual and in 50 years, we get a new extremist party that claims that information for a genocide? Google knows a LOT about you. Your weird porn fetishes, your political affiliations, your religion, your beliefs. Your friends, family and THEIR political affiliations.

It sounds impossible but it's not. Take a look at 1960’s Afghanistan to see how a country can really change in a few decades.

Imagine for one second that this goldmine of information existed in 1942. Who can say how 2042 will be...

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#172

Post by agentgt »

zzzcpan wrote: post #120
agentgt wrote: post #111

I'm curious what bothers people most about the privacy issues? Strangely I don't care that Google (and others) know about me. I probably should but I have just sorted have accepted the lack of privacy today. What really bothers me isn't the privacy its them using that data to create a completely unfair advantage to continue the oligopoly that is quickly consuming all markets. I used to be such a capitalist but as of…

Don't understand why it bothers you. Big corporations have unfair advantage either way. Small players already need some special treatment to level the field. But privacy is more about power and governments getting access to the data companies collect is the worst thing that could happen.

> Don't understand why it bothers you. Big corporations have unfair advantage either way. Small players already need some special treatment to level the field.

So to make it fair we should give small players special treatment while continuing to have big corps have no restrictions.

Which small players get to receive the treatment? Why not make it simpler and have more restrictions on big corps?

> But privacy is more about power and governments getting access to the data companies collect is the worst thing that could happen.

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. These companies at this point are bigger and more powerful than most countries below the G8. I have exactly the concern you are mentioning.

While people generally like that google, apple, fb don't give data to the US government I can see it equally bad that they keep it to themselves and use it to leverage the government (they are already doing it with money).

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#173

Post by wincy »

newscracker wrote: post #137
wincy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My marriage isn't in shambles or anything like that. Just not great. We just feel like we've been on autopilot for years. It never really "became a problem", it was just always a problem. We were both glued to our screens. We never did anything. My daughter is 18 months old and will sign and say "birds birds" because she loves birds and wants to watch videos on Youtube. If we turn it off she starts screaming she's so…

What about a camera or camcorder to capture memories with your daughter? That seems to be missing in your original list. Would it be digital or film?

Right that's also on the list! Might buy a DSLR or something. Also going to probably end up buying a cheap atom-based server to set up nextcloud or owncloud for storing and serving those images online to family. Part of this is also to get out of the endless subscriptions to cloud services and host all our own stuff.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#174

Post by lostforest »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #150
jsingleton wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard good things about both https://www.fastmail.com and https://protonmail.com so would be good to hear your experiences after a bit more use.

Yeah, ProtonMail was the other one I considered, but the price for storage wasn't nearly as compelling, and both had reasonably strong privacy stories. And now that I'm in FastMail, I'm really amazed at the flexibility and control it gives you, especially with connecting your own domain and stuff. Back in the day, Gmail's driving appeal was it's pro features, and I'd argue that FastMail makes Gmail look basic. Also,…

ProtonMail lost any cred when they paid to have some perps stop DDOsing them. Have their engineers or their Web host never heard of blackhole routing? Smart router engineers know about the concept of blackhole routing offensive traffic. It takes a couple of minutes and it works wonders.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#175

Post by wincy »

m0ngr31 wrote: post #145
wincy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my wife and I just ordered dumb phones and an AWS 2FA key fob (remember those?) which will be here this weekend, we're selling all our screens except one family PC. I sold off my Oculus Rift and gaming PC a month ago. We're going to have to buy a flashlight, GPS or maybe just a map book, calculator, a CD player, a Blu-Ray burner, a day planner, a wristwatch, a kitchen timer, get a library card, a shared calenda…

I've looked into going back to a dumb phone in the past. If you don't mind, what phones did you order?

Sure! We ordered these phones. If they're really awful I might buy some Nokia phones, but they're more expensive. We wanted talk, text, and MMS (just in case), but that's it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O5EU7TQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_HHLc...

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#176

Post by unethical_ban »

delroth wrote: post #58
unethical_ban wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some googler will come in and say "That's not our motto anymore, dummy". To which I'll say - Think about that. Is saying, "Well, we can be shitty now that our motto no longer prohibits it" really a good excuse?

No Googler will come and tell you that since "Don't be evil" are literally the first 3 words of the published Google code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html I'm not sure why you think this has changed.

Well, I've seen it on HN before, where people are called out specifically for stating that it is (was) Google's motto.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#177

Post by wincy »

et-al wrote: post #74
wincy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my wife and I just ordered dumb phones and an AWS 2FA key fob (remember those?) which will be here this weekend, we're selling all our screens except one family PC. I sold off my Oculus Rift and gaming PC a month ago. We're going to have to buy a flashlight, GPS or maybe just a map book, calculator, a CD player, a Blu-Ray burner, a day planner, a wristwatch, a kitchen timer, get a library card, a shared calenda…

Thought this was satire, but then I saw your other comment. Good on you two.

I'll be honest, I wrote all this out and read it to my wife before posting, and we both laughed at how crazy it sounds. It's the aggregate of lots of little decisions in the past year and we're not solid on any of it yet. We'll be using tech for a lot of things still, we'll have a server with our personal images, and I'm looking at some Arduino stuff for home automation things. I don't think tech is bad, just a lot of it is designed as a feedback loop of addiction.

I just read about noprocrast mode on HN, I might turn this on too. I guess it lets you spend 20 minutes on HN every 3 hours.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#178

Post by dredmorbius »

sambobeckingham wrote: post #128
grzm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. Or even Google. I've seen comments online about DDG providing only an illusion of privacy. I haven't dug into this deeply. From what I've read this comes down to DDG (including bang searches like !g and !sp) stripping identifying information, which provides protection from tracking by entities like advertisers and social networks, but not law enforcement or agencies like the…

DDG don't track your IP or log activity against you. Bang searches are simply redirects as far as I'm aware and thus !g is equivalent to typing straight into Google. But if you're using Google through DDG you're probably missing the point.

Using Google through DDG is useful because of the bang searches. It's actually faster for me to get to, say, image, scholar, books, ngram, or maps (though I prefer OpenStreetMap) searches from DDG than it is through Google's own web interface.

It's faster to do that, in further irony, on Firefox rather than Chrome (on Android), because Chrome/Android doesn't allow specifying DDG as a default search engine.

(I prefer Firefox for multiple features including extensions (adblock, hul-fucking-lo), and Reader Mode, but motherlovin' heck is Firefox every laggy and slow on Android...)

I'll run a DDG search, for all the reasons stated above, then re-run it to Google if I must. It's still faster than finding Google's search page and entering a search (and clicking past multiple nags and seeing multiple distracting animations).

Two more reasons for Google:

1. Specific date-bounds on search.

2. Counts of results by domain (Desktop only)

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#179

Post by aikah »

omouse wrote: post #37

The marketers and advertisers have finally won. Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, but this confirms it. It's like Facebook, they're beholden to the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. So glad I'm evaluating other email providers and use Privoxy for ad-blocking.

> Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe

I think Google always was an ad company, using technology to push ads and never a engineering company using ads as a source of income.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#180

Post by chejazi »

pmyjavec wrote: post #61
blowski wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a neat split along the lines of "All developers good, all marketers bad". What has won here is the pressure to grow, and the acceptance of society and governments to let them do it by any means. We are all complicit in this.

True, it's time to make a change and start educating family and friends about this issue and the alternatives. I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. I use DDG and I think it's a pretty solid alternative, although it requires a little more effort when looking for certain things. Non-tech types have been curious about why I…

> time to make a change and start educating

When it comes to this, it's too late. The dollars have already won in the highest court.

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