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Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#22I don't trust Privacy Guides. They must have some kind of deal with Brave. They didn't accept Brave and then out of nowhere they start accepting it with the excuse of having a Chromium-based browser.
Hey, I'm Justin from the 501(c)(3) fiscal host of Privacy Guides, MAGIC Grants. Us board members administer the funds for Privacy Guides, and we are different people than those who are on the Privacy Guides committee. I assure you that Privacy Guides has not made a deal with Brave or any other of the tools that it recommends on the website. I'm happy to address any other questions about raising funds if you have them…
I don't doubt PrivacyGuides but...
> There are lengthy discussions about whether to recommend a tool or not on the Privacy Guides GitHub and their forum
The process doesn't strike me as consensus driven? Mods/team have become gatekeepers (both for persisting with existing recommendations or adding new ones), including aggressively shutting down conversations/threads they personally don't like (I was told, all moderation actions are final, regardless of who on the team does it, even if why they did it doesn't hold water). I imagine, such a rigid setup is in response to prevent bad faith actors (but then, I lose count of how many times team/mods have called others "extremist", using it as a slur, just because ... reasons).
It is hard to definitively prove ulterior motive, but other folks do observe such nefariousness and come to their own conclusions, valid or not, as GP has done.
All that to say, the way it is currently run, "discussions happened" isn't really the defence you think it is.
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#23> It's the mindset assuming that for anything to have value in data privacy it needs to be 100% perfectly private and secure.
It does also need to make a difference though. If Google has say three different ways of figuring out who I am and I eliminate one of them then nothing has changed.
Let’s say IP address, fingerprinting and cookies.
In that sense it is somewhat all or nothing. Either I’ve eliminated all three or I have not. I know that’s not precisely what the author means by all or nothing but there are certainly dynamics at play here that are not a smooth continuum
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#24Only the word has been hijacked at best "Your privacy is our priority..."
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Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#25> It's the mindset assuming that for anything to have value in data privacy it needs to be 100% perfectly private and secure. It does also need to make a difference though. If Google has say three different ways of figuring out who I am and I eliminate one of them then nothing has changed. Let’s say IP address, fingerprinting and cookies. In that sense it is somewhat all or nothing. Either I’ve eliminated all three o…
Yes. But there are all sorts of sites that only track you with cookies, or IP address + cookies, and separating cookies helps a lot with those.
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#26Again, and tediously, with my rule of thumb about privacy technology guides:
Here's a concrete example: Let's say your friend just told you they moved their communications from SMS to Signal. This is something to celebrate! Your friend just improved their data privacy a lot by deciding to start using Signal instead of SMS. It is absolutely not the time to tell your friend things like "Okay, but you're not even using Firefox!
If a privacy source suggests that Firefox is an absolute improvement over other browsers without actually laying out the security tradeoffs you'd be making by adopting it, you should trust that source less.
I would personally go much farther with this analysis; I have categorical opinions about the relative security of browsers. But you don't have to follow me that far down the path to see the merit of the rule, because if you think "just use Firefox" is an uncomplicatedly strong recommendation, you're simply not paying attention to browser security at all, in which case: why are you making recommendations?
Most privacy and security guides are LARPs.
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dont understand the needed distinction between "chromium" and "non-chromium" browsers, thyre just web engines and ultimately technical details. Although chromium having significantly more compatibility (or chrome features that websites use) the average consumer will be using websites that keep strict accordance with webstandards to support safari. For technical users its another story but for the average user the w…
Some people think it’s important to support more browser diversity by not using chromium-based browsers. Some people also think that it’s bad to use pretty much anything produced by Google. Plenty of reasons to want non-chromium browsers
And there’s the other side of the coin: some websites break in Firefox (and other non-Chromium brewsers, perhaps). I’m keeping Ungoogled Chromium just in case (and for testing my own websites, of course).
(Remember to complain politely, but loudly, if something works in Chromium only.)
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#28Again, and tediously, with my rule of thumb about privacy technology guides: Here's a concrete example: Let's say your friend just told you they moved their communications from SMS to Signal. This is something to celebrate! Your friend just improved their data privacy a lot by deciding to start using Signal instead of SMS. It is absolutely not the time to tell your friend things like "Okay, but you're not even using…
There's a lot more context about what browsers they recommend (and what they recommend them for) on the dedicated page for it: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/
The part you quoted was an example of what _not_ to do ("not the time").
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#29Again, and tediously, with my rule of thumb about privacy technology guides: Here's a concrete example: Let's say your friend just told you they moved their communications from SMS to Signal. This is something to celebrate! Your friend just improved their data privacy a lot by deciding to start using Signal instead of SMS. It is absolutely not the time to tell your friend things like "Okay, but you're not even using…
You’re quoting from a hypothetical discussion scenario, not an actual recommendation.
They do indeed recommend Firefox (as a third choice, after Tor and Mullvad Browsers), and the recommendation page doesn’t go into reasoning, sadly, but it does discuss some pitfalls of the default config and how to fix them: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/#firefox
Re: Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
#30> It's the mindset assuming that for anything to have value in data privacy it needs to be 100% perfectly private and secure. It does also need to make a difference though. If Google has say three different ways of figuring out who I am and I eliminate one of them then nothing has changed. Let’s say IP address, fingerprinting and cookies. In that sense it is somewhat all or nothing. Either I’ve eliminated all three o…
If you eliminate fingerprinting, that is in and of itself a fingerprint. If you block cookies, that is too. So the person with your IP address and blocks fingerprinting and cookies is you. Someone with your IP address and only blocking cookies could be you as well on another device, or a family member on their device. Either way, they're on to you