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Alternatives to Google Products

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Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#341

Post by nothrabannosir »

amelius wrote: post #303
shawn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those can uniquely identify me So does your resolution. And that's hard to mask because JS usually needs to know it. If you're not using the browser fullscreen, chances are that you're using a unique innerWidth+innerHeight. As unsatisfying as it is, the current best solution seems to be not to care about privacy most of the time, and then take privacy seriously when you do. Whonix is excellent for this.

If fingerprinting uses a hash based on a number of input criteria, then you only need to perturb one of those inputs to make the entire hash unusable. Perhaps Firefox is perturbing the other inputs (?) such that screen resolution doesn't matter much. (Just guessing and looking for a positive angle here).

I had to work on fingerprinting (not my proudest moment) and disabling hashing to avoid this problem was literally the very first thing we did. Just a datapoint, of course.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#342

Post by icebraining »

zdkl wrote: post #200
smichel17 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to deprive Alphabet of revenue, if not for their privacy-disrespecting business model?

Read a cyberpunk book. The mega-corp as focal point for resources, innovation and political clout is a scary thought. Consider the almost exclusive dataset they have moated "everyone" else out of, and the long line of disingenuous/unethical business practices. The privacy considerations are the proverbial top of the iceberg.

Using Microsoft products to avoid feeding megacorps would be a strange strategy.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#343

Post by tome »

teekert wrote: post #211

I use Nextcloud (files, contacts, calendar, notes), Firefox on all the things and pay for email. My last "things" are the play store and Google maps, I can't seem to shake them (I love paying for good apps and gmaps is the best nav app imho).

Nextcloud looks great! Do they do individual subscriptions? Doesn't seem obvious to me.

EDIT: Seems you have to go through a "provider" https://nextcloud.com/providers/

I will investigate further.

EDIT2: OK, so you can can get a Nextcloud instance through one of these providers. Do you have a recommendation?

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#344

Post by fauigerzigerk »

scarface74 wrote: post #191
rock_hard wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that Tim Cook handed Beijing the iCloud private keys for Chinese users

How did he do that without completely rearchitecting how iOS works? Do you have any citations?

This is about the architecture of iCloud not iOS. Apple has the keys to all encrypted iCloud data (iCloud email is not encrypted at rest).

The only exception is iCloud keychain, but I believe only if you decline the default setting to create an iCloud security code (I'm not entirely sure about that)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#345

Post by beagle3 »

icebraining wrote: post #340
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JS usually needs to know it What do you mean by this?

JS is often used to change the position of elements based on the window size. If you give it wrong info, it will break the layout.

True, but if you round it down to the closest multiple of (say) 32, you significantly reduce the information content while leaving JS/CSS layout essentially the same.

Indeed, it will surely make resize look less sexy (jumping by 32s instead of pixels), and you might waste a few pixels of screen real estate on some sites at some times -- but it's the kind of tradeoff that some people happily do for more privacy.

Related, does anyone know if privacy badger include "screen size determination" in its heuristics?

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#346

Post by robbrown451 »

probably_wrong wrote: post #299
robbrown451 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how would this happen? Google gives them my data? I'm sorry but I don't get it. Google can't do that. Even if they work at Google they can't get it. I just represented myself in a week long custody trial (I won primary custody, and yes I went up against an attorney), and there were lots of risks involved, but this sort of thing seems to be about the smallest one I could imagine. I'd like to hear if this has actual…

> Google can't do that. Even if they work at Google they can't get it. I'm not sure I understand this point, so let me make my point clearer. It's clear that Google(TM) can access your data. You probably mean "most google employees can't", which I agree with. But someone can access your data for sure, and in fact you can access your data: if you are a European citizen, you can request all of your data right now, than…

Yeah I don't see the connection to Google or how using these non-Google services helps with that kind of thing. It's completely unrelated.

You say "Google can access your data." What exactly does that mean? No single employee of Google can. They put immense protections in place because of just how costly it would be if this happened....it would destroy trust in the company that they have spent billions of dollars building up.

This is a fundamentally different thing than someone's wife logging into their device and seeing their Ashley Madison stuff.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#347

Post by [deleted] »

zbraniecki wrote: post #224

Hi all, I'm an engineer working on Firefox Platform (Gecko). In the linked blog post, the author recommends Firefox (thanks!) and links to a "privacy recommendations" for it, which include items such as "resistFingerprinting" settings. I'd like to remind everyone that turning on this setting has far fetched consequences to how you experience the Web. Your dates, timezones, preferred languages will all be masked which…

[deleted]

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#348

Post by hardwaresofton »

dvko wrote: post #240

We've been working on something that has yet to be added to this list, but I feel it's worth mentioning. It's a self-hosted OS alternative to Google Analytics, much like Matomo (formerly Piwik) but less focused on developers and way more opinionated in terms of what data is visualized. It's called Fathom Analytics[1]. Eventually we want to provide a paid hosted option much like what Ghost is offering to make sure we…

Hey wanted to know that I'm super excited to see/use fathom -- I've been using Piwik (now Matomo) for a while, but found that it kinda did too much, envisioned myself writing something like Fathom to scratch the itch, glad I don't have to! :)

It looks like fathom has just the stuff I want to see in a nice stripped down view

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#349

Post by superflyguy »

blub wrote: post #333
edanm wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While all these things help , I still think it's true that for 99.9% of people, nothing really bad will happen because of info that Google collects. I mean, as terrible as "getting on the radar of someone that wants to make [your] life miserable" is, it's a relatively rare occurrence, and I doubt that Google is really making it that much worse (if at all). Disclaimer - would be happy to be proved wrong if you want to…

Disadvantages as a consequence of being spied on by the "googles" of the world are difficult to prove , because of information asymmetry: * were you denied entry in a country because the agent had a bad day or because of something you wrote on twitter? * did your insurance rates increase because of a market adjustment, or because of something your car mechanic or car manufacturer shared with the insurer? * were you d…

Am I really the only person who creates and uses new accounts for every online site/service every few months? Different email addresses (on my own domain) too or mailinator for the sign ups, using tor on occasion in case they want to note the country/IP I'm signing up from.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#350

Post by pmlnr »

mailbomb wrote: post #40

Besides the Gmails alternatives: 1. Mailfence – Based in Belgium – 500 MB free; 20 GB Pro 2. Tutanota – Based in Germany – 1 GB free; 10 GB Pro 3. Mailbox.org – Based in Germany – 2 GB storage 4. Protonmail – Based in Switzerland – 500 MB free; 5 GB Pro 5. * * Runbox.com - Based in Norway * * They forgot #5, runbox.com

self hosted iredmail on a raspberry/old laptop/home server/rented server/VPS?
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