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

Alternatives to Google Products

restoreprivacy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 527 posts

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#381

Post by blub »

bobsoap wrote: post #275
blub wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it become some sort of fashion statement to be ignorant about privacy? Whenever I discuss this topic people seem to almost take pride in giving their information to Google, Facebook and the thousands of other companies they have no clue about. I think it's cognitive dissonance rearing its ugly head again: those people have tied their identity at some level with the use of the products and an attack on e.g. Google…

I find I'm having trouble arguing in a meaningful way with people who don't share the same concerns regarding the privacy of their data. I'm running out of arguments - no matter what I say, they'll respond with a shrug. "So what? I don't have anything to hide." "So what? They are a big company, surely they won't abuse my data." "So what? How has Cambridge Analytica affected me?" And for the ultimate capitulation: "So…

In general I frame the discussion so that I can emphasize the effects of surveilance on society and key members of society (judges, government employees, journalists, law enforcement, doctors etc). They could be blackmailed or reveal the data of many others through their carelessnes.

The average Joe is not clever enough to figure out what's happening and is probably not worth the effort to educate them. Try it on family and friends, but don't get your hopes up :)

IT workers are a special case: they think they're super smart but are just as clueless about the topic like the general population. And they help develop these systems, so it might be worthwile to try to use social pressure to get them to quit helping the abusers.

Ultimately this can only be solved through new laws and regulations, like the GDPR.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#382

Post by oldcynic »

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…

After the constant succession of revelations of the sorry state of privacy, along with myriad data breaches, all I want a browser to do is lie and obfuscate. So I'll gladly take the sledgehammer boolean of resistFingerprinting for now.

I've yet to come across an extension that does something like this so I'm presuming it's not possible via extensions?

Are Mozilla working to make this more granular and let me whitelist individual features on a per site basis?

I'd far rather lose tracking than get the very minor benefit of a (slow loading) web font or en-GB over en-US. Especially if I can opt in the few I trust or need those features.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#383

Post by seanwilson »

jazoom wrote: post #374
4ad wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU did not make cookies an opt-in technique. The EU made irrelevant cookies opt-in. Cookies that are essential for the functioning of the service do not need a notice. If you require user accounts, you don't need to show a cookie notice. If you implement a shopping cart without user accounts, you also don't need to show a cookie notice. Unfortunately most websites don't understand this simple idea and show the co…

Probably most websites use Google Analytics or an alternative.

> Probably most websites use Google Analytics or an alternative.

How is this not essential though? You can't effectively run a business without some understanding of your traffic and where it's coming from. Also, you can use Google Analytics in a way that doesn't store PII.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#384

Post by blub »

robbrown451 wrote: post #290
bobsoap wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I'm having trouble arguing in a meaningful way with people who don't share the same concerns regarding the privacy of their data. I'm running out of arguments - no matter what I say, they'll respond with a shrug. "So what? I don't have anything to hide." "So what? They are a big company, surely they won't abuse my data." "So what? How has Cambridge Analytica affected me?" And for the ultimate capitulation: "So…

You deal with that by giving an actual example of something bad that has happened to someone who has not worried about what Google tracking them. I haven't seen one. I mean, people who advise me not to text and drive can give real examples of people who died because they did that. That's tangible. All I hear is a lot of people telling me what I should care about but refuse to supply anything but intangibles and theor…

Do you actually play an important role in society which gives you access to the information of many people or which would make others interested in blackmailing you? If yes, you'd hopefully already be aware of those risks and also educate your contacts on how to act in a provacy-conscious way.

Otherwise use Google, use whatever you want, nobody cares.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#385

Post by blub »

edanm wrote: post #361
blub wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Look, I semi-agree in the abstract. It is difficult to prove in the individual case. In the aggregate , it's not impossible to prove, if still a bit hard - this is what economics/sociology research does, and a lot of governments have statistics/open access/FOIA/etc. So we can know how often these things happen. Specifically to the things you list - again, I don't have statistics here, but based on my gut feeling - mo…

The negative consequences will never affect most people, just those that have bad luck or have upset someone in power. Kinda like how only some journalists commit suicide by shooting themselves 5 times in the head in Russia.

It's impossible for us to know what's happening, baring various leaks. Given the last decade my gut feeling is that if it's not happening, someone's at least thinking about how to implement it.

Re LinkedIn: I didn't mean good old social network stalking. There's nothing stopping LinkedIn from offering this as a sevice to companies. They already allow recruiters and paying members more privileges.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#386

Post by jazoom »

seanwilson wrote: post #383
jazoom wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably most websites use Google Analytics or an alternative.

> Probably most websites use Google Analytics or an alternative. How is this not essential though? You can't effectively run a business without some understanding of your traffic and where it's coming from. Also, you can use Google Analytics in a way that doesn't store PII.

I could run the business just fine without Google Analytics. Would just be in the dark a bit more.

I'm not associated with EU so I haven't pondered on this as much as others. My first thought is that this should really be up to the browsers and their users on what info Analytics software is able to work out just from the user being on the page.

Users should just assume that every business will absorb all available information. At least then we wouldn't see those ridiculous cookie notices everywhere.

As a web developer, I'm kinda surprised 3rd party cookies ever became a thing in the first place.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#389

Post by jhoh »

Last week I tried to improve my online privacy and removed all Google products from my life. In short, here's what I did:

1. Replaced my Google G-Suite with Proton Mail and a self hosted Nextcloud The process was fairly easy: Just export all your mails and import them into Proton Mail. After that I've exported Google Drive data, contacts and calendar and imported everything into Nextcloud. This all took around two hours (including the Nextcloud setup).

The only "issue" was dealing with services where I use my G-Suite account as a login, but most of them allowed you to set a password so you can log in with email.

Nextcloud has amazing one click install apps that offer the same features that Google has (video calls, docs, notes etc.).

2. Removing Google from my Android phone For that I flashed LineageOS for microG. The great thing with this is, that you can install and use all apps you normally have but without having Google Services installed. As a PlayStore alternative you can use F-Droid and Yalp Store. Anyone who installed a custom ROM before will have it running in under an hour.

3. Securing my network with a PI-Hole and Proton VPN For devices like my phone, laptop and desktop I installed Proton VPN. As a browser for mobile and desktop I use Firefox with uBlock origin. For everything else (like "smart" devices etc.) I installed a Pi-Hole (basically Easy-List on network level) to remove ads and tracking scripts.

These were only the major steps that I've taken. So far I don't have any regrets about it and I haven't faced any limitations with the alternatives I use now.

If anyone has questions or ideas for further improvement, let me know.

Links: https://protonmail.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ https://lineage.microg.org/ https://protonvpn.com/

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#390

Post by majidazimi »

We are facing two issues:

1. Privacy against advertisers 2. Privacy against security agencies.

From my perspective, first issue, is more important than second one. I think Apple does pretty decent job regarding first issue. MS holds second position. Google/FB hold the worst position.

So even though Apple/MS are closed source, I think our privacy will improve considerably just by installing an ad-blocker and sticking to Apple/MS products.

Second issue is more involved and you'd probably need to give up on all sort of mobile devices. On desktop you have to move to Linux/BSDs. No online storage (or at least move to self hosted solution). No hosted email(Or maybe just protonmail, ...). Life becomes tougher, if you decide to improve privacy against security agencies.

People tend to treat privacy as a binary issue. (either no privacy or full privacy). However, as said, majority of people experience much higher privacy just by dumping Google/FB and using an ad-blocker.

Post reply on HN