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I mean, the sites you visit have a privacy policy that has to mention any firm of analytics being used, and it always has a clause that goes something like "by using this site, you agree to the terms of service and privacy policy"
So if you want to use the site, you'll have to deal with the fact that they want to know what's going on on their business front end, and they won't have the ressources to develop a quality analysis platform.
Also, at least, Google protects you from the business owners who'd honestly rather have access to all your data instead of an incrementing counter and the approximate city you're browsing from.
Not saying Google is all good, but they do take a whole lot of steps to make sure your data is being used responsibly instead of a, let's just say, less responsible way by small/medium businesses. -
@FMashiro True but the second I actually find out what a website uses, the scripts are usually already loaded. If it gave me an option to back out before having those scripts loaded, you at least give people a fair choice/chance.
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@FMashiro I'm completely fine with not using a website if it requires you to let google analytics run but the moment I have loaded the site, it already runs.
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@linuxxx that is one of the reasons why I use noscript. I also prefer not to use google. Regarding websites: in the end everything boils down to money and a lot of businesses want to have their cake and eat it meaning they want to know exactly why they aren't making a turnover or (logical or) how they can make more profit. It is just easier to use google for that purpose since tracking is what they do best.
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https://theguardian.com/technology/...
Google will stop reading emails for ads personalisation. I never supported reading emails for ads and I am glad to know they are taking actions.
An important thing you are forgetting is Gmail is a free service. The email services that use encryption all the time are most of the time paid. If they are not, pretty sure they are selling your data somewhere.
Your choice is not taken by Google but the user that is using the free service.
Complaining about using an add-on for Google Analytics is very similar to complaining about using adblocks for ads. Ads and Analytics are tools provided by Google (or other companies), it's the business owners using them for generating the revenue. Whether you use the add-on or any open source software it totally up to you.
Without Ads and Analytics, a lot of companies will simply go bankrupt. Because of these tools, there is a lot of companies just based on the ad revenue and generating tons of jobs for people.
For DDG, you don't know if it is under PRISM or not. All the big companies are always criticised first before any small companies are even brought to the context. And the fact that some privacy advocates call other dumb for using Google while they are using DDG makes me laugh.
I will write a bit more later when I am free. And thanks for writing! -
@tahnik you are correct in your assesment but that does not mean it is not annoying for someone who is privacy concerned.
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@MateTea42 I am always (like everyone else) annoyed by ads. But I don't keep blaming Google for it. I can see why websites use it and I get around it using add ons. There is a difference between being annoyed and literally wanting the death of a company.
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@tahnik I was not talking about ads at all. I was only talking about tracking. Ads on the other hand are ok however there are so many sites that abuse it.
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@MateTea42 I used that as an example. Same goes for trackings.
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@tahnik I use tutanota for my email and they provide a free account. Don't believe they don't sell data? Check their source code, it's open source.
The choice part, fair point.
Don't agree. With an adblocker I might block all ads from 100000+ sources. With that one addon, I just block google analytics.
I never said I was against ads. I'm against ads which track users.
As for analytics, a lot of companies will go bankrupt indeed. Not saying analytics is/are wrong, just saying that I don't want *google* analytics to get any data from me.
I never said I knew whether it was or not, I said that I know that google is integrated in prism.
Duckduckgo - when you disable cookies they don't set any and they appear to deliver an empty referal header value. That's at least better for ones privacy than what google and other search engines mostly have to offer. I'd call that actual proof. -
The issue is that google stores a lot of data about you and could without you knowing distribute that info to someone else. It is scary to think that I could be reseaching a topic for a paper without using google and they still know what websites I visit. There are a lot of addons that have now become a requirement in order to browse with some sort of security. Wouldn't you also be annoyed if someone kept looking at you typing messages to friends on your cellphone even after you told them not to. It is the same principle here.
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@linuxxx If I was concerned that much about privacy, I would not trust anything unless I am running them in my own server. Another reason people won't use tutanota is the lack of features compred to Inbox. The ability to sort emails automatically, set reminders for emails etc helps a lot of with productivity.
Well yeah, Google provides you addon for blocking their analytics. If you want to block others as well, you will have to get something like uBlock or AdBlock. And I did not say you are against ads, I said your fraustration towards trackings are similar to how people hate ads.
As you mentioned, you just don't want "Google" analytics to get data from you. That is a biased opinion. I don't know why you would specifically hate Google out of all the companies that provides analytics.
I would also like to point out that Google doesn't force analytics on any business. It's the business owners that is choosing the platoform for their needs. -
@MateTea42 it is a bit scary. This is mostly because how majority of the people wants their life to be automated and easy. As I mentioned in my previous comment, it's the business owner that is using the analytics. At the end, it's not Google's fault.
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@linuxxx Did you read up on the GDPR? That might improve many of these points a lot (in Europe only of course).
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@theCalcaholic Yeah I'm aware of it and it's quite good but I don't believe that big companies won't move their data across european borders.
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@linuxxx No, but don't they still need to comply to it (at least partially), if they want to offer services in Europe?
I don't know, I'm still in the prices of trading through it. :) -
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@MateTea42 How's this related to GDPR?
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@theCalcaholic watch it and you will see. It is related to the eu and us data privacy regulation problems.
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@MateTea42 I've watched most of it now. These are totally different regulations.
Interesting talk nonetheless. :) -
@theCalcaholic That is why I mentioned it because they are in some way related. I couldnt elaborate earlier because I was doing a worksheet for uni. Taking a short break now.
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Just my humble opinion.
Even after you can convince every internet user with the cons of Google's services and importance of privacy, I am quite sure many will still go with Google and tell you to just send a physical mail via post office if you don't wanna send to the gmail address. Even aftre let's say you have convinved them there are better-choices-for-privacy tools such as the provider you use.
Should we blame the corporate *alone*? or should be also blame on the laziness of monkey-evolved-beings? -
@CurseMeSlowly Or should we blame ourselves for a lack of technical education? I see a big responsibility within our profession.
Since awareness of problems requires knowledge, we are the ones to lobby for technical education which in turn rises public awareness of IT related issues (like privacy infringements).
In Germany for example, organizations like the CCC are doing an awesome work in these fields, but we need more people involved in that things. -
@theCalcaholic again, IMHO this is on same story line as wondering why would people still use IE on earth. We just don't like to change even for a better purpose. We only start to change when something very bad hit us.
Education and knowledge sharing will help to certain extent but only for newer tools and services. For any existing things we are very used to, it is really hard to make a change.
Related Rants
Privacy is a legend
Sorry for being late, stuffs came inbetween!
I have done a few privacy rants/posts before but why not another one. @tahnik did one a few days ago so I thought I'd do a new one myself based on his rant.
So, online privacy. Some people say it's entirely dead, that's bullshit. It's up to an individual, though, how far they want to go as for protecting it.
I personally want to retain as much control over my data as possible (this seems to be a weird thing these days for unknown reasons...). That's why I spend quite some time/effort to take precautions, read myself into how to protect my data more and so on.
'Everyone should have the choice of what services they use' - fully agreed, no doubt about that.
I just find one thing problematic. Some services/companies handle data in a way or have certain business models which takes the control which some people want/have over their data away when you communicate with someone using that service.
Some people (like me) don't want anything to do with google but even when I want to email my best fucking friend, I lose the control over that email data since he uses gmail.
So, when someone chooses to use gmail and I *HAVE* to email them, my choice is gone.
TO BE VERY CLEAR: I'm not blaming that on the users, I'm blaming that on the company/service.
Then for example, google analytics. It's a very good/powerful when you're solely looking at its functions.
I just don't want to be part of their data collection as I don't want to get any data into the google engine.
There's a solution for that: installing an addon in order to opt out.
I'm sorry, WHAT?! --> I <-- have to install an addon in order to opt out of something that is happening on my own motherfucking computer?! What the actual fuck, I don't call that a fucking solution. I'll use Privacy Badger + hosts files to block that instead.
Google vs 'privacy' friendly search engines - I don't trust DDG completely because their backend is closed/not available to the public but I'd rather use them then a search engine which is known to be integrated into PRISM/other surveillance engines by default.
I don't mind the existence of certain services, as long as they don't integrated you with data hungry companies/mass surveillance without you even using their services.
Now lets see how fast the comment section explodes!
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linuxxx
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