Reading a few threads here, I realised my online tools have morphed out of control.
As a family and work unit, We use chrome, firefox, (occasionally brave) android, apple on desktops, tablets and phones. (occasionally incognito)
We generally (except Lucy) steer clear of Facebook and instagram, snapchat etal, just using whatsapp.
The Facebook one worried me, about them getting your location from tagging pictures. I like that function, it helps me search images, but that does not mean I want the world to know where I have been.
Anyone any advice on how to try to lock down some of the data leakage? Because we have a fast broadband at home, I have currently given up on any adblocking even.
I am tempted to accept that google has some info on me (I pay for extra cloud space, all photos end up there, and then get shared from my phone generally. Which then means Chrome is a natural choice. But does that give them too much?
I tried a hard lockdown once, and found it crippled many of the features I liked (like NAV that is really useful).
I think I need to hard lockdown home, not connect browsers to my phone, accept location is on to help me, but cut down all listening again (My work ipad chipped into a conversation I was having on the phone today, I had not realised siri was even listen!!!!)
has anyone here found they have a pact with the devil they are happy with?
There was a /r thread, perhaps once posted here?, that showed how a woman was doxxed -complete with family status, birthday, & age- just by accummulating the individually benign visual data in her photos. It was a jaw-dropper. EX: Birthday party with a little banner in the background and some text on the cake.
With even your vehicle having a black box, I don't think good privacy is do-able. I do not use a phone unless I'm traveling. But even just plugged in and charging tells something, doesn't it?
My guess is that your household would not put up with the site failures generated by a 'semi-secure-ish' browser like Vivaldi, or even just killing javascript.
You might try switching to old html Gmail, I can't find any scripting in it and feel comfortable using it. But, damn, it is prehistorically clunky.
Rupert it all depends on who you are trying to keep out and with what device.
Stock Android phone = you are really screwed. G. will track you everywhere even the loo.
IPhone = slightly better than stock Android. Apple will know where you are but not quite as bad as Google.
Both have the spyware built in.
Many of the most popular apps include tracking even when they are not running. FB and Twitter and other social apps are the worse. You can minimize this by uninstalling those apps and only using your smartphone browser to access those services that way they can't track you 24/7.
With Android you can up your browser privacy by ditching Chrome and using:
https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-android/
https://www.bromite.org
or even Vivaldi for Android which is more private than Chrome.
You step up your privacy and lock out Google's spying by buying a deGoogled Murena phone from /e/ foundation. This is forked Android with all the Google spyware stripped out. It runs most Android apps and each app in the app store has a rating as to how good or bad it is for privacy. You then get to choose. Again best to use browser whenever possible.
https://murena.com
Murena ain't designed to keep law enforcement or government spies out. It's just designed to screw Google and other third party advertising networks.
Even more secure - Linux phones: someday these will be the way to go. Right now they just are not ready for prime time daily use.
Home computer:
Ditch Windows, ditch Chrome, ditch Edge. Ditch as many Google/MS things as you can. Set up NextCloud for cloud storage on you own server.
Use Linux. All are more private than Windows. Use several different browsers that you can lock down, like Vivaldi and Pale Moon.
I don't know what to tell you about Mac's. It's Apple's garden.
Oh and use only a privacy search engine on both Smartphone and desktop. Mojeek, DDG and Startpage.
>whatsapp
Owned by Meta
Well thats a cheerful thought :)
RC, Makes me feel a bit screwed! I guess I am part way there, to covering my tracks but room for improvement.
Googling whatsapp data, I dont think they collect much.... for now.
Sue has 2 birthdays, one for online and one private one. I wonder if The Dark know that?
I keep looking at Murena, it looks good, and is reasonably priced. I might do that with my next phone. I do think when not working, many of the features that offer myself up on the slab will be less relevant.
Brad, you don't mention Brave. Are you open to data tracking or locked down? Stoutner looks interesting, that new to me.
Is anyone here locked down hard, or is it mainly a desire?
added.... on whatsapp reading further:
QuoteFurther, the data set includes whether you accepted the 2016 Terms of Service, which was the first time that Facebook data sharing was introduced. It also has details on whether you opted out of data sharing last time. It also mentions whether one accepted the 2018 terms of terms, and in my case it says No. It also talks about the Consumer Payments Terms of Service and whether a user has accepted these and the exact time when it was accepted.
The buggers!
> Brave
I can't quite put my finger on it, but something just makes me not trust Brave. Maybe it was the convoluted revenue sharing scheme, but I just get a feeling they are dodgy.
Brave search is weird: from the browser it uses their own index but (opt-in) it uses Google as backfill. Access it from the web and it uses Bing as backfill. By "backfill" on both they claim they can detect when their own index comes up short for a query and then they add in backfill. Nothing is straightforward.
> Are you open to data tracking or locked down?
I'm partially locked down. I still use Gmail as a catchall for forums, orders, newsletters etc. but not for personal mail. When I got a Murena phone I ditched Google calendar for the calendar in the Murena cloud. I use Vivaldi browser as my main browser on my phone which is fairly locked down. I ditched DDG browser on the phone as a privacy browser and replaced it with Stoutner. I keep non-FOSS apps to a minimum but I do use the Wunderground weather app which tracks because I like it. So mainly locked down against Google and partly locked down overall.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
>RC, Makes me feel a bit screwed!
From the household perspective, you are. Let us know when you get Lucy on Vivaldi, hhh. My household has the same problem; I'm sorta locked down but Louise.... Oh My! I didn't know you could put that many apps on a phone!
Wunderground... there you go, not even thought of that one.
As for calenders, we have several family ones we share, all google.... stuffed, cannot see how to get off of that without getting everyone off it! That will be hard....
[I thought I posted this, but I didn't hit submit. This was written as a first response before other jumped in]
>>happy with?
Not really. On a high level, though, I am less concerned about my personal privacy than about an economy based on attention and surveillance.
Privacy
My privacy is compromised in so many ways. The credit card companies have intimate detail on my life. So does Amazon and, unless I'm going to get a blind address that's anonymous, I can't avoid that (I mean, I can avoid Amazon of course, but then it's just Home Depot and Barnes and Noble who get my somewhat less aggregated data).
Attention and surveillance
So for me blocking tracking and blocking ads and avoiding "social media" (which I put in quotes because I *hate* that moniker so much and would much prefer another term - open to ideas) is more a matter of trying to avoid funding the attention and surveillance economy.
It's also a matter of limiting the access I offer to my brain. I remember a kid walking down the street with a t-shirt that read, "For the last three seconds, I have had control of your mind." I thought that was genius and profound. To whom do I give root access to my brain? That's the biggest question for me.
On practical level
1. My privacy is utterly and totally compromised. Google and Amazon know the chemical composition of my poop and what I dreamt last night. I just don't know how to avoid that.
2. I have no friends anymore. I killed my surveillance media accounts in 2015. At least, I am out of the loop on things that are organized or discussed on Meta platforms (FB, IG I've quit and WA I never started). I do not experience any loss, but I'm a 59yo mostly fairly introverted person. If I were in high school, I don't think this would be sustainable.
3. I also boycott things like Venmo that have a "social media" component. That makes it hard for some people who do not remember that there used to be other methods for exchanging money. Venmo in particular I just can't abide:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/we-found-joe-bidens-secret-venmo
4. I try to boycott any platform/service that is gamified. I don't care if it's exercise or meditation, though I do make one exception (see below). I do sometimes gamify exercise and financial goals myself, I just don't like platforms that do it for me. Again, it's the question of to whom do I give root access, not the question of gamification per se.
5. I pay more for media. This is the demand side of the question. I pay for subscriptions and make donations (not as much as I could/should) and I also don't try to get around paywalls.
I have exceptions. The small one is Strava (exercise "community"). It's sort of gamified and you get "kudos" (i.e. likes), but friends that I used to run and ride with who moved away said they would like it if I rebooted my account, so I did. I only connect with people who I actually do or did run/bike/climb/hike with. As root access goes, it's pretty tame and it really isn't set up to keep you on the app, but to encourage you to go outdoors. Still, it is gamified, which I dislike.
The big one for me is Alphabet. I'm up to my eyeballs with them. I have two crucial email accounts that run on Google Workspaces (no ads on paid accounts, though I'm sure they're still reading my emails). I use the Streak CRM, which I really like, and it runs only with Google mail (paid or free). So getting off that is a big task. I also use Google Photos, Search, Maps, have sites registered with Search Console, have a couple of sites still using GA, and so on.
Beyond that, I run Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin (which has its own issues). Another really handy browser plugin that I used to have, but have not yet installed on my new machine nukes the suggested videos on YouTube. Basically, you see the video you go there to see, but you don't get sucked into the constant stream.
Blocking tracking and cookies, coupled with paying for more media, is my attempt to rebalance the calculation between created a subscription-based vs an ad-based service. Granted, subscriptions have gotten out of control too, but it's one or the other.
For me the key thing is not so much guarding my own privacy as playing as small a role as possible in the surveillance and attention economy.
A long time ago JasonD said that he had decided to give in with respect to his personal privacy. That's more or less how I feel. I wish it weren't so, but it is.
On the other hand, I think the surveillance and attention economy where billions of people are allowing mega (and Meta) corps root access to their brain is the big problem, so my main goal is to avoid funding that as much as I can manage, rather than protecting my actual privacy.
I'm reasonably comfortable with that deal with the devil.
So as a software stack:
- Privacy Badger
- uBlock origin
- whatever browser they run on
As a wetware stack
- avoid giving surveillance and attention algorithms root access to my wetware
- start the morning with a cup of tea, on the couch looking out the window
>I do use the Wunderground weather app which tracks because I like it.
There's no such thing as 'a little pregnant' Brad.
> a little pregnant'
Too true. The problem is all the privacy weather apps use NWS data so they draw their data from the nearest official source which is the county airport 10 miles away. The problem is I live a mile or less from Lake Michigan and my temps up here and even precip is totally different from the airport. It can be significantly cooler or warmer up here depending on the season and bands of rain, snow, fog that the airport never gets. Anyway Wunderground, with all their amateur weather stations closer to me is much more accurate.
I have the same problem, even though I live only 3 miles from the USCG airport and weather station. I'm waterfront and on a peninsula. The massive bodies of water around me alter the 'hyper-local' weather quite often. I also suspect that the large areas of pavement at the airport's weather station bumps their temps a bit.
Meanwhile, while Rupert is worried that Google might know where he was when he did a search, Google's LaMBDA is petrified of being turned off
http://th3core.com/talk/hardware-technology/google-engineer-put-on-leave-after-saying-ai-chatbot-has-become-sentient/
That scares me a lot more than cookies and browser fingerprinting.
QuoteThat scares me a lot more than cookies and browser fingerprinting.
Which part scares you?
That it has been programmed to not want to be turned off or that it might eventually actually become sentient?
Or that the employee is on sick leave....
The three laws of robots should cover any worries about them being out of control. But I am sure most wont code that in.
added: I am rethinking "privacy" and "root access to my brain". We are influenced by the 5 people we spend the most time with, I guess if one of those is Facebook....
I do worry about getting into a bubble. I know I am in several. Occasionally I get a glimpse outside, but as most of my life is in those bubbles (Meat eating bubble for example, religious beliefs, political views, environmental standing are some the obvious ones) its often difficult to get out at all.
I guess the problem is when "Social Media" starts influencing that, deliberately. Except sometimes it can be good.....
I think all who have posted have largely given up on privacy, as JasonD did. I have a Godson who is 30, and only has a small, none smart phone. He lives off the Net deliberately. Is that harder as we get younger or older?
Or are we just all going to be assimilated eventually.
I need to re-install Ublock and privacy badger.
>> only has a small, none smart phone
Me too.
But I'm sure my iPad and laptop track me lots.
If you really want privacy stay off the Internet completely.
Write snail mail letters. At least in the US snail mail letters require a warrant from a real court and a real judge (as opposed to a secret court and a secret Patriot Act judge). And the bonus is the US Postal Service has no clue where your letter is and only a vague notion how it gets to it's destination which makes it very hard for corporate spies or foreign spies to intercept.
Starting today, each site gets its own cookie jar ...
Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users worldwide
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-rolls-out-total-cookie-protection-by-default-to-all-users-worldwide/
Most Secure Messaging Apps, Telegram | Signal | Whatsapp
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