Sorry to post my shitty neofetch to this community
Google “Only spy the web” is highly inaccurate…they are everywhere. In every website, in your android phone, in your YouTube, in your Google drive, in your email, in your Google maps…
Anyways… I will calm down now. :)
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For me, it is useful. At the very least, such a blatant display of tracking information means people will know about it and disable it if necessary.
It should be an opt in feature, but it has helped me a couple times. I got beat up pretty bad after leaving a bar and couldn’t remember anything about the night, was able to retrace my steps from the google stuff.
It is opt in. someone didn’t read.
Oh that’s spooky. What phone do you have? I was almost gonna say that it’s likely a pixel thing, but I have one too, so idk why they would brag with your data.
Its baked into Google Maps.
Huh, interesting. Thanks for sharing.
It’s cute, people think their android os isn’t collecting an embarrassing amount of data. Even if you turn everything off but cellular, it still phones home with cellular tower triangulation, app usage, call history, general web activity, weather the phone thinks your walking driving or riding a Bike, device diagnostics, etc.
Yes but we do what we can.
Same, I wish there was a better options. I’m on android right now but when it comes time to upgrade I always try to choose the lesser evil and it’s hard.
demand compensation we should be paid for it
I wish there was a paid google of no spying… I mean what does google one get me, but the ability for google to spy on more or my data?
They’re really good at providing value for your data, I feel the same way about YouTube premium. I do it to better support creators and remove ads but they probably have one of the most detailed profiles on me.
Everyone thinks about the spying as relating to themselves, the individual.
Google doesn’t give a shit about you. Google gives a shit about us. Collectively. They can monitor the collective soul of the world. When people are busy, when they’re not paying attention, when they’re mad, who, and for how long; how they react to certain subjects…how to get them to listen about certain subjects, how to bring them around to certain subjects, how to keep them disagreeing with other viewpoints, etc.
They’re literally developed “a remote control for the flock” and everyone’s out here like “why do I care if Google see my save games I have 500 hours in CoD so wut”
In your car, your TV, your network, your dns…
Everywhere.
They are even part of paying for the massive underwater cables between continents that all internet traffic runs through.
They took everything over.
It’s the most extensive surveillance network in the world.
Literally 1984.
Except that instead of an authoritarian government using it to totally control the learned populace, they are showing you ads.
We’ve still got a way to go before 1984. If it did happen, you wouldn’t be able to discuss it.
To be fair, Google does release data to governments so I guess it’s both.
I use alternative for all google services.
YouTube - piped.video
Google drive - Mega Drive or Anonfile
G-Mail - Proton
Google Map - OSM (Open Street Map)
I think you meant:
Google maps - OSM
and
Google Search Engine - almost a thing else (duckduckgo)
Yea, But my search engine is ecosia.org
Ecosia is cool. Should probably also switch to it…
started uploading pics to maps as a ‘guide’ back in 2000s. G has sent me a few trinkets over the years(coveted lego phone stand). a level 8 guide, w/e that means. millions of pic views. what do I care. it’s a hobby. Moved a home phone line to Voice. Get email transcript of any voice mails. set it to do not disturb. phone never rings. voicemail or nothing. I use them for free. They use me. Or think they do
in your android phone
And if you try to revoke their spying access on a rooted stock device, they force a reboot ☹️
Hence GrapheneOS sandboxing the Play Store. It is ironic that Google is the only phone manufacturer that allows for installing a different OS. But I suppose the fact that GrapheneOS has pushed security updates that have made it into stock Android and the fact that most users won’t bother installing an alternative OS on their pixel phones is why they allow such shenanigans.
I use rooted LineageOS on my 4a 5G, though I do still have GApps on it. Next phone I buy I’m thinking I’ll give GrapheneOS a try. Leaving behind my rooted system level adblocking would be difficult for me though.
In regards to ad blocking. My solution isn’t as all encompassing as that, but for general web browsing, I use the Mull browser as you can install some addons like ublock and noscript. I’ll admit though if you’re looking to install advertisement heavy Play Store Apps though, I’d say maybe look into using a PiHole to adblock your home network?
I mostly just use my phone for/at work. I already have a server that could operate as a pihole at home, but my PC already blocks everything under the sun, so it’s not really needed.
I get most of my stuff off f-droid unless I don’t have any other choice, and use firefox with ublock+noscript on my phone as-is. But it is nice to not have to worry about getting ads in anything else when I do install an odd game or something, though.
What works for me is a pi-hole at home, a wireguard service on my (dd-wrt) router with the pi-hole functioning as dns server and my phone using wireguard as an always-on vpn.
All traffic on my phone is now routed through the pi-hole at home, which filters out all tracking, wherever I am.
It would be fun if some government required companies that off free services to disclose how they make money and allow each user to see their particular value. This might help open some eyes…
open their eyes to what? the fact it costs money to run a service? its either some data mining or everything costing a helluva lot more. and im sure youd complain about prices too.
and im sure youd complain about prices too
A universal claim only takes one case to disprove, and I’ll be that case: you’re wrong. I actually seek out the pay services and cut out the “free” ones.
My real complaint is when the huge companies offer a paid plan, but then still try to double dip and abuse my data and I. So I leave for the smaller guys who have an actual reputation to protect and so have garnered some trust. The hard part are things like google street view, or youtube, where competition is way behind due to the sheer inertia that incumbents have (e.g., creators using youtube due to the huge potential audience).
Other thing hard to ditch for me is android, as I really don’t like how tightly locked down apple’s walled garden is - not being able to run real firefox with my choice of extensions is a showstopper for any mobile platform.
I think it is funny that this community thinks it knows everything about privacy and security and every time I see a post like this it becomes apparent that the main of this community doesn’t.
I like the Fediverse but it is a security and privacy nightmare.
It would be, if users were convinced it is anything other than a public place.
Its basically a giant townhall. Anything you say is public.
I know what you mean. It suck but whatever it’s better than giving data to a big company.
I mean, in this way we are basically giving data to every big company, aren’t we?
The important thing is: it’s not traced back to you. It’s possible to see everything for everyone, sure. But nobody knows that it’s you and that’s why it’s not as much worth
That’s not how it works though? They don’t need to know “who you are,” because with ads you have a unique identifying number. If you are browsing the web and your ads become more catered to you then you are giving data somewhere.
Privacy is about maintaining as little about yourself as personally possible. That is what gets me about this app. Half the users on here have very little idea how the Internet works. Privacy and security aren’t about going, “I support open source and decentralized software so the big man doesn’t have my data,” but that is not how that works at all. Just because you aren’t giving your data to Mark Zuckerberg and you don’t support Facebook doesn’t mean you aren’t exposing your giving data to someone else.
I also truly don’t think Lemmy users realize how exposed they are potentially making themselves. Even if the API is free and your app is open source and it isn’t Elon Musk showing you your image of a cat does not mean you are private and secure.
Lemmy services and instances are hosted on a server and use an API that is open to anyone and everyone that wants to host an instance and community. So instead you are entrusting your data to someone you don’t know on their hardware that you don’t know anything about.
From a security and privacy point of view Lemmy is a nightmare. Mastadon, etc. Even if your data is encrypted or passed along secure channels and you can migrate your data to some other instances does not mean you are safe. That is not how the law works either. If a national government agency shows up and issues an order for their server data and that data isn’t protected properly by the host well then you are exposed. The people acting like they know something more because you decided to pay for Sync or because you want to use Windows or Google literally no zero fucks about privacy and data.
No, thats exactly it. When you post something on reddit, Google collects your browser information for your “unique identifying number” by having scripts implemented into Reddits site. Google then knows, that u/Prethoryn is your account and they can then collect the data from your reddit account and link it to you.
But your Lemmy instance (so far) does not do that. You post something here and google sees that some “Prethoryn@lemmy.world” guy wrote something, but their data-collecting can’t link it to your unique identifying number, because lemmy.world does not collect that information from you. And of course, your comment is federated to thousands of other instances. But they also can’t sell more information than what is available when you look at Google. If lemmy.world decides to implement tracking, this of course changes. But for now, your comment is not linked to you and it’s definitely a step up in privacy (regarding companies) than before.
The other aspect of privacy, personal privacy, is of course not so good on the fediverse and that’s where your points make valid sense. If you want to delete your comments because your friends discovered your secret account, it’s basically impossible because of the federation.
Well technically I am using a Google pixel phone to access Lemmy through an app that I downloaded from their store, using the same phone and ISP that I use to chat with my mother on Facebook Messenger, shop on Marketplace, order on Amazon and check my mails. I also tried the connect-your-phone thing to read my SMS on the computer, so Microsoft also got in.
Everyone knows everything I do at this point.
I don’t know where you live but in most of the world it would be illegal for them to spy on what you do in the apps. Yes, Google knows that you use Lemmy and also Facebook knows that. But they are not allowed to spy on what you do inside those apps and can’t link your account to your phone if you don’t use an app that sells this data (aka Sync)
Apple fanboys will lose their shit if they see this meme. I sometimes dont understand these fanboys like apple doesn’t pay them nor does they credit these idiots for word of mouth free marketing instead these idiots pay top $ to buy their product and act like them invented it. Stupid mofos!!
Well it’s more the fact that they have payed top $ so it can’t be a flawed product. That’s most likely why some apple users react in that fashion.
The new Mac Pro would like a word with you LOL
That’s so true. You make a good point.
Facebook: you guys hide it?
Google: Laughing in Android.
Google: Laughing in Chrome, scanning your entire file system
Google: Laughing in bloody web DRM
Oh no my previous private keys 😱
The amount of telemetry that comes with GMS is insane.
Pretty sure Google also spies through the OS.
It depends of the OS. The vast majority of Android devices " yes". But there are few exceptions like GrapheneOS for example, where Google code was almost completely purged from the system except from the firmware level (unfortunately), for basic reasons.
somebody never reads the logs
Both Android and ChromeOS are Linux, and Google’s spying there…
Do we really need to bring back “GNU/Linux” for the pedants?
We should all be thankful that ChromeOS is flaming hot garbage that no one should be using on UX alone.
This is one of the reasons why I think something like “Freedesktop Platform” is a more appropriate term than “Linux”.
Linux*
*Except Ubuntu
All you can really do is make the spying as difficult as possible. That’s really all we can do 🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️
True. And unfortunately certain privacy measures can make it easier to digitally fingerprint you as a user. Also my mind is still blown since I learned about canvas fingerprinting. EFF.org describes it as follows:
Canvas fingerprinting is invisible to the user. A tracker can create a “canvas” in your browser, and generate a complicated collage of shapes, colors, and text using JavaScript. Then, with the resulting collage, the tracker extracts data about exactly how each pixel on the canvas is rendered. Many variables will affect the final result. These include your operating system, graphics card, firmware version, graphics driver version, and installed fonts.
These settings are different from one computer to the next. But they tend to be consistent enough on a single machine to clearly identify a user.
linux is not inherently immune ya’ll
Very Accurate
I have a Mac 💀
I’m sure not everyone will agree, but honestly, I kind of stopped caring too much. I’ve been using Instagram, Google, Android, Apple, and many other service providers for years and none seems to know a lot about me based on the stuff I see being advertised to me.
None of them seem to have figured out what languages I speak (I get a lot of language courses for English and German, but I’m native in both), what my education level is (I get a lot of ‘study your bachelor or master here or there or online’ despite having two master’s degrees), where I really live (lots of British stuff always, but I live out of Europe), or what my hobbies are (lots of mobile games that I wouldn’t touch with a stick).
Yeah, it seems they get the basics (I’m male, below 35, I am interested in educational stuff), but that could be anyone… And if I can use their services for tree for them to put me in a category with some 10M others, I’m kinda okay
(I know it’s a late response but I only saw this post now and wanted to response to your particular comment) It was also the case for me because I usually didn’t consume stuff from my age or from my native language but I still stopped using their services for the most part and deactivated any kind of telemetry from them for the remaining stuff I still use because despite all of that, I still don’t want to support their business model or the companies themselves, as well as their constant push to consumerism through ads drowning. So privacy isn’t the only reason to stop letting them listen to you I think.
Question is, what business model would you support?
Ads are the thing that pay for a lot of services most people use in daily lives. Imagine you needed a paid subscription for your email, your search engine, browser, social media account(s)…
Lemmy is fun and all, but eventually it will need to expand and pay for server costs and so on. Yes, perhaps it will be carried by enthusiastic community members, but that’s just a higher paid subscription for a few rather than many.
I agree fully with you that the level of commercialisation is beyond crazy by now, and many developments do not have the user in mind. But that’s not on the business model itself, but the companies’ decisions.
Google spy through android as well
I use lineageOS because of this
I’ll be switching to Lineage soon…
Google forced my manufacturer (Fairphone) to effectively ‘disable’ the fingerprint scanner from android 13 onwards for the FP3. Our Lineage fork reverted that Google mandated change thankfully
