23 ms·

Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

513 points by scribu 10y ago

atrilumen 10y ago
> “Some new features for your Google account.” Oh, yeah, I remember that. I totally clicked "Ok, whatever." How does one not be herded like cattle by the corporations, without making a full time job of resisting it?
- jsingleton 10y ago
  Use alternatives? For example, https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com for search.
  - _nalply 10y ago
    Has DuckDuckGo email and an app suite?
    - akerro 10y ago
      tutanota, protonmail, fastmail, scrypmail. If Google is part of your life, it's too late for you.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Just switched to FastMail this past weekend, and I recommend it. For an app suite, I recommend Sandstorm.io.
      - yojex 10y ago
        Could you explain your use case with Sandstorm? I find their homepage to be ambiguous/not really sure what they're offering.
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Yeah, so I do all my documents and spreadsheets and stuff on Sandstorm Oasis, which is their managed offering. I can do a bunch of other stuff on it, and it's easiest to figure out the extent of it by just trying the demo yourself (https://demo.sandstorm.io https://demo.sandstorm.io) and checking out the apps and stuff. But in my case, I mostly use it like I used Google Docs and Trello before, that I can easily control my data on, and migrate to a self-hosting solution easily later. Sometimes it's hard to explain Sandstorm because they have a wide variety of good use cases for it, and there's really not a lot of comparable software packages to it. (It's like ownCloud but it's not like ownCloud, it's like Docker but it's not at all like Docker, etc.)
        ifhs 10y ago
        Curious: why use the managed hosting if you are a privacy enthusiast? Or are you just a sandstorm enthusiast? Why? Became nits not Google? Just curious since your every comment is about it...and it looks like you are wearing Google glass...
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Heh, the Glass picture is really old. I used to be quite the Google fan, a few years back. Then I paid a bit more attention to the cost, and have been moving away since. The managed hosting for Sandstorm is a good step in the direction, because it's very easy to me to move between Sandstorm servers, but I'm not super confident on running my own right now, and it's still in early development as a platform. But Sandstorm on their servers runs the same as Sandstorm on mine, and unlike leaving Google, where I have to figure out how to transplant my data from their proprietary apps to other apps, I can move my apps and data perfectly between Sandstorm servers. I do place a high degree of trust in Kenton Varda (founder of Sandstorm.io) specifically to keep Sandstorm doing what they should. If I ever feel that trust is misplaced (and I keep a close eye), I'll move.
      - jsingleton 10y ago
        I've heard good things about both https://www.fastmail.com https://www.fastmail.com and https://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com so would be good to hear your experiences after a bit more use.
        newscracker 10y ago
        Recently I started a "paper evaluation" of paid, privacy protecting (to a good extent) email services. I found Fastmail to be quite expensive if one needs multiple accounts. Providers like Protonmail and Tutanota don't support IMAP or any other way to download mails (the web interface and apps are the only choices). That makes it very difficult (or impossible?) to move to another service and take one's older mails along. Protonmail does not support custom domains, whereas Tutanota does. The cheapest solutions I like currently are posteo.de and mailbox.org. I have not started using either of them, but plan to move soon. Posteo does not support custom domains (it is heavily privacy focused and refrains from collecting or storing customer data as much as possible). So your only choice is to use one of many posteo.x domains for the email address. On the other hand, mailbox.org supports custom domains. Both support IMAP, web mail, migrating email from other providers, etc. Both these services and their websites are worth a look, IMO.
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Yeah, ProtonMail was the other one I considered, but the price for storage wasn't nearly as compelling, and both had reasonably strong privacy stories. And now that I'm in FastMail, I'm really amazed at the flexibility and control it gives you, especially with connecting your own domain and stuff. Back in the day, Gmail's driving appeal was it's pro features, and I'd argue that FastMail makes Gmail look basic. Also, I've opened two support tickets this week to ask questions and got responses within an hour or two.
        lostforest 10y ago
        ProtonMail lost any cred when they paid to have some perps stop DDOsing them. Have their engineers or their Web host never heard of blackhole routing? Smart router engineers know about the concept of blackhole routing offensive traffic. It takes a couple of minutes and it works wonders.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      Why does your search engine need to provide email? The two are pretty unrelated.
    - jasonkostempski 10y ago
      Do you want them to? So they can eventually turn into Google? Diversify and avoid cloud apps and closed source applications as much as possible.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      No, and that's a feature. Google's path to the dark side hit a major milestone with Gmail, and the fact that you now had a reason to personally and identifiably log in to your search engine provider. No, no, no, nope, fucking bloody hell no! I'm thinking it's hard time to give https://Sandstorm.io https://Sandstorm.io a really good looking at.
  - problems 10y ago
    Unfortunately their results are pretty abysmal. https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ or ixquick is a better option in terms of results.
    - inanutshellus 10y ago
      I've used them for years now and their search is rarely insufficient. When it is, I make my search more specific or I hop over to another engine for that specific search. Really, I just like using products of companies that try to do "the right thing". Anything from the Mozilla Foundation and DuckDuckGo are two examples. I'd say I do a Google search once or twice a month.
      - chillingeffect 10y ago
        Same here. Been "ducking" for years now. I used to go to google when I couldn't find stuff on ddg, but lately I've noticed if it's not on ddg, it's not on google, either! I'd say about 1% of 1% of the time I find something on google that I couldn't find on google.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      DDG has been my preferred search for years. I'd tried it pre-Snowden, off-and-on. Since Snowden or before it's been fully acceptible: 1. Results close to as good if not better than Google. 2. No tracking. 3. Bang searches. With the "too clever by half" search dialogs many sites are implementing (Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Google Ngram Viewer) it's often superior to the native on-site search as I don't have to set focus 2-4 times to actually type in the bloody search dialog. 4. No tracking. 5. Did I mention no tracking? 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. 7. Search customisations -- light page (good for console and commandline search), night mode, and others. 8. Unmangled URLs. I can copy/paste URLs straight from DDG. No-can-do with Google.
      - grzm 10y ago
        > 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. Or even Google. I've seen comments online about DDG providing only an illusion of privacy. I haven't dug into this deeply. From what I've read this comes down to DDG (including bang searches like !g and !sp) stripping identifying information, which provides protection from tracking by entities like advertisers and social networks, but not law enforcement or agencies like the NSA that may have legal options or extralegal access. Is my understanding generally correct? Any corrections/additions/clarifications appreciated.
  - clydethefrog 10y ago
    And if their search engine does not deliver what you're looking for, use the bang !sp to use Startpage, a search engine that fetches results from the Google search engine but does not give any personal user information to Google's servers. Startpage's servers are in the Netherlands.
    - jsingleton 10y ago
      Simply !s works too.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > How does one not be herded like cattle by the corporations, without making a full time job of resisting it? Legal protection is necessary, and that's what works in other industries. It's not a fair negotiation, between a company's teams of engineers, management, and attorneys on one side, and a lone individual on the other. Financial firms, for example, can't just put whatever they want in agreements or do whatever they want. EDIT: The solution of informed consent doesn't work. Consumers don't have time to become informed, which requires not only reading every click-wrap agreement but understanding the technology (remember the solution must work for all users, not only the HN crowd but people who don't know what a web browser is), and understanding privacy and its consequences, and then starting that process over again to find an alternative that meets their needs - for every technology in the stack. It's unrealistic in theory, and in practice obviously doesn't work: Almost nobody, even the HN crowd, is informed.
  - __jal 10y ago
    People need to start thinking of web forms, solicitations for email address, etc. like people used to think of the Columbia House record/CD club. There may be an instant-gratification payoff, but you'll regret it at leisure. Or, would you take a free sample to munch on if they first presented you with a 34-page legal agreement?
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      People rarely regretted joining Columbia House, so I'm not sure what you're referring to here. They really did give you a billion records for a penny, and all you had to do was opt out every month (or opt in, they had a lot of really good records in that catalog in the 90s at least.) They relied on people repeatedly forgetting to opt out, not the blatant subterfuge of modern business models. http://www.avclub.com/article/four-columbia-house-insiders-explain-shady-math-be-219964 http://www.avclub.com/article/four-columbia-house-insiders-e...
      - __jal 10y ago
        I'm sure there were more than one person who liked it, so yes, I suspect it is true to say 'people' rarely regretted it. I know I did, when I joined them on a lark in college. They were literally a joke (several, actually) at the time. Consumer reports was overflowing with complaints. The only people I knew who didn't regret it were the ones who were cheating. > They relied on people repeatedly forgetting to opt out, not the blatant subterfuge of modern business models. I understand that others see things differently, and if you liked them, great for you. But businesses who rely on customers making mistakes about their own best interests are slime, in my view, and in that of many others.
- akerro 10y ago
  Just don't have Google account and clean cookies and history regularly[1], forbid saving 3rd party cookies (built-in in Firefox) and noise your canvas generator [2], block 3rd party JS, CSS, media and fonts [3], control your referals your browser sends on each click [4] use VPN or Tor on startup. You don't need to bother with those tools, they will just work in background (µBlock requires some configuration). [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/expire-history-by-days/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/expire-histor... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/no-canvas-fingerprinting/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/no-canvas-fin... [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... [4] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/refcontrol/
  - oridecon 10y ago
    My Google account only runs in a separate browser. But I still do the things you mentioned (privacytools.io). For YouTube I'm using a RSS reader (no account) through a 3rd-party but I think they can still easily identify me. I hope I can fully remove Google from my life in a few years.
  - artificial 10y ago
    Excellent list, here's one you may not know about which locally hosts 3rd party libraries (such as jQuery) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes... to plug that hole while restoring some enhanced functionality. This alone got me back on Firefox.
  - godshatter 10y ago
    I've also found it helps to use different Firefox profiles for different things, like hobbies, going to banks, going to anything google, programming stuff, etc. I have noscript, umatrix, and ghostery installed on each profile. I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but there is a Firefox command-line switch to bring the profile manager up when run.
- Torn 10y ago
  Google do provide a privacy checkup screen where you can review and tweak your settings: https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/1 https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/1 And you can opt out of ads here https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated
- bitJericho 10y ago
  Start paying for your services from companies that exist by charging. Don't do business with ad companies.
  - amelius 10y ago
    Any good search engines in the paid space?
    - bitJericho 10y ago
      Nope!
  - jasonvorhe 10y ago
    Yeah, get a G-Suite account and you're free from Google using your data for advertising purposes.
- wincy 10y ago
  Well, my wife and I just ordered dumb phones and an AWS 2FA key fob (remember those?) which will be here this weekend, we're selling all our screens except one family PC. I sold off my Oculus Rift and gaming PC a month ago. We're going to have to buy a flashlight, GPS or maybe just a map book, calculator, a CD player, a Blu-Ray burner, a day planner, a wristwatch, a kitchen timer, get a library card, a shared calendar on the wall, and we'll go from there. I'm excited but also nervous about it. A few months ago I spent 90% of my free time staring at a screen. I yelled at my wife if god forbid she wanted to spend time with me and not just shut up and watch whatever video game I was playing. I figure it's a start.
  - nacnud 10y ago
    Please write this up in a few months to share your experiences.
    - wincy 10y ago
      That's my plan. I'm hoping to find other people in my city (Kansas City) that want to start down a similar path. I want to write more but I'm at work and really need to get a few hours of productivity in today. I'll make sure to keep track of my experiences though!
  - arkitaip 10y ago
    I admire your dedication and would be interested in hearing more about your experiment in the future. Maybe some kind of update in the future here on HN?
    - inanutshellus 10y ago
      Sounds like they're trying to save their marriage after "screen addiction" became a problem. I had the same problem with video games. I ended up swearing off video games that didn't have an ending and have been all the better for it.
      - wincy 10y ago
- kuschku 10y ago
  I got the screen today: http://i.imgur.com/HClXUy3.png http://i.imgur.com/HClXUy3.png It only tells you that it will actually result in less privacy if you scroll down and read the fine print. That’s seriously misleading.
- omouse 10y ago
  Class action lawsuits.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I'd just like to draw people's attention to a little bit of conflict-of-interest research some Stanford University researchers published a few years ago: Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
- pyrophane 10y ago
  This really is an important point. Somehow in this new age of technology companies we have forgotten that corporations, in the long run, will always converge on what is most profitable, regardless of the values of their founding team, who will eventually retire or have their influence diminished. For that reason, I always pay more attention to a company's incentives than I do what they say about values. If a company derives the vast majority of their income showing me targeted ads, I can expect that that will take priority over any notion of privacy, and we all know that privacy is the bane of targeted advertising. Unless there is some seismic shift in Google's core business in the next several years, we should only expect more moves like this. And as we head into the new era of "intelligent personal assistants," let's keep in mind which companies are pushing this most aggressively: two ad companies and one that wants us to make it easier (perhaps even not a conscious activity?) to buy things from them. It does not take a lot of imagination to see what these assistants are most interested in assisting us with. That's why, for all of the valid criticisms of them, I still use Apple products. I'm just more comfortable with their incentives, which are, as of now, mostly to sell me shiny new hardware. Sure, this has led them to do some things that annoy me like lock down their iMessage platform so I can't use it to communicate with my Android-using friends. Still I'll take that sort of behavior over a wholesale disregard for my privacy.
0xmohit 10y ago
Earlier: We will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with your personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent. Now: Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google's services and the ads delivered by Google. So opt-in becomes opt-out.
- runeb 10y ago
  To opt out, or "Pause" as Google is tellingly calling it, from the article: To opt-out of Google’s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls[1] on Google’s My Account page, and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services." You can also delete past activity from your account. [1] https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols
  - e40 10y ago
    Mine was already unchecked.
    - dminor 10y ago
      Mine was unchecked but the same settings on my phone were on.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    There are more tracking settings here for "Ads based on your interests" and "Control Signed-In Ads" (Ads based on your interests on websites beyond google.com): https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated
  - initram 10y ago
    In typical Google fashion, I can't tell if this will actually work or not. Some of the settings were in-between "On" and "Off". WTF did that mean? And then some of them seemed to imply that I had to accept a cookie to make them not work. Well I browse privately and use ad blocking, so does that mean they'll track me across a single session but not multiple sessions? (I ask because cookies work in a single session, but when I quit, they are deleted.) It also seemed to imply that the settings were only for that one browser on that one computer. I want it always off for everything. WTF? I don't think a typical user can understand the implications of these settings and make informed choices about using them.
rdslw 10y ago
Cool. Yes they deliberatly block chrome extension on mobile chrome, as then ublock usage on mobile would explode. Together with myth of mobile ads. Do not evil. Riiiight. As long as it does not hamper our profit.
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  Some googler will come in and say "That's not our motto anymore, dummy". To which I'll say - Think about that. Is saying, "Well, we can be shitty now that our motto no longer prohibits it" really a good excuse?
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Technically "Do the right thing" also inherently suggests not doing evil. Though the full motto should probably be "Do the right thing for Larry Page's yacht budget".
  - delroth 10y ago
    No Googler will come and tell you that since "Don't be evil" are literally the first 3 words of the published Google code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html I'm not sure why you think this has changed.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      > I'm not sure why you think this has changed. Actions speak louder than words.
      - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
        Is "Don't be evil" something that really needs to be said anyway? Couldn't have set the bar much lower.
      - jbpetersen 10y ago
        Privacy is evil?
mtgx 10y ago
Google seems no better than Facebook when it comes to privacy, and I'm not just talking about how far they're willing to go in tracking users, but also how they are willing to lie and violate their users' trust so they can collect more data. Facebook is now getting into trouble in the EU for breaking their promise about not sharing WhatsApp data, and yet Google still goes ahead and does this. I hope the European Commission adds this as one more charge against Google. Without real enforcement the companies will continue to do whatever the hell they want.
- rahrahrah 10y ago
  And when that happens every American on HN will go "look at that old crusty EU, getting in the way of progress again with their bloated regulations".
  - skummetmaelk 10y ago
    The free market fallacy.
    - rahrahrah 10y ago
      I'm starting to hate the word "fallacy". What's the free market fallacy? The idea that not everything that's driven by free market is great? Why call that a fallacy, why not just call it being wrong?
      - skummetmaelk 10y ago
        A fallacy is really any argument that is wrong because of wrong assumptions or faulty logic, but leads to a believable result anyway. The free market fallacy is a fallacy because people who believe the free market solves problems base this claim on the assumption that human beings are rational and have access to all information.
throw2016 10y ago
I think duckduckgo often becomes an alternative that isn't an alternative, in the sense yes its there, you are frustrated with Google's behavior and you persist for a whole day and then have to revert back to Google with tail behind legs so it's more of an alternative in name. With the sheer scope of Google properties there is always going to be a tempation for 'value searchers' within the organization to give in to dark patterns and compromise users. I have been trying Yandex search and email and its fairly decent. Email is good, search appears to be a much more serious offering compared to duckduckgo but still some way to go. However we need diversity and decentralization to prevent concentration and inevitable abuse of power.
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  To be honest DuckDuckGo is fine, you just need to put a little extra effort in. I'll admit it takes some getting used to but I happily use it now. Also as others have stated the 'sp!' bang is handy.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    StartPage is a mystery to me; they say they're "enhanced by Google", but what does Google get out of providing their search results to a competitor?
    - singularity2001 10y ago
      Also heard rumors about StartPage being very shady. Would be nice to get some confirmation on this or to learn that it was only a campaign by competitors. Google for "StartPage malware" ;)
  - Mystrl 10y ago
    put a little extra effort in So it's hopeless then. You're never going to convince anything resembling a sizable portion of the population to put in more effort for no easily appreciable benefit.
yuhong 10y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483805 I was trying to figure out what was happening.
- danieldk 10y ago
  https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/ https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/
whistlerbrk 10y ago
A recent podcast (TAL? Radiolab?) just discussed the retreats Google has made over time with respect to privacy and intrusive advertising. I tried to find it - someone have a link? This very much continues the theme. It is important to note how much Sergey and Larry hated advertising and the belief they held that any advertising based search engine would inherently corrupt itself.
- sleepydog 10y ago
  There was recently a bit on NPR (Here & Now?) about how Facebook did not shy away from this type of advertising, whereas Google balked at it initially after public outcry. It seems they have finally caved in.
- quest88 10y ago
  http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/17/498237314/how-free-web-content-traps-people-in-an-abyss-of-ads-and-clickbait http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/17/498... They say what your last sentence said, so I'm guessing this is the podcast you're thinking of.
eveningcoffee 10y ago
Like I have told under other similar discussions. Something in ToS has no relevance if data is collected. If data is collected then it will eventually be used (against you).
- j_s 10y ago
  That's a good point: is this change retroactive (will old data be associated)?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    There have been several such retroactive changes, such as using GMail’s data to train the models for Inbox before, so it’s likely.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    Consider the path of least resistance - is it easier to just take one action across data, or multiple actions based on data age, user opt-in, and EULAs? Engineers are lazy, after all, and it's fairly easy to change an EULA.
omouse 10y ago
The marketers and advertisers have finally won. Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, but this confirms it. It's like Facebook, they're beholden to the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. So glad I'm evaluating other email providers and use Privoxy for ad-blocking.
- FUCK__GOOGLE 10y ago
  I'm moving off gmail today, gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere. I think that and hangouts are the last ways they got me, looking forward to deleting my account. It's so strange to be old enough to see the same mistakes of the AOL days repeated again at a much larger scale. I don't want your garden, I want my privacy, thanks.
  - GrinningFool 10y ago
    Meta-comment: Your post isn't unreasonable, but it seems your throwaway name killed it for you...
    - KirinDave 10y ago
      "isn't unreasonable" but it's a profoundly selfish sentiment. It's almost a given that the people reading this are totally immune to this. We all use adblockers as the default.
  - nibs 10y ago
    Zoho Mail + Personal Domain = Free, No Ads. Company makes money by providing good-enough email product, encouraging you to use their other for-money good-enough SaaS products.
  - kotajacob 10y ago
    Everyone's talking about switching emails, but realistically how difficult do you think it will be. Changing it for all the services you use and informing everyone? Or are you just planning on setting up forwarding for a while... (Asking because I'm trying to make the switch myself)
pinewurst 10y ago
Isn't Google moving aggressively to fingerprint-based browser tracking instead of cookies?
- rahrahrah 10y ago
  Possibly, but even right now when you open Chrome (non-incognito) you immediately get three google analytics cookies set, which are picked up by any website using google analytics (i.e. almost every website). If you put this together with the fact that Chrome knows about Google Account sessions, you conclude that Google is already keeping track of everything that you, as an individual, does online and has been for many years, even without fingerprinting.
  - pinewurst 10y ago
    I was thinking of the non-logged-in Google accounts with ad blocker case not being privacy protecting any more.
RodericDay 10y ago
When I read announcements like these I actually get a bit hopeful. These companies seem somewhat scared, and their funding bases more fragile than they let on.
CommanderData 10y ago
Is it enough to install adblock on the router level? This would in theory block all domains tracking and serving adverts.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  You could also try https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts to block ads. Quoting from the description: Extending and consolidating hosts files from a variety of sources like adaway.org, mvps.org, malwaredomains.com, someonewhocares.org, yoyo.org, and potentially others. You can optionally invoke extensions to block additional sites by category.
  - CommanderData 10y ago
    Great to see an updated hosts file. I've and others have been saying, routers need an easier configuration method. Preferably through an app and common API across firmware and manufacturers.
vonklaus 10y ago
I expect google will experience outages >15 minutes for core services in the comung months. This is based on significant uptick in ddos sophistication, this has been referenced by Schneier-- although not in ref to Goog. If changes like this announcement convince people to move away; I am all for it. This just proves not only their power, but the danger of a single point of failure.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  That is the opposite of my prediction. I predict that as ddos attacks become larger and more sophisticated, only Google and a handful of other huge operators will be left standing.
  - john_reel 10y ago
    Realistically, if it reaches that point, why wouldn’t the first response be action on the part of ISP and backbone providers? I get that right now it would be extremely difficult and expensive, but at a point where DDoS has a significant effect on the market share of a company like Google, I feel like something would have to be done.
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      > why wouldn’t the first response be action on the part of ISP and backbone providers? Schneier points out that these have the shape of probing attacks and are executed across multifaceted services at the micro & macro level. I feel like something needs to be done now. There is, I am sure, a fix but with something like Dyn and other major cloud management, infrastructure, ISP and backbone companies are getting seriously worked over. There is a saturation point. The attackers have capabilities to hit so many different pieces of exposed surface area, that for small networks/apps/services/companies they are unable to be repelled. In between small companies and Google tier service, some can repel attacks, but they still cede some uptime and performance. Cloudflare has released some insane reports and when you have motivated powerful attackers striking key pieces of core internet infrastructure, to some extent, you have to consider the entire system is under hostile attack. > but at a point where DDoS has a significant effect on the market share of a company like Google I am certainly a layman here, but none of the targets made a choice today to be vulnerable. I am sure the entire chain is rapidly reinvesting and hardening the infrastructure, but this should have probably been done years ago. In between when the companies are pouring resources out (I suspect they are now) and when they gain enough of an understanding to withstand these attacks, there will be downtime. I think google will get hit soon. It was reported that a google core outage of ~15 minutes deadzoned about 40% of America's internet traffic. Even knocking google out for ~1-2 hours would show 2008 what too big to fail means. If google DNS, Chrome, google search, gmail, google apps, hosting, dns, ISP all activities ceased for 2 hours things would get bad.
rahrahrah 10y ago
That diff in the article, does anyone know where it comes from?
- manigandham 10y ago
  Google offers it themselves: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/ https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/ Click on "comparison" to see the changes between versions.
deleted 10y ago
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fencepost 10y ago
Looking at the My Activity details is actually pretty creepy. Starting today working backwards, Google includes "Used Phone," "Used [my launcher]," "contacted [messaging site]," "Used [alarm clock app]," several overnight repeats of the messaging site when I received alerts, my Chrome-based website visits from yesterday, my foray into Android Settings yesterday, etc. It all serves to make me happy that I'm using Firefox with uMatrix as my daily driver, and only use Chrome (with uBlock Origin) for the rare things that I can't get to load properly because of all the cross-site dependencies.
- xgbi 10y ago
  Using firefox? Did you tick "Send analysis data to Mozilla"? If yes, Mozilla has the very same information about your browsing habits and all clicks and actions you performed in Firefox too. It's just that Google shows it to you, rather than not telling you anything. Any sufficiently big Android/iOS app has the very same system in place so that they can see what people are doing with their app and anticipate interesting features, down to the location of your finger when you touched that button, the wifis you were seeing at the time, the battery level etc. Admitedly though, Google has such a wide reach in all your day-to-day life that they gather an immense amount of data. But don't be fooled, anyone else is also doing it. And they are far less open about it.
  - mccr8 10y ago
    If you go to about:telemetry in Firefox, you can see exactly what data is being collected.
  - ViViDboarder 10y ago
    I think most people here understand that everyone is collecting data about usage of their apps. The thing people are getting wary of is having all your habits, regardless of app or platform, in one place.
  - windlep 10y ago
    > Using firefox? Did you tick "Send analysis data to Mozilla"? If yes, Mozilla has the very same information about your browsing habits and all clicks and actions you performed in Firefox too. That is blatantly false. The policy page here describes what is sent for each data feature in Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ Mozilla does not have tracking cookies scattered through-out the web tracking you. Google via Google Ad's and Doubleclick does (as does Facebook via their social features). Neither the Chrome browser nor Firefox sends "your browsing habits and all clicks and actions you performed" to their respective companies. If you turn on History sync, the clients encrypt all this data before uploading. Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla. edit: Chrome can send all history unencrypted to Google if you ask it to, under Privacy Checkup, Web & Web App Activity: "Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services". Supposedly this is to make the search more relevant. This was unchecked for me by default though.
ommunist 10y ago
As for now, there is no viable alternative to Google. There is no distributed, free independent search engine that provides such quality relevant search results as Google, and is caring for users privacy. I do not think either it is financially possible to run such a thing, without someone's vested interest in metadata behind such possible endeavour. There is silent demand for such an effort however. UPD: I know about DuckDuckGo, but look: https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=1 https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as...
rmc 10y ago
This is why we need the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Article 8 covers personal data, and can blocks things like this.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
agentgt 10y ago
I'm curious what bothers people most about the privacy issues? Strangely I don't care that Google (and others) know about me. I probably should but I have just sorted have accepted the lack of privacy today. What really bothers me isn't the privacy its them using that data to create a completely unfair advantage to continue the oligopoly that is quickly consuming all markets. I used to be such a capitalist but as of the last few years watching what companies will continue to do to not just grow but grow exponentially with unfair and unethical leverage in every direction. I'm curious if others share that feeling or is that just me. Or is it just invasion of privacy?
- rndmind 10y ago
  If we accept the small invasion of privacy now, and accept it as the norm, what are the implications for the future?
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    It doesn't really bother me if the internet knows that I recently bought a nice soldering iron on Amazon or that I play D&D with my friends. I kinda view the internet as public and I don't really have huge privacy concerns about information I put in public.
    - initram 10y ago
      Other people have legitimate concerns about others knowing what they bought on Amazon or do with their friends. In some jurisdictions, buying what seem like normal products to you and I is illegal. Some people live in areas where others knowing they are gay, transgendered, conservative, atheist, etc. will get them fired or literally killed. It's great that you don't have to worry about that. But others do, and it's getting to the point where, "Then just don't use the internet" is simply not possible. Even, "Then just don't use Google's services" is impossible when their ads and tracking are on literally half of the top 1 million sites on the internet.
      - tdb7893 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
> If you want to permanently opt out of the DoubleClick cookie, you can install the DoubleClick opt out extension.
solveforall 10y ago
[Disclaimer: shameless plug, and also previously announced as a Show HN a while back] I would like to mention my search engine as another privacy-focused alternative: https://solveforall.com/ https://solveforall.com/ 1) Does not track user activity. Hosted in Canada. 2) Does not leak referrer to visited sites 3) No ads. Will be considering affiliate links, a paid API, and/or "good" ads -- ads people want that don't compromise privacy 4) Integrated feed reader which also provides search results 5) Activation codes (like DDG bangs, so ?g instead of !g) 5) Plugins written in JS/data to be searched can be added at any time. 6) Deep search -- get results from the search results page of several sites at a time. Try https://solveforall.com/answers.do?q=rx+480&client.kind=web&type=answers&engines=107&depth=1 https://solveforall.com/answers.do?q=rx+480&client.kind=web&... There clearly a lot more work to be done, and I plan on open sourcing this soon, but please try it out and let me know any feedback you have!
- drawnwren 10y ago
  The UI on the left side could use some work. I followed your link, search for Ars Technica and then spent about a minute trying to figure out why it was showing me electronics. Everything feels just a bit too large and control information should probably all be above the page (at least a summary.)
  - solveforall 10y ago
    Excellent feedback, thank you! I will work on this.
a3n 10y ago
Don't be evil. Not all at once.
betolink 10y ago
Just to give you and idea of how big of a deal this is, go to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and check what third parties could learn from you, with your name on it.
ams6110 10y ago
I've already stopped using Chrome on my computers and phone. Getting pretty close to dropping them into my hosts file.
philprx 10y ago
Bait and switch?
yuhong 10y ago
Also recommend that you read https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/Bo88vgre8Nw https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/Bo88vgre... , particularly the comments.
barnassey 10y ago
More and more changes that do not bode well for google, first they changed it to where they can track what numbers you dial, then they tried that with your google chrome history and tabs if you synced it to your account and now this? People wondered why i stopped being a google evangelist after 2014.
- mikeleeorg 10y ago
  Do you, or anyone else here, know of a good, privacy-conscious personal information management system? Other than Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Apple? Having a system that manages such critical info in a seamless way is huge. I'm acutely aware that free services are not truly "free," so if there is a good alternative that has a reasonable premium subscription plan, I would seriously consider it.
  - mikeleeorg 10y ago
    Ah, I just read further in this thread, and it looks like a number of alternatives are already being shared. https://www.fastmail.com/ https://www.fastmail.com/ looks pretty interesting.
  - barnassey 10y ago
    No the thing is i've had to learn all of this the hard way. using opera with a custom sync phrase, as well as using the opt-out addons that google provides. Canvas blocker, Ublock origin, and cleanlinks to get rid of the UTM strings on links. Oh and not using chrome whatsoever.
Animats 10y ago
Log out of Google. Now. And delete all their cookies. Consider deleting your Google account. Put your mail on an IMAP server. Your ISP probably offers one. (I don't use a Google account. My last login to Google was in 2015, and that was to update a browser add-on.)
- jasonvorhe 10y ago
  Your ISP probably offers the most basic mail setup you can build with the lowest effort. Your ISP as no reason to give a world class mail service because that's not something they're good at or that they could make money from. It's just one something they think is expected nowadays. I don't think this is wise advice from a privacy point of view, considering your ISP knows all your internet habits including all your connections to any service you'll ever use and that most ISPs don't have your interests in mind.
c_r_w 10y ago
That's weird. I guess they like making money.
yason 10y ago
I sometimes wonder if why it is generally held that marketing sucks and advertisements are evil because they're so random, badly targeted and thus crappy. I basically wouldn't mind seeing advertisements if they were relevant and spot on. And that probably hasn't been possible until all that big data is cross-indexed with user identities. It may be that ads are considered bad because good ads happen once in a thousand.
urda 10y ago
This is yet another reminder that it's important, especially for HN readers, to continue to give support to groups such as Mozilla and their Firefox platform. The more widespread Google and Chrome usage is, the more Google can push these changes with little to no resistance.
- oridecon 10y ago
  I wish I could pay Mozilla to host my custom domain e-mail, encrypted files and any other services they could offer
mikeleeorg 10y ago
For people who didn't read the article but want to opt out of this tracking: To opt-out of Google’s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls on Google’s My Account page, and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services." You can also delete past activity from your account. Links from that paragraph: * Activity controls: https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols * My account page: https://myaccount.google.com/ https://myaccount.google.com/ * Delete past activity: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Does this apply to paid accounts', e.g. businesses', data?
feelix 10y ago
I use google and have chosen to give up a lot of my privacy to use their services. One thing I was never willing to do though, and I had an instant emotional reaction to not doing, was allowing them access to all my email. They can have my GPS coordinates at all times, my web search history, etc, but they can't get into the inner workings of my life and my thoughts. So back before I had any real use for it I just registered myname@myfirstandlastname.com and used that for my email address. It felt like a natural move. It does bother me still that a lot of the people I email do use gmail, so google still ends up siphoning of a lot of the contents of my email. I see a lot of people talking about FastMail instead of GMail, but I don't know why more geeks don't register their own domain name which has several advantages (including looking better and more professional). The one downside is that mail search sucks. I'd love to get some decent search without giving up privacy somehow.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  +1 for fastmail. lots of domains to choose from and i also use my own personal domain for email
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  FastMail has incredibly good domain name configuration for custom domains. I just set it up this week. The problem is most users don't have the skill or time to manage a well-maintained email service. I'd like to, but the risk of losing important email is too critical to risk. (Even making the cutover to FastMail, I was super nervous!) And unlike Google, FastMail has a strong privacy strategy. But what I did do, about a year ago, was move my email usage over to an address at my own domain, which was then forwarded to Gmail. By lessening the references to my Gmail account, it made it easy to switch elsewhere. ...I just repointed my domain to FastMail's email service. And because I control the domain name people send email to me on, it's easy for me to move it again in the future if I have a problem with FastMail or find something better.
- oridecon 10y ago
  If you're being targeted, can you really protect your domain/DNS from all points of attack? And does domain privacy protection really covers all of your personal data, forever? The more I learn the worse I feel about my digital privacy and security. The one thing I do right now is to compartmentalize my accounts and services, but I can't help to think it's only stopping smaller fish from getting/triangulating my data. Tin foil hat apart, I also don't like to give away my data for free.
awqrre 10y ago
You have to be logged-in for the opt-out to be effective... so now they know exactly who you are...
gjolund 10y ago
What are the best alternative email services with a privacy focus?
- JayNeely 10y ago
  https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/
- milcron 10y ago
  Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but self-hosting email can be a fun challenge. Lavabit had a privacy focus and look what happened to them.
  - gjolund 10y ago
    That is what I was thinking. Right now I am debating an on premise email server or something on aws.
snarf 10y ago
Does anyone know the specifics of Google's privacy practices for G Suite (formerly Google Apps for business)? They claim no advertising, but do they use your data for anything else, and do they still build shadow profiles? If you're already buying 1 TB of storage for Google Drive, then you can instead sign up for the $10 month G Suite plan and get 1 TB of storage with ad free versions of their apps.
- jasonvorhe 10y ago
  It says so in their TOS, but if you're wearing your tinfoil hat you have no reason to believe that they're honest about that.
qwerty1234567 10y ago
google.com
forsberg 10y ago
So there are a lot of talk about using DuckDuckGo instead of Google but I'm wondering if anyone have considered using Bing as a middle ground? Sure they track you but in my understanding they actually suck at it. :)
chirageminent 10y ago
Google News: Google Updated Private Policy To Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking. How to Opt in/out Sharing Data? http://www.themobileupdates.com/news/google-news-google-updated-private-policy-to-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking/ http://www.themobileupdates.com/news/google-news-google-upda...

513 points by scribu 10y ago

> “Some new features for your Google account.” Oh, yeah, I remember that. I totally clicked "Ok, whatever." How does one not be herded like cattle by the corporations, without making a full time job of resisting it?

jsingleton 10y ago
Use alternatives? For example, https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com for search.
- _nalply 10y ago
  Has DuckDuckGo email and an app suite?
  - akerro 10y ago
    tutanota, protonmail, fastmail, scrypmail. If Google is part of your life, it's too late for you.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Just switched to FastMail this past weekend, and I recommend it. For an app suite, I recommend Sandstorm.io.
    - yojex 10y ago
      Could you explain your use case with Sandstorm? I find their homepage to be ambiguous/not really sure what they're offering.
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Yeah, so I do all my documents and spreadsheets and stuff on Sandstorm Oasis, which is their managed offering. I can do a bunch of other stuff on it, and it's easiest to figure out the extent of it by just trying the demo yourself (https://demo.sandstorm.io https://demo.sandstorm.io) and checking out the apps and stuff. But in my case, I mostly use it like I used Google Docs and Trello before, that I can easily control my data on, and migrate to a self-hosting solution easily later. Sometimes it's hard to explain Sandstorm because they have a wide variety of good use cases for it, and there's really not a lot of comparable software packages to it. (It's like ownCloud but it's not like ownCloud, it's like Docker but it's not at all like Docker, etc.)
        ifhs 10y ago
        Curious: why use the managed hosting if you are a privacy enthusiast? Or are you just a sandstorm enthusiast? Why? Became nits not Google? Just curious since your every comment is about it...and it looks like you are wearing Google glass...
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Heh, the Glass picture is really old. I used to be quite the Google fan, a few years back. Then I paid a bit more attention to the cost, and have been moving away since. The managed hosting for Sandstorm is a good step in the direction, because it's very easy to me to move between Sandstorm servers, but I'm not super confident on running my own right now, and it's still in early development as a platform. But Sandstorm on their servers runs the same as Sandstorm on mine, and unlike leaving Google, where I have to figure out how to transplant my data from their proprietary apps to other apps, I can move my apps and data perfectly between Sandstorm servers. I do place a high degree of trust in Kenton Varda (founder of Sandstorm.io) specifically to keep Sandstorm doing what they should. If I ever feel that trust is misplaced (and I keep a close eye), I'll move.
    - jsingleton 10y ago
      I've heard good things about both https://www.fastmail.com https://www.fastmail.com and https://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com so would be good to hear your experiences after a bit more use.
      - newscracker 10y ago
        Recently I started a "paper evaluation" of paid, privacy protecting (to a good extent) email services. I found Fastmail to be quite expensive if one needs multiple accounts. Providers like Protonmail and Tutanota don't support IMAP or any other way to download mails (the web interface and apps are the only choices). That makes it very difficult (or impossible?) to move to another service and take one's older mails along. Protonmail does not support custom domains, whereas Tutanota does. The cheapest solutions I like currently are posteo.de and mailbox.org. I have not started using either of them, but plan to move soon. Posteo does not support custom domains (it is heavily privacy focused and refrains from collecting or storing customer data as much as possible). So your only choice is to use one of many posteo.x domains for the email address. On the other hand, mailbox.org supports custom domains. Both support IMAP, web mail, migrating email from other providers, etc. Both these services and their websites are worth a look, IMO.
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Yeah, ProtonMail was the other one I considered, but the price for storage wasn't nearly as compelling, and both had reasonably strong privacy stories. And now that I'm in FastMail, I'm really amazed at the flexibility and control it gives you, especially with connecting your own domain and stuff. Back in the day, Gmail's driving appeal was it's pro features, and I'd argue that FastMail makes Gmail look basic. Also, I've opened two support tickets this week to ask questions and got responses within an hour or two.
        lostforest 10y ago
        ProtonMail lost any cred when they paid to have some perps stop DDOsing them. Have their engineers or their Web host never heard of blackhole routing? Smart router engineers know about the concept of blackhole routing offensive traffic. It takes a couple of minutes and it works wonders.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    Why does your search engine need to provide email? The two are pretty unrelated.
  - jasonkostempski 10y ago
    Do you want them to? So they can eventually turn into Google? Diversify and avoid cloud apps and closed source applications as much as possible.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    No, and that's a feature. Google's path to the dark side hit a major milestone with Gmail, and the fact that you now had a reason to personally and identifiably log in to your search engine provider. No, no, no, nope, fucking bloody hell no! I'm thinking it's hard time to give https://Sandstorm.io https://Sandstorm.io a really good looking at.
- problems 10y ago
  Unfortunately their results are pretty abysmal. https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ or ixquick is a better option in terms of results.
  - inanutshellus 10y ago
    I've used them for years now and their search is rarely insufficient. When it is, I make my search more specific or I hop over to another engine for that specific search. Really, I just like using products of companies that try to do "the right thing". Anything from the Mozilla Foundation and DuckDuckGo are two examples. I'd say I do a Google search once or twice a month.
    - chillingeffect 10y ago
      Same here. Been "ducking" for years now. I used to go to google when I couldn't find stuff on ddg, but lately I've noticed if it's not on ddg, it's not on google, either! I'd say about 1% of 1% of the time I find something on google that I couldn't find on google.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    DDG has been my preferred search for years. I'd tried it pre-Snowden, off-and-on. Since Snowden or before it's been fully acceptible: 1. Results close to as good if not better than Google. 2. No tracking. 3. Bang searches. With the "too clever by half" search dialogs many sites are implementing (Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Google Ngram Viewer) it's often superior to the native on-site search as I don't have to set focus 2-4 times to actually type in the bloody search dialog. 4. No tracking. 5. Did I mention no tracking? 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. 7. Search customisations -- light page (good for console and commandline search), night mode, and others. 8. Unmangled URLs. I can copy/paste URLs straight from DDG. No-can-do with Google.
    - grzm 10y ago
      > 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. Or even Google. I've seen comments online about DDG providing only an illusion of privacy. I haven't dug into this deeply. From what I've read this comes down to DDG (including bang searches like !g and !sp) stripping identifying information, which provides protection from tracking by entities like advertisers and social networks, but not law enforcement or agencies like the NSA that may have legal options or extralegal access. Is my understanding generally correct? Any corrections/additions/clarifications appreciated.
- clydethefrog 10y ago
  And if their search engine does not deliver what you're looking for, use the bang !sp to use Startpage, a search engine that fetches results from the Google search engine but does not give any personal user information to Google's servers. Startpage's servers are in the Netherlands.
  - jsingleton 10y ago
    Simply !s works too.
hackuser 10y ago
> How does one not be herded like cattle by the corporations, without making a full time job of resisting it? Legal protection is necessary, and that's what works in other industries. It's not a fair negotiation, between a company's teams of engineers, management, and attorneys on one side, and a lone individual on the other. Financial firms, for example, can't just put whatever they want in agreements or do whatever they want. EDIT: The solution of informed consent doesn't work. Consumers don't have time to become informed, which requires not only reading every click-wrap agreement but understanding the technology (remember the solution must work for all users, not only the HN crowd but people who don't know what a web browser is), and understanding privacy and its consequences, and then starting that process over again to find an alternative that meets their needs - for every technology in the stack. It's unrealistic in theory, and in practice obviously doesn't work: Almost nobody, even the HN crowd, is informed.
- __jal 10y ago
  People need to start thinking of web forms, solicitations for email address, etc. like people used to think of the Columbia House record/CD club. There may be an instant-gratification payoff, but you'll regret it at leisure. Or, would you take a free sample to munch on if they first presented you with a 34-page legal agreement?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    People rarely regretted joining Columbia House, so I'm not sure what you're referring to here. They really did give you a billion records for a penny, and all you had to do was opt out every month (or opt in, they had a lot of really good records in that catalog in the 90s at least.) They relied on people repeatedly forgetting to opt out, not the blatant subterfuge of modern business models. http://www.avclub.com/article/four-columbia-house-insiders-explain-shady-math-be-219964 http://www.avclub.com/article/four-columbia-house-insiders-e...
    - __jal 10y ago
      I'm sure there were more than one person who liked it, so yes, I suspect it is true to say 'people' rarely regretted it. I know I did, when I joined them on a lark in college. They were literally a joke (several, actually) at the time. Consumer reports was overflowing with complaints. The only people I knew who didn't regret it were the ones who were cheating. > They relied on people repeatedly forgetting to opt out, not the blatant subterfuge of modern business models. I understand that others see things differently, and if you liked them, great for you. But businesses who rely on customers making mistakes about their own best interests are slime, in my view, and in that of many others.
akerro 10y ago
Just don't have Google account and clean cookies and history regularly[1], forbid saving 3rd party cookies (built-in in Firefox) and noise your canvas generator [2], block 3rd party JS, CSS, media and fonts [3], control your referals your browser sends on each click [4] use VPN or Tor on startup. You don't need to bother with those tools, they will just work in background (µBlock requires some configuration). [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/expire-history-by-days/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/expire-histor... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/no-canvas-fingerprinting/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/no-canvas-fin... [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... [4] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-gb/firefox/addon/refcontrol/
- oridecon 10y ago
  My Google account only runs in a separate browser. But I still do the things you mentioned (privacytools.io). For YouTube I'm using a RSS reader (no account) through a 3rd-party but I think they can still easily identify me. I hope I can fully remove Google from my life in a few years.
- artificial 10y ago
  Excellent list, here's one you may not know about which locally hosts 3rd party libraries (such as jQuery) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes... to plug that hole while restoring some enhanced functionality. This alone got me back on Firefox.
- godshatter 10y ago
  I've also found it helps to use different Firefox profiles for different things, like hobbies, going to banks, going to anything google, programming stuff, etc. I have noscript, umatrix, and ghostery installed on each profile. I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but there is a Firefox command-line switch to bring the profile manager up when run.
Torn 10y ago
Google do provide a privacy checkup screen where you can review and tweak your settings: https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/1 https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/1 And you can opt out of ads here https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated
bitJericho 10y ago
Start paying for your services from companies that exist by charging. Don't do business with ad companies.
- amelius 10y ago
  Any good search engines in the paid space?
  - bitJericho 10y ago
    Nope!
- jasonvorhe 10y ago
  Yeah, get a G-Suite account and you're free from Google using your data for advertising purposes.
wincy 10y ago
Well, my wife and I just ordered dumb phones and an AWS 2FA key fob (remember those?) which will be here this weekend, we're selling all our screens except one family PC. I sold off my Oculus Rift and gaming PC a month ago. We're going to have to buy a flashlight, GPS or maybe just a map book, calculator, a CD player, a Blu-Ray burner, a day planner, a wristwatch, a kitchen timer, get a library card, a shared calendar on the wall, and we'll go from there. I'm excited but also nervous about it. A few months ago I spent 90% of my free time staring at a screen. I yelled at my wife if god forbid she wanted to spend time with me and not just shut up and watch whatever video game I was playing. I figure it's a start.
- nacnud 10y ago
  Please write this up in a few months to share your experiences.
  - wincy 10y ago
    That's my plan. I'm hoping to find other people in my city (Kansas City) that want to start down a similar path. I want to write more but I'm at work and really need to get a few hours of productivity in today. I'll make sure to keep track of my experiences though!
- arkitaip 10y ago
  I admire your dedication and would be interested in hearing more about your experiment in the future. Maybe some kind of update in the future here on HN?
  - inanutshellus 10y ago
    Sounds like they're trying to save their marriage after "screen addiction" became a problem. I had the same problem with video games. I ended up swearing off video games that didn't have an ending and have been all the better for it.
    - wincy 10y ago
kuschku 10y ago
I got the screen today: http://i.imgur.com/HClXUy3.png http://i.imgur.com/HClXUy3.png It only tells you that it will actually result in less privacy if you scroll down and read the fine print. That’s seriously misleading.
omouse 10y ago
Class action lawsuits.

dredmorbius 10y ago

I'd just like to draw people's attention to a little bit of conflict-of-interest research some Stanford University researchers published a few years ago: Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

pyrophane 10y ago
This really is an important point. Somehow in this new age of technology companies we have forgotten that corporations, in the long run, will always converge on what is most profitable, regardless of the values of their founding team, who will eventually retire or have their influence diminished. For that reason, I always pay more attention to a company's incentives than I do what they say about values. If a company derives the vast majority of their income showing me targeted ads, I can expect that that will take priority over any notion of privacy, and we all know that privacy is the bane of targeted advertising. Unless there is some seismic shift in Google's core business in the next several years, we should only expect more moves like this. And as we head into the new era of "intelligent personal assistants," let's keep in mind which companies are pushing this most aggressively: two ad companies and one that wants us to make it easier (perhaps even not a conscious activity?) to buy things from them. It does not take a lot of imagination to see what these assistants are most interested in assisting us with. That's why, for all of the valid criticisms of them, I still use Apple products. I'm just more comfortable with their incentives, which are, as of now, mostly to sell me shiny new hardware. Sure, this has led them to do some things that annoy me like lock down their iMessage platform so I can't use it to communicate with my Android-using friends. Still I'll take that sort of behavior over a wholesale disregard for my privacy.

0xmohit 10y ago

Earlier: We will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with your personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent. Now: Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google's services and the ads delivered by Google. So opt-in becomes opt-out.

runeb 10y ago
To opt out, or "Pause" as Google is tellingly calling it, from the article: To opt-out of Google’s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls[1] on Google’s My Account page, and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services." You can also delete past activity from your account. [1] https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols
- e40 10y ago
  Mine was already unchecked.
  - dminor 10y ago
    Mine was unchecked but the same settings on my phone were on.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  There are more tracking settings here for "Ads based on your interests" and "Control Signed-In Ads" (Ads based on your interests on websites beyond google.com): https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated
- initram 10y ago
  In typical Google fashion, I can't tell if this will actually work or not. Some of the settings were in-between "On" and "Off". WTF did that mean? And then some of them seemed to imply that I had to accept a cookie to make them not work. Well I browse privately and use ad blocking, so does that mean they'll track me across a single session but not multiple sessions? (I ask because cookies work in a single session, but when I quit, they are deleted.) It also seemed to imply that the settings were only for that one browser on that one computer. I want it always off for everything. WTF? I don't think a typical user can understand the implications of these settings and make informed choices about using them.

rdslw 10y ago

Cool. Yes they deliberatly block chrome extension on mobile chrome, as then ublock usage on mobile would explode. Together with myth of mobile ads. Do not evil. Riiiight. As long as it does not hamper our profit.

unethical_ban 10y ago
Some googler will come in and say "That's not our motto anymore, dummy". To which I'll say - Think about that. Is saying, "Well, we can be shitty now that our motto no longer prohibits it" really a good excuse?
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Technically "Do the right thing" also inherently suggests not doing evil. Though the full motto should probably be "Do the right thing for Larry Page's yacht budget".
- delroth 10y ago
  No Googler will come and tell you that since "Don't be evil" are literally the first 3 words of the published Google code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html I'm not sure why you think this has changed.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > I'm not sure why you think this has changed. Actions speak louder than words.
    - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
      Is "Don't be evil" something that really needs to be said anyway? Couldn't have set the bar much lower.
    - jbpetersen 10y ago
      Privacy is evil?

mtgx 10y ago

Google seems no better than Facebook when it comes to privacy, and I'm not just talking about how far they're willing to go in tracking users, but also how they are willing to lie and violate their users' trust so they can collect more data. Facebook is now getting into trouble in the EU for breaking their promise about not sharing WhatsApp data, and yet Google still goes ahead and does this. I hope the European Commission adds this as one more charge against Google. Without real enforcement the companies will continue to do whatever the hell they want.

rahrahrah 10y ago
And when that happens every American on HN will go "look at that old crusty EU, getting in the way of progress again with their bloated regulations".
- skummetmaelk 10y ago
  The free market fallacy.
  - rahrahrah 10y ago
    I'm starting to hate the word "fallacy". What's the free market fallacy? The idea that not everything that's driven by free market is great? Why call that a fallacy, why not just call it being wrong?
    - skummetmaelk 10y ago
      A fallacy is really any argument that is wrong because of wrong assumptions or faulty logic, but leads to a believable result anyway. The free market fallacy is a fallacy because people who believe the free market solves problems base this claim on the assumption that human beings are rational and have access to all information.

throw2016 10y ago

I think duckduckgo often becomes an alternative that isn't an alternative, in the sense yes its there, you are frustrated with Google's behavior and you persist for a whole day and then have to revert back to Google with tail behind legs so it's more of an alternative in name. With the sheer scope of Google properties there is always going to be a tempation for 'value searchers' within the organization to give in to dark patterns and compromise users. I have been trying Yandex search and email and its fairly decent. Email is good, search appears to be a much more serious offering compared to duckduckgo but still some way to go. However we need diversity and decentralization to prevent concentration and inevitable abuse of power.

pmyjavec 10y ago
To be honest DuckDuckGo is fine, you just need to put a little extra effort in. I'll admit it takes some getting used to but I happily use it now. Also as others have stated the 'sp!' bang is handy.
- icebraining 10y ago
  StartPage is a mystery to me; they say they're "enhanced by Google", but what does Google get out of providing their search results to a competitor?
  - singularity2001 10y ago
    Also heard rumors about StartPage being very shady. Would be nice to get some confirmation on this or to learn that it was only a campaign by competitors. Google for "StartPage malware" ;)
- Mystrl 10y ago
  put a little extra effort in So it's hopeless then. You're never going to convince anything resembling a sizable portion of the population to put in more effort for no easily appreciable benefit.

yuhong 10y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483805 I was trying to figure out what was happening.

danieldk 10y ago
https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/ https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/

whistlerbrk 10y ago

A recent podcast (TAL? Radiolab?) just discussed the retreats Google has made over time with respect to privacy and intrusive advertising. I tried to find it - someone have a link? This very much continues the theme. It is important to note how much Sergey and Larry hated advertising and the belief they held that any advertising based search engine would inherently corrupt itself.

sleepydog 10y ago
There was recently a bit on NPR (Here & Now?) about how Facebook did not shy away from this type of advertising, whereas Google balked at it initially after public outcry. It seems they have finally caved in.
quest88 10y ago
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/17/498237314/how-free-web-content-traps-people-in-an-abyss-of-ads-and-clickbait http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/17/498... They say what your last sentence said, so I'm guessing this is the podcast you're thinking of.

eveningcoffee 10y ago

Like I have told under other similar discussions. Something in ToS has no relevance if data is collected. If data is collected then it will eventually be used (against you).

j_s 10y ago
That's a good point: is this change retroactive (will old data be associated)?
- kuschku 10y ago
  There have been several such retroactive changes, such as using GMail’s data to train the models for Inbox before, so it’s likely.
- falcolas 10y ago
  Consider the path of least resistance - is it easier to just take one action across data, or multiple actions based on data age, user opt-in, and EULAs? Engineers are lazy, after all, and it's fairly easy to change an EULA.

omouse 10y ago

The marketers and advertisers have finally won. Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, but this confirms it. It's like Facebook, they're beholden to the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. So glad I'm evaluating other email providers and use Privoxy for ad-blocking.

FUCK__GOOGLE 10y ago
I'm moving off gmail today, gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere. I think that and hangouts are the last ways they got me, looking forward to deleting my account. It's so strange to be old enough to see the same mistakes of the AOL days repeated again at a much larger scale. I don't want your garden, I want my privacy, thanks.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  Meta-comment: Your post isn't unreasonable, but it seems your throwaway name killed it for you...
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    "isn't unreasonable" but it's a profoundly selfish sentiment. It's almost a given that the people reading this are totally immune to this. We all use adblockers as the default.
- nibs 10y ago
  Zoho Mail + Personal Domain = Free, No Ads. Company makes money by providing good-enough email product, encouraging you to use their other for-money good-enough SaaS products.
- kotajacob 10y ago
  Everyone's talking about switching emails, but realistically how difficult do you think it will be. Changing it for all the services you use and informing everyone? Or are you just planning on setting up forwarding for a while... (Asking because I'm trying to make the switch myself)

pinewurst 10y ago

Isn't Google moving aggressively to fingerprint-based browser tracking instead of cookies?

rahrahrah 10y ago
Possibly, but even right now when you open Chrome (non-incognito) you immediately get three google analytics cookies set, which are picked up by any website using google analytics (i.e. almost every website). If you put this together with the fact that Chrome knows about Google Account sessions, you conclude that Google is already keeping track of everything that you, as an individual, does online and has been for many years, even without fingerprinting.
- pinewurst 10y ago
  I was thinking of the non-logged-in Google accounts with ad blocker case not being privacy protecting any more.

RodericDay 10y ago

When I read announcements like these I actually get a bit hopeful. These companies seem somewhat scared, and their funding bases more fragile than they let on.

CommanderData 10y ago

Is it enough to install adblock on the router level? This would in theory block all domains tracking and serving adverts.

0xmohit 10y ago
You could also try https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts to block ads. Quoting from the description: Extending and consolidating hosts files from a variety of sources like adaway.org, mvps.org, malwaredomains.com, someonewhocares.org, yoyo.org, and potentially others. You can optionally invoke extensions to block additional sites by category.
- CommanderData 10y ago
  Great to see an updated hosts file. I've and others have been saying, routers need an easier configuration method. Preferably through an app and common API across firmware and manufacturers.

vonklaus 10y ago

I expect google will experience outages >15 minutes for core services in the comung months. This is based on significant uptick in ddos sophistication, this has been referenced by Schneier-- although not in ref to Goog. If changes like this announcement convince people to move away; I am all for it. This just proves not only their power, but the danger of a single point of failure.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
That is the opposite of my prediction. I predict that as ddos attacks become larger and more sophisticated, only Google and a handful of other huge operators will be left standing.
- john_reel 10y ago
  Realistically, if it reaches that point, why wouldn’t the first response be action on the part of ISP and backbone providers? I get that right now it would be extremely difficult and expensive, but at a point where DDoS has a significant effect on the market share of a company like Google, I feel like something would have to be done.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    > why wouldn’t the first response be action on the part of ISP and backbone providers? Schneier points out that these have the shape of probing attacks and are executed across multifaceted services at the micro & macro level. I feel like something needs to be done now. There is, I am sure, a fix but with something like Dyn and other major cloud management, infrastructure, ISP and backbone companies are getting seriously worked over. There is a saturation point. The attackers have capabilities to hit so many different pieces of exposed surface area, that for small networks/apps/services/companies they are unable to be repelled. In between small companies and Google tier service, some can repel attacks, but they still cede some uptime and performance. Cloudflare has released some insane reports and when you have motivated powerful attackers striking key pieces of core internet infrastructure, to some extent, you have to consider the entire system is under hostile attack. > but at a point where DDoS has a significant effect on the market share of a company like Google I am certainly a layman here, but none of the targets made a choice today to be vulnerable. I am sure the entire chain is rapidly reinvesting and hardening the infrastructure, but this should have probably been done years ago. In between when the companies are pouring resources out (I suspect they are now) and when they gain enough of an understanding to withstand these attacks, there will be downtime. I think google will get hit soon. It was reported that a google core outage of ~15 minutes deadzoned about 40% of America's internet traffic. Even knocking google out for ~1-2 hours would show 2008 what too big to fail means. If google DNS, Chrome, google search, gmail, google apps, hosting, dns, ISP all activities ceased for 2 hours things would get bad.

rahrahrah 10y ago

That diff in the article, does anyone know where it comes from?

manigandham 10y ago
Google offers it themselves: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/ https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/ Click on "comparison" to see the changes between versions.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

fencepost 10y ago

Looking at the My Activity details is actually pretty creepy. Starting today working backwards, Google includes "Used Phone," "Used [my launcher]," "contacted [messaging site]," "Used [alarm clock app]," several overnight repeats of the messaging site when I received alerts, my Chrome-based website visits from yesterday, my foray into Android Settings yesterday, etc. It all serves to make me happy that I'm using Firefox with uMatrix as my daily driver, and only use Chrome (with uBlock Origin) for the rare things that I can't get to load properly because of all the cross-site dependencies.

xgbi 10y ago
Using firefox? Did you tick "Send analysis data to Mozilla"? If yes, Mozilla has the very same information about your browsing habits and all clicks and actions you performed in Firefox too. It's just that Google shows it to you, rather than not telling you anything. Any sufficiently big Android/iOS app has the very same system in place so that they can see what people are doing with their app and anticipate interesting features, down to the location of your finger when you touched that button, the wifis you were seeing at the time, the battery level etc. Admitedly though, Google has such a wide reach in all your day-to-day life that they gather an immense amount of data. But don't be fooled, anyone else is also doing it. And they are far less open about it.
- mccr8 10y ago
  If you go to about:telemetry in Firefox, you can see exactly what data is being collected.
- ViViDboarder 10y ago
  I think most people here understand that everyone is collecting data about usage of their apps. The thing people are getting wary of is having all your habits, regardless of app or platform, in one place.
- windlep 10y ago
  > Using firefox? Did you tick "Send analysis data to Mozilla"? If yes, Mozilla has the very same information about your browsing habits and all clicks and actions you performed in Firefox too. That is blatantly false. The policy page here describes what is sent for each data feature in Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ Mozilla does not have tracking cookies scattered through-out the web tracking you. Google via Google Ad's and Doubleclick does (as does Facebook via their social features). Neither the Chrome browser nor Firefox sends "your browsing habits and all clicks and actions you performed" to their respective companies. If you turn on History sync, the clients encrypt all this data before uploading. Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla. edit: Chrome can send all history unencrypted to Google if you ask it to, under Privacy Checkup, Web & Web App Activity: "Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services". Supposedly this is to make the search more relevant. This was unchecked for me by default though.

ommunist 10y ago

As for now, there is no viable alternative to Google. There is no distributed, free independent search engine that provides such quality relevant search results as Google, and is caring for users privacy. I do not think either it is financially possible to run such a thing, without someone's vested interest in metadata behind such possible endeavour. There is silent demand for such an effort however. UPD: I know about DuckDuckGo, but look: https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=1 https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as...

rmc 10y ago

This is why we need the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Article 8 covers personal data, and can blocks things like this.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

agentgt 10y ago

I'm curious what bothers people most about the privacy issues? Strangely I don't care that Google (and others) know about me. I probably should but I have just sorted have accepted the lack of privacy today. What really bothers me isn't the privacy its them using that data to create a completely unfair advantage to continue the oligopoly that is quickly consuming all markets. I used to be such a capitalist but as of the last few years watching what companies will continue to do to not just grow but grow exponentially with unfair and unethical leverage in every direction. I'm curious if others share that feeling or is that just me. Or is it just invasion of privacy?

rndmind 10y ago
If we accept the small invasion of privacy now, and accept it as the norm, what are the implications for the future?
- tdb7893 10y ago
  It doesn't really bother me if the internet knows that I recently bought a nice soldering iron on Amazon or that I play D&D with my friends. I kinda view the internet as public and I don't really have huge privacy concerns about information I put in public.
  - initram 10y ago
    Other people have legitimate concerns about others knowing what they bought on Amazon or do with their friends. In some jurisdictions, buying what seem like normal products to you and I is illegal. Some people live in areas where others knowing they are gay, transgendered, conservative, atheist, etc. will get them fired or literally killed. It's great that you don't have to worry about that. But others do, and it's getting to the point where, "Then just don't use the internet" is simply not possible. Even, "Then just don't use Google's services" is impossible when their ads and tracking are on literally half of the top 1 million sites on the internet.
    - tdb7893 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

forgotpwtomain 10y ago

> If you want to permanently opt out of the DoubleClick cookie, you can install the DoubleClick opt out extension.

solveforall 10y ago

[Disclaimer: shameless plug, and also previously announced as a Show HN a while back] I would like to mention my search engine as another privacy-focused alternative: https://solveforall.com/ https://solveforall.com/ 1) Does not track user activity. Hosted in Canada. 2) Does not leak referrer to visited sites 3) No ads. Will be considering affiliate links, a paid API, and/or "good" ads -- ads people want that don't compromise privacy 4) Integrated feed reader which also provides search results 5) Activation codes (like DDG bangs, so ?g instead of !g) 5) Plugins written in JS/data to be searched can be added at any time. 6) Deep search -- get results from the search results page of several sites at a time. Try https://solveforall.com/answers.do?q=rx+480&client.kind=web&type=answers&engines=107&depth=1 https://solveforall.com/answers.do?q=rx+480&client.kind=web&... There clearly a lot more work to be done, and I plan on open sourcing this soon, but please try it out and let me know any feedback you have!

drawnwren 10y ago
The UI on the left side could use some work. I followed your link, search for Ars Technica and then spent about a minute trying to figure out why it was showing me electronics. Everything feels just a bit too large and control information should probably all be above the page (at least a summary.)
- solveforall 10y ago
  Excellent feedback, thank you! I will work on this.

a3n 10y ago

Don't be evil. Not all at once.

betolink 10y ago

Just to give you and idea of how big of a deal this is, go to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and check what third parties could learn from you, with your name on it.

ams6110 10y ago

I've already stopped using Chrome on my computers and phone. Getting pretty close to dropping them into my hosts file.

philprx 10y ago

Bait and switch?

yuhong 10y ago

Also recommend that you read https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/Bo88vgre8Nw https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/Bo88vgre... , particularly the comments.

barnassey 10y ago

More and more changes that do not bode well for google, first they changed it to where they can track what numbers you dial, then they tried that with your google chrome history and tabs if you synced it to your account and now this? People wondered why i stopped being a google evangelist after 2014.

mikeleeorg 10y ago
Do you, or anyone else here, know of a good, privacy-conscious personal information management system? Other than Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Apple? Having a system that manages such critical info in a seamless way is huge. I'm acutely aware that free services are not truly "free," so if there is a good alternative that has a reasonable premium subscription plan, I would seriously consider it.
- mikeleeorg 10y ago
  Ah, I just read further in this thread, and it looks like a number of alternatives are already being shared. https://www.fastmail.com/ https://www.fastmail.com/ looks pretty interesting.
- barnassey 10y ago
  No the thing is i've had to learn all of this the hard way. using opera with a custom sync phrase, as well as using the opt-out addons that google provides. Canvas blocker, Ublock origin, and cleanlinks to get rid of the UTM strings on links. Oh and not using chrome whatsoever.

Animats 10y ago

Log out of Google. Now. And delete all their cookies. Consider deleting your Google account. Put your mail on an IMAP server. Your ISP probably offers one. (I don't use a Google account. My last login to Google was in 2015, and that was to update a browser add-on.)

jasonvorhe 10y ago
Your ISP probably offers the most basic mail setup you can build with the lowest effort. Your ISP as no reason to give a world class mail service because that's not something they're good at or that they could make money from. It's just one something they think is expected nowadays. I don't think this is wise advice from a privacy point of view, considering your ISP knows all your internet habits including all your connections to any service you'll ever use and that most ISPs don't have your interests in mind.

c_r_w 10y ago

That's weird. I guess they like making money.

yason 10y ago

I sometimes wonder if why it is generally held that marketing sucks and advertisements are evil because they're so random, badly targeted and thus crappy. I basically wouldn't mind seeing advertisements if they were relevant and spot on. And that probably hasn't been possible until all that big data is cross-indexed with user identities. It may be that ads are considered bad because good ads happen once in a thousand.

urda 10y ago

This is yet another reminder that it's important, especially for HN readers, to continue to give support to groups such as Mozilla and their Firefox platform. The more widespread Google and Chrome usage is, the more Google can push these changes with little to no resistance.

oridecon 10y ago
I wish I could pay Mozilla to host my custom domain e-mail, encrypted files and any other services they could offer

mikeleeorg 10y ago

For people who didn't read the article but want to opt out of this tracking: To opt-out of Google’s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls on Google’s My Account page, and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services." You can also delete past activity from your account. Links from that paragraph: * Activity controls: https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols * My account page: https://myaccount.google.com/ https://myaccount.google.com/ * Delete past activity: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Does this apply to paid accounts', e.g. businesses', data?

feelix 10y ago

I use google and have chosen to give up a lot of my privacy to use their services. One thing I was never willing to do though, and I had an instant emotional reaction to not doing, was allowing them access to all my email. They can have my GPS coordinates at all times, my web search history, etc, but they can't get into the inner workings of my life and my thoughts. So back before I had any real use for it I just registered myname@myfirstandlastname.com and used that for my email address. It felt like a natural move. It does bother me still that a lot of the people I email do use gmail, so google still ends up siphoning of a lot of the contents of my email. I see a lot of people talking about FastMail instead of GMail, but I don't know why more geeks don't register their own domain name which has several advantages (including looking better and more professional). The one downside is that mail search sucks. I'd love to get some decent search without giving up privacy somehow.

jjawssd 10y ago
+1 for fastmail. lots of domains to choose from and i also use my own personal domain for email
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
FastMail has incredibly good domain name configuration for custom domains. I just set it up this week. The problem is most users don't have the skill or time to manage a well-maintained email service. I'd like to, but the risk of losing important email is too critical to risk. (Even making the cutover to FastMail, I was super nervous!) And unlike Google, FastMail has a strong privacy strategy. But what I did do, about a year ago, was move my email usage over to an address at my own domain, which was then forwarded to Gmail. By lessening the references to my Gmail account, it made it easy to switch elsewhere. ...I just repointed my domain to FastMail's email service. And because I control the domain name people send email to me on, it's easy for me to move it again in the future if I have a problem with FastMail or find something better.
oridecon 10y ago
If you're being targeted, can you really protect your domain/DNS from all points of attack? And does domain privacy protection really covers all of your personal data, forever? The more I learn the worse I feel about my digital privacy and security. The one thing I do right now is to compartmentalize my accounts and services, but I can't help to think it's only stopping smaller fish from getting/triangulating my data. Tin foil hat apart, I also don't like to give away my data for free.

awqrre 10y ago

You have to be logged-in for the opt-out to be effective... so now they know exactly who you are...

gjolund 10y ago

What are the best alternative email services with a privacy focus?

JayNeely 10y ago
https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/
milcron 10y ago
Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but self-hosting email can be a fun challenge. Lavabit had a privacy focus and look what happened to them.
- gjolund 10y ago
  That is what I was thinking. Right now I am debating an on premise email server or something on aws.

snarf 10y ago

Does anyone know the specifics of Google's privacy practices for G Suite (formerly Google Apps for business)? They claim no advertising, but do they use your data for anything else, and do they still build shadow profiles? If you're already buying 1 TB of storage for Google Drive, then you can instead sign up for the $10 month G Suite plan and get 1 TB of storage with ad free versions of their apps.

jasonvorhe 10y ago
It says so in their TOS, but if you're wearing your tinfoil hat you have no reason to believe that they're honest about that.

qwerty1234567 10y ago

google.com

forsberg 10y ago

So there are a lot of talk about using DuckDuckGo instead of Google but I'm wondering if anyone have considered using Bing as a middle ground? Sure they track you but in my understanding they actually suck at it. :)

chirageminent 10y ago

Google News: Google Updated Private Policy To Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking. How to Opt in/out Sharing Data? http://www.themobileupdates.com/news/google-news-google-updated-private-policy-to-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking/ http://www.themobileupdates.com/news/google-news-google-upda...