16 ms·

Goodbye Big Five: Google

169 points by kaboro 8y ago

ariwilson 8y ago
This is a whole series. She already did Amazon and Facebook: https://gizmodo.com/c/goodbye-big-five https://gizmodo.com/c/goodbye-big-five
- mrweasel 8y ago
  The Facebook one is weird. There are some strange thought processes going though her head, which she kinda acknowledges. Stuff like: > I have to admit that the enjoyment of a holiday dedicated to dressing up is somewhat degraded when not using Facebook’s apps.
kawfey 8y ago
Despite the tirade of anti-facebook/google/amazon blogs and posts in the last 5 years, I'm still not convinced that "being tracked" in my day-to-day life is a negative thing. I still don't perceive that my privacy is lost when I use those services. That information is shared with companies who use the data more-or-less responsibly with respect to my life. Personally I prefer having a majority of my internet experience centralized in one place. Calendar, Email, files, maps, news, search, entertainment, etc. This saves a lot of time and effort in my life. Is it worth it?
- lostcolony 8y ago
  Until they don't. Just because you don't balk at the current usage (that you know of), doesn't mean they aren't, or won't, do something you won't balk at. Anything learned can't be unlearned, and so by definition you've allowed them collect any data they are able to, and to do anything they wish with the data they collect.
- slenk 8y ago
  My only fear with having everything centralized is that Google can decide you did something wrong and cut you out of so many important things in your life, without recourse. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989146 is just one example I found with minimal searching.
  - fencepost 8y ago
    You might also enjoy Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled": https://craphound.com/scroogled.html https://craphound.com/scroogled.html Though for whatever reason the formatting on that appears terrible (to me in my uMatrix locked down Firefox)
    - fxfan 8y ago
      I had a nice umatrix config saved to the cloud but it got deleted somewhere in the last one year (I had to temporarily switch to chrome). Did that happen to you too?
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  I was tracked by an abusive ex for months via my Google account. Location history allowed them to show up at places they knew I would be at, and they had access to my email and who knows what else before I figured out what they were doing. If you're a dissident, a journalist[1] or a political party member[2], there are powerful people who might want to track or silence you. If you're the wrong type of minority in the wrong place at the wrong time, there are people who might want to put you in camps[3] or murder you[4]. A KGB-style surveillance apparatus that's used to better target ads can be abused by anyone with an agenda, no matter how petty their motivation is. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/01/2017-was-the-most-dangerous-year-ever-for-journalists-2018-might-be-even-worse/?utm_term=.8e808c2ab5da https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/01... [2] https://qz.com/1089384/the-communist-app-store-chinas-endless-apps-for-tracking-organizing-and-motivating-party-members/ https://qz.com/1089384/the-communist-app-store-chinas-endles... [3] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-... [4] http://time.com/chechnya-movsar/ http://time.com/chechnya-movsar/
  - filoleg 8y ago
    How is it Google's fault that someone else had access to your account and (for all intents and purposes) impersonated you? If someone gets access to any of your important accounts on your behalf (which would include your primary email), you will have a lot of opportunities to get screwed over. Email access alone can be enough, in a lot of cases.
    - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
      > How is it Google's fault that someone else had access to your account Please don't strawman my anecdote. I never said it was Google's fault. However, I did say that Google's surveillance system enabled a level of stalking that's never been this accessible to laymen and nation-states alike.
      - sridca 8y ago
        > I did say that Google's surveillance system enabled a level of stalking *Google's surveillance system in conjunction with irresponsibly giving one's account login to one's ex Fixed that for you.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  They use it responsibly now, but that assumes they’ll always use it responsibly. And what happens in the worst case scenario, when some actor takes over who may not care for laws and constitutions?
- icebraining 8y ago
  Hence the GDPR: it's perfectly fine to track your every move as long as they get explicit, opt-in consent for doing so.
- megaman8 8y ago
  So far they haven't really done much wrong. But, the problem is, the potential for wrong doing is so enormous. Google has so much power to control the fate of every business on this planet: I think this is just begging for abuse. It's remarkable that they've gone this long without any more serious scandals.
- sridca 8y ago
  > Despite the tirade of anti-facebook/google/amazon blogs and posts in the last 5 years, I'm still not convinced that "being tracked" in my day-to-day life is a negative thing I made a similar observation before, and despite reasonable points raised I was downvoted to oblivion both here and at lobste.rs. It is one of those things you can't say[1] here. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- luord 8y ago
  Well I'm not sure this mentality won't have consequences, I find myself doing what you do. Not precisely because of trust or because I think they're well behaved but simply because I don't care about the tracking and, while I'm not certain, I do hope nothing bad comes of it. In fact, I actually bought the pixel 3 just two weeks ago. It's nice.
polskibus 8y ago
Great experiment. It really shows how badly we are dependent on Google. Everything relies on it, seems like it would be best if it was regulated as a public utility, enjoying monopoly but also having to serve the public good also when it doesn't necessarily align with its commercial interest (like in EU energy companies have to give you a link to the grid). It also shows that it doesn't have real competitors, being so broad in scope and having all that data before others did.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Part of the challenge there is it's bigger than a public utility. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the US nationalizes it. That leaves EU, Australian, Canadian, &c Google customers out in the cold---it's unlikely either the US or those other countries will be comfortable with continued service by a national utility to customers outside that nation. Perhaps some kind of subsidiary model could be constructed, but the details of how are non-trivial.
  - polskibus 8y ago
    We could make it more like NATO?
tivert 8y ago
> There’s no way I can delete my Gmail accounts completely as I did with Facebook. First off, it would be a huge security mistake; freeing up my email address for someone else to claim is just asking to be hacked. Does Google really free up your email address for re-allocation when you delete your account? I do recall that was in issue at one point with Yahoo Mail. No email provider should allow the reassignment of previously used email addresses for precisely this reason.
- kyrra 8y ago
  I believe Google never garbage collects deleted @gmail.com usernames. According to [0]: "Your Gmail address can’t be used by anyone else in the future." [0] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/61177?hl=en&topic=2382753&ctx=topic https://support.google.com/mail/answer/61177?hl=en&topic=238...
  - puzzle 8y ago
    Security was the main reason why, when I asked years ago.
  - xingped 8y ago
    This used to be possible. I know because I once deleted my email and then realized I missed something I needed to transfer, so just re-created my email again to receive that email.
    - kyrra 8y ago
      How long between deleted and re-opening? The support page I linked talks about being able to restore a deleted account within some period of time.
  - rgovostes 8y ago
    Maybe this is true today. But as the grandparent pointed out, Yahoo did release unused usernames back in 2013. Who is to say that Google won't decide to do that some day? https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26/yahoo-releases-recycled-usernames-to-those-who-sent-in-requests-lets-you-stalk-your-own-for-1-99/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26/yahoo-releases-recycled-us...
kradeelav 8y ago
I feel like this comes from a good place, but a lot of it seems self-inflicted and/or over-dramatized. Most privacy-conscious folks have been saying from day one that smartphones and smart-homes are a bad idea in that regard. Dumb-phones exist. Printing directions out is ... not that hard. Etc. Overall, though, I am glad this is becoming more of a thing in terms of mass appeal. Hopefully the pendulum will swing the other way to a greater awareness of shiny-new-tech-that-comes-with-strings.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > I feel like this comes from a good place, but a lot of it seems self-inflicted and/or over-dramatized. Agreed, and too absolutist. You can take a reasonable stance without upending your life. So you can't get away from maps integration in apps, that's ok, still using the competition helps. Same with browser choice and others. I can decry all the plastic waste and still type on a keyboard with plastic parts.
  - m4x 8y ago
    Taking an absolutist stance is the point of the authors experiment. You wouldn't do this in practice if you were just trying to improve your privacy, but in an experiment to see just how far Google's reach extends it makes sense to block everything and see what unexpected 3rd party services also fail - such as Uber or Dropbox
neurobashing 8y ago
I am the only person on Earth, I think, that has had 0 problems with Apple Maps (at least, in the past year). I have never aimed for Cleveland and ended up in the Atlantic; and I've never been late or gotten lost. I think I've disagreed with its shortcuts once or twice. Not denying your bad Apple Maps experience - just, I have no idea why mine is so trouble-free because so many have bad ones. (For calibration, I live in NoVA)
- mereel 8y ago
  Same for me and I've used Apple Maps all over the US. Although there have been instances of Google Maps finding something Apple Maps couldn't, I've never actually gotten wrong directions.
- NikolaNovak 8y ago
  You might be! Occasionally I'll rent a car that only has Apple's Car Play and have to use my work iPhone to navigate (gawd forbid Apple would let us use Google Maps on Car Play;). My experience has been universally poor: - it provides no instructions for major actual intersections. It thinks you're staying on same main road even when there's a confusing Y in front of the driver. I have constant moments of panic when I see the intersection coming and no help from the maps. - It provides confusing instructions on straight roads ("Turn right in 100 meters" when there's a stretch of straight road) - It'll reference names for a road that are nowhere near what any of the signs indicate - "Keep in right three lanes to stay on the road" - when the rightmost lane is actually a turning lane - Something that is admittedly tricky, it struggles to provide useful instructions on more than four-way roads (e.g. if it's a 5-way or 6-way, "Turn right" has multiple interpretations). It doesn't use, at least not in my cases "bear right" or "slight right" or similar vs "turn right" or "acute right" or "sharp right" - and again, it gets the road names wrong. - When Searching: * it'll show me Bedford England 5000km away, but not Bedford NS 12km away * It has some weird internal naming so searching for actual address will again not lead me anywhere near to what I want Basically it's been a constant source of frustration beyond what I believe could reasonably be attributed to my inexperience with its UI :-/ EDIT/UPDATE: Thx for feedback; my work phone is on iOS 11, good to know that (*recently, after 4 years without it) CarPlay now supports other maps; note that I don't think it in any way makes Apple Maps experience itself any better 0:-)
bpicolo 8y ago
> “Your smart home pings Google at the same time every hour in order to determine whether or not it’s connected to the internet,” Dhruv tells me. “Which is funny to me because these devices’ engineers decided to determine connectivity to the entire internet based on the uptime of a single company. It’s a good metaphor for how far the internet has strayed from its original promise to decentralize control.” The alternative is effectively DDoSing random websites from 100 million devices, which is definitively an uncool move.
- jm_l 8y ago
  The requests wouldn't be synchronized, so probably wouldn't cause a DoS
  - bpicolo 8y ago
    Once an hour means they're doing ~30k qps if they have 100 million devices (and traffic is well-distributed, which admittedly is pretty easy to do), though 100 million is potentially an overestimate. Point is, you can't just fire that traffic into the nether / to domains you don't control from IoT devices. Those providers will happily cut off your automated traffic.
    - johnchristopher 8y ago
      > Point is, you can't just fire that traffic into the nether / to domains you don't control from IoT devices. Those providers will happily cut off your automated traffic. Which reminds me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911501 TP-Link firmware sends six DNS requests and one NTP query every 5 seconds https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/tplink-aggressive-ntp https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/tplink-aggressive-ntp
  - puzzle 8y ago
    Even if they don't start synchronized, something as simple as a hiccup on the receiving side of all such pings would make them more and more synchronized over time. Such is the life of anyone operating large sites.
Slippery_John 8y ago
I've taken similar steps, though have not gone so far as to set up a vpn block to all google ips. I do have as much fingerprinting and privacy protection as possible enabled in Firefox though. I find the worst experience is captcha, it will no longer give me free passes and I regularly have to sit there for several minutes providing training data that they reject. It's to the point where I just avoid sites that require it. Newegg is a particularly egregious offender as they seem to require a very high degree of certainty.
- ggpsv 8y ago
  What set up are you using in Firefox for fingerprint and privacy protection?
  - fencepost 8y ago
    (not the GP) For blocking I'm using uMatrix, plus uBlock Origin and Ghostery. There's a lot of overlap and it might not be the most efficient, but there are reasons. This is fine for sites that I'm on regularly, but is annoying for one-offs. I actually flip to Chrome with only uBlock Origin for some purchases and for some specific websites that work better there (like GMail), though I could probably use the Firefox beta channel builds as a non-locked-down browser for that. uMatrix generally blocks third-party items, though it defaults to allowing CSS and images from anywhere and I haven't changed that. uBlock Origin provides list-based blocking instead and is a failover if I give up and temporarily turn off uMatrix for a site. Ghostery is useful for a quick reference of why various things are blocked in terms of website categories (trackers, discussion, ads, etc.). I'm also using DeCentralEyes, which provides locally-injected versions of a lot of CDN-based resources.
  - Slippery_John 8y ago
    Extensions: uBlock, Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes, DDG Privacy Essentials, HTTPS Everywhere, and most importantly Containers I try to keep as many sites as possible into relevant containers. Facebook and Google get their own containers just for them (there are additional addons which will handle this for you as getting all of Google siloed off is cumbersome otherwise). I also make use of the built in tracker blocking, blocking all third party cookie use entirely. There's also an option to resist fingerprinting that I enable, which does a ton of things [1] [1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting
pleasecalllater 8y ago
... except that Google still has most of my emails as people who send me them or whom I send to are using Gmail...
- dylan604 8y ago
  This. Same with Facebook. Even if I choose to not use a particular service, these services still know about me because so many other people I interact with do use these services. I get that as a Gmail user, you've agreed to allow them to read emails for whatever they choose. However, I did not. If I hit reply to a Gmail account, I'm not agreeing to the ToS. Just because I visit a site that has chosen to use G*/FB does not mean that I agree to the ToS. A website's cookie notices give me the option to leave if I don't agree, but by then, all of the tracking has already started without my agreement.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jm_l 8y ago
Worth noting that by blocking all Google IPs, the author is not only cutting out Google services, but also any other application that relies on Google services. For example, there's a bit in there about not being able to use Dropbox because it uses Captcha.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  Or an alarming amount of sites completely unrelated to Google that use Google captchas.
- auslander 8y ago
  Google fonts are used by all websites. And from Referrer header, Google has your browsing history.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Google also hosts a plethora of standard JS libraries. I wonder how many web pages fail to work with their JS at all if you block Google?
  - extra88 8y ago
    Google font logs are not dumped into their analytics and they take a number of steps that greatly reduce requests made for fonts in the first place. https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_...
    - auslander 8y ago
      There is no mention of which browser they refer to. I don't use Chrome, and I see requests to fonts on every website. And requests do contain Referer (what I browse) and, of course, my IP. And in Private browsing, no caches should be saved anyway.
      - extra88 8y ago
aboutruby 8y ago
> Next up: Microsoft. That will be pretty easy. Only thing I used of Microsoft website for is to get .NET for a one-off project that required it.
- detaro 8y ago
  Random stuff you don't know about might be on Azure. But yes, their general services reach is probably lower.
  - aboutruby 8y ago
    It seems like it's mostly used by large corporations for intranets. Ebay, EasyJet and maybe Samsung are most likely to be the ones internet users would encounter. [0]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/case-studies https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/case-studies [1]: https://www.quora.com/What-are-publicly-known-biggest-customers-of-the-Microsoft-Azure-Platform https://www.quora.com/What-are-publicly-known-biggest-custom...
- icebraining 8y ago
  And you never use GitHub either? Don't forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
  - extra88 8y ago
    Yes, and that will include static sites hosted on GitHub Pages. Avoiding Microsoft is often a problem when exchange documents with someone and the files don't work well with whatever not-Office you choose (Apple Page/Numbers/Keynote, LibreOffice, etc.). I wonder if they can even attempt to block receiving or placing phone calls from/to a number with Skype on the other end.
  - aboutruby 8y ago
    Thanks for reminding me of this tragedy :(
xamlhacker 8y ago
For maps, I use HERE maps on Android and it works great. Offline capability is particularly good. I am not sure if it is available on iOS.
fencepost 8y ago
For maps, I'd add Here (https://wego.here.com/ https://wego.here.com/) to the Apple Maps and Mapquest options she chose. It's the mapping solution that Microsoft got from Nokia, and is used by a lot of in-car navigation systems IIRC. It suffers by comparison to Google Maps mostly in the lack of integration with the full database of businesses/reviews/etc. though I think it probably has most of the business listings. I suspect its traffic info is weaker as well, though I haven't really checked.
Klonoar 8y ago
So much of this is overblown... and I say this as someone who goes out of their way to avoid using Amazon/Google/etc for privacy reasons. The biggest problem with debating privacy and security these days is the sheer paranoia running rampant from people who don't understand the workings behind the scenes, coupled with the people behind the scenes assuming defensive tones from the get-go whenever stuff is brought up.
faitswulff 8y ago
Anyone know why she chose RiseUp.net for personal email?
Animats 8y ago
I've pretty much run in that mode for years. No big problems. With Ghostery and Privacy Badger turned up to high, and third party cookies blocked, Google doesn't get much through. My phone, a ruggedized Android model from Caterpillar Tractor, has no Google apps other than the Google Play Services middleware. I've never had Facebook on a phone. Mail is on Thunderbird and an IMAP server at an ISP. My email address is on my own domain. If I want to make something available to others, I put it on Github, or an "outgoing" directory on my web site. Documents are edited with LibreOffice. Browsing is with Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on the phone. A few sites don't load properly, but they're marginal ones for which there are better alternatives. More often, the site loads but the ads don't, which is nice. I don't see many ads. It's just easier this way. The junk level is way down.
johnchristopher 8y ago
> I create new email addresses on Protonmail and Riseup.net (for work and personal email, respectively) [..] I wouldn't do that. Riseup is providing email on a very tight budget. They are activists and every free account they give out is using some precious resources. Unless you really need it for specific purposes I believe it's better to go to fastmail or protonmail for "general purposes" email needs.
CydeWeys 8y ago
Is trading Google cloud products for Apple cloud products really such a big change? I could see the truly privacy paranoid running away from all cloud services and running their own everything, but just switching cloud providers doesn't seem like a meaningful difference to me. OK, so now Apple has all of your data instead of Google. Either way it's in the hands of a big corporation, and by extension, the government.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  Google's core business is advertising, while Apple's core business is hardware. One has a much greater incentive to collect, store, and exploit users' data.
  - bitpush 8y ago
    and yet Apple comes up with some of the biggest privacy blunders in their offerings.
- athenot 8y ago
  Apple's business model relies first and foremost on selling hardware, not knowing as much as possible about you. Recently they realized they can turn this into a selling point, so they try to do more locally and NOT store your data server-side. Technically this is a lot more challenging but I appreciate the privacy aspect. Here's a paper they put out about how they handle learning from their users in aggregate without knowing anything about specific users—they call it differential privacy: https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/12/06/learning-with-privacy-at-scale.html https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/12/06/learning-with-p...
- 51lver 8y ago
  Apple has a phone number you can call and talk to someone who can actually fix your problems. Google does not. Wife's appleid got broken into last year and some stuff was purchased with funds in the account. One call, and we got our money back and the account all reset. After being the administrator of a google business account for a few years, I was astonished. I'm not really ok with how much information apple OR google has on their users, but I am absolutely sure that apple is doing a better job and is more trustworthy.
YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
I think we as a community need to embrace a more holistic approach to the problem of privacy. It's great that some of us can protect privacy by going crazy on each channel that leaks our personal data. But the remaining >7B people on the planet will still leak a lot of personal details, undermining their authority over their choices. If the data creep continues we'll one day find ourselves in a dystopia, and we'll be the people to blame. Much like the 2008 crisis is the fault of bankers because it was easiest for them to figure out that the human project is headed towards suffering.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
I am guessing that if she has already dropped Microsoft that is why she can't use Bing maps. Not as ubiquitous as Google Maps, or as featured as even Apple maps, but still ahead of Mapquest :-)
Spearchucker 8y ago
I get the world's Google dependency. I really do. I tried most of their mainstream services myself and they were indeed as good as I'd been told. But they're online only. And their Office apps tank next to Microsoft Office. And nothing I've seen matches the utility of Outlook. Besides, the prospect of transferring all my meticulously collected birthdays from Outlook to Gmail didn't float my boat at all. In the 00's I eventually switched from IE to Firefox, and have never tried Chrome. One employer used Gmail, and I happily used it whilst employed there, but that didn't do nearly enough to change my mind. And so I never did buy into Google like the linked article describes. To this day I cannot imagine a scenario in which I'd trust my world to a single vendor, in a single location. It's no surprise that the non-technical great unwashed don't think this way, but it surprises me that technically literate and able people do not care for reducing or eliminating the risk posed by depending on a single vendor for... everything. Especially given what we know about Google.
wishinghand 8y ago
A lot of commenters in here are saying "oh yeah, I've done something similar, not that hard/different." What they're glossing over is how the author also blocked all Google IPs, meaning that Google Cloud Platform is no longer available, along with assorted services. This means authentication like captchas, anything that uses maps besides Google's own offering (Lyft, Uber, Yelp, etc), and photos being hosted on their version of AWS S3 is included. There is a ton of web and data infrastructure being hosted/ran by Microsoft, Google, and Amazon that we often don't think about. The only big service provider I can think of besides those three is Digital Ocean, and it's not a 1:1 comparison, since they're more like infrastructure. *edit: Basically, if you find Amazon so abhorrent that you want to cut them out of your life, you can't unless you eschew huge swathes of the internet. Which might work for you. But think about that: they own the digital land under our feet.
- pbalau 8y ago
  jQuery foundation, nobody thinks about how much they might know about you...
charliebrownau 8y ago
Gday Platforms that censor speech List :- * Facebook * Twitter * Google * Youtube * TUMBLR * Pateron * Stripe * Paypal * Twitch * Spotify * Apple * pin interest * LinkedIn * Mailchimp * Wordpress * mastodon * azure * Mastercard * Godaddy * MEDIUM * Shopify * Cloudflare * pusher * WIKI * Reddit * teespring * Slack * coinbase * GOFUNDME * VISA * Square * Bitpay * ROKU
auct 8y ago
Turn off internet. Would be much easier xD
auslander 8y ago
Why the title was changed from article's one? Mods?
budadre75 8y ago
This non-tech person's attempt looks to me is futile, just switching from Google to Apple or other companies doesn't mean you won't be tracked. To me the best solution will be self-hosting cloud services for email, calendar, and using TomTom or Garmin GPS.

169 points by kaboro 8y ago

This is a whole series. She already did Amazon and Facebook: https://gizmodo.com/c/goodbye-big-five https://gizmodo.com/c/goodbye-big-five

mrweasel 8y ago
The Facebook one is weird. There are some strange thought processes going though her head, which she kinda acknowledges. Stuff like: > I have to admit that the enjoyment of a holiday dedicated to dressing up is somewhat degraded when not using Facebook’s apps.

kawfey 8y ago

Despite the tirade of anti-facebook/google/amazon blogs and posts in the last 5 years, I'm still not convinced that "being tracked" in my day-to-day life is a negative thing. I still don't perceive that my privacy is lost when I use those services. That information is shared with companies who use the data more-or-less responsibly with respect to my life. Personally I prefer having a majority of my internet experience centralized in one place. Calendar, Email, files, maps, news, search, entertainment, etc. This saves a lot of time and effort in my life. Is it worth it?

lostcolony 8y ago
Until they don't. Just because you don't balk at the current usage (that you know of), doesn't mean they aren't, or won't, do something you won't balk at. Anything learned can't be unlearned, and so by definition you've allowed them collect any data they are able to, and to do anything they wish with the data they collect.
slenk 8y ago
My only fear with having everything centralized is that Google can decide you did something wrong and cut you out of so many important things in your life, without recourse. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989146 is just one example I found with minimal searching.
- fencepost 8y ago
  You might also enjoy Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled": https://craphound.com/scroogled.html https://craphound.com/scroogled.html Though for whatever reason the formatting on that appears terrible (to me in my uMatrix locked down Firefox)
  - fxfan 8y ago
    I had a nice umatrix config saved to the cloud but it got deleted somewhere in the last one year (I had to temporarily switch to chrome). Did that happen to you too?
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
I was tracked by an abusive ex for months via my Google account. Location history allowed them to show up at places they knew I would be at, and they had access to my email and who knows what else before I figured out what they were doing. If you're a dissident, a journalist[1] or a political party member[2], there are powerful people who might want to track or silence you. If you're the wrong type of minority in the wrong place at the wrong time, there are people who might want to put you in camps[3] or murder you[4]. A KGB-style surveillance apparatus that's used to better target ads can be abused by anyone with an agenda, no matter how petty their motivation is. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/01/2017-was-the-most-dangerous-year-ever-for-journalists-2018-might-be-even-worse/?utm_term=.8e808c2ab5da https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/01... [2] https://qz.com/1089384/the-communist-app-store-chinas-endless-apps-for-tracking-organizing-and-motivating-party-members/ https://qz.com/1089384/the-communist-app-store-chinas-endles... [3] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-... [4] http://time.com/chechnya-movsar/ http://time.com/chechnya-movsar/
- filoleg 8y ago
  How is it Google's fault that someone else had access to your account and (for all intents and purposes) impersonated you? If someone gets access to any of your important accounts on your behalf (which would include your primary email), you will have a lot of opportunities to get screwed over. Email access alone can be enough, in a lot of cases.
  - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    > How is it Google's fault that someone else had access to your account Please don't strawman my anecdote. I never said it was Google's fault. However, I did say that Google's surveillance system enabled a level of stalking that's never been this accessible to laymen and nation-states alike.
    - sridca 8y ago
      > I did say that Google's surveillance system enabled a level of stalking *Google's surveillance system in conjunction with irresponsibly giving one's account login to one's ex Fixed that for you.
bobthepanda 8y ago
They use it responsibly now, but that assumes they’ll always use it responsibly. And what happens in the worst case scenario, when some actor takes over who may not care for laws and constitutions?
icebraining 8y ago
Hence the GDPR: it's perfectly fine to track your every move as long as they get explicit, opt-in consent for doing so.
megaman8 8y ago
So far they haven't really done much wrong. But, the problem is, the potential for wrong doing is so enormous. Google has so much power to control the fate of every business on this planet: I think this is just begging for abuse. It's remarkable that they've gone this long without any more serious scandals.
sridca 8y ago
> Despite the tirade of anti-facebook/google/amazon blogs and posts in the last 5 years, I'm still not convinced that "being tracked" in my day-to-day life is a negative thing I made a similar observation before, and despite reasonable points raised I was downvoted to oblivion both here and at lobste.rs. It is one of those things you can't say[1] here. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
luord 8y ago
Well I'm not sure this mentality won't have consequences, I find myself doing what you do. Not precisely because of trust or because I think they're well behaved but simply because I don't care about the tracking and, while I'm not certain, I do hope nothing bad comes of it. In fact, I actually bought the pixel 3 just two weeks ago. It's nice.

polskibus 8y ago

Great experiment. It really shows how badly we are dependent on Google. Everything relies on it, seems like it would be best if it was regulated as a public utility, enjoying monopoly but also having to serve the public good also when it doesn't necessarily align with its commercial interest (like in EU energy companies have to give you a link to the grid). It also shows that it doesn't have real competitors, being so broad in scope and having all that data before others did.

fixermark 8y ago
Part of the challenge there is it's bigger than a public utility. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the US nationalizes it. That leaves EU, Australian, Canadian, &c Google customers out in the cold---it's unlikely either the US or those other countries will be comfortable with continued service by a national utility to customers outside that nation. Perhaps some kind of subsidiary model could be constructed, but the details of how are non-trivial.
- polskibus 8y ago
  We could make it more like NATO?

tivert 8y ago

> There’s no way I can delete my Gmail accounts completely as I did with Facebook. First off, it would be a huge security mistake; freeing up my email address for someone else to claim is just asking to be hacked. Does Google really free up your email address for re-allocation when you delete your account? I do recall that was in issue at one point with Yahoo Mail. No email provider should allow the reassignment of previously used email addresses for precisely this reason.

kyrra 8y ago
I believe Google never garbage collects deleted @gmail.com usernames. According to [0]: "Your Gmail address can’t be used by anyone else in the future." [0] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/61177?hl=en&topic=2382753&ctx=topic https://support.google.com/mail/answer/61177?hl=en&topic=238...
- puzzle 8y ago
  Security was the main reason why, when I asked years ago.
- xingped 8y ago
  This used to be possible. I know because I once deleted my email and then realized I missed something I needed to transfer, so just re-created my email again to receive that email.
  - kyrra 8y ago
    How long between deleted and re-opening? The support page I linked talks about being able to restore a deleted account within some period of time.
- rgovostes 8y ago
  Maybe this is true today. But as the grandparent pointed out, Yahoo did release unused usernames back in 2013. Who is to say that Google won't decide to do that some day? https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26/yahoo-releases-recycled-usernames-to-those-who-sent-in-requests-lets-you-stalk-your-own-for-1-99/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26/yahoo-releases-recycled-us...

kradeelav 8y ago

I feel like this comes from a good place, but a lot of it seems self-inflicted and/or over-dramatized. Most privacy-conscious folks have been saying from day one that smartphones and smart-homes are a bad idea in that regard. Dumb-phones exist. Printing directions out is ... not that hard. Etc. Overall, though, I am glad this is becoming more of a thing in terms of mass appeal. Hopefully the pendulum will swing the other way to a greater awareness of shiny-new-tech-that-comes-with-strings.

kodablah 8y ago
> I feel like this comes from a good place, but a lot of it seems self-inflicted and/or over-dramatized. Agreed, and too absolutist. You can take a reasonable stance without upending your life. So you can't get away from maps integration in apps, that's ok, still using the competition helps. Same with browser choice and others. I can decry all the plastic waste and still type on a keyboard with plastic parts.
- m4x 8y ago
  Taking an absolutist stance is the point of the authors experiment. You wouldn't do this in practice if you were just trying to improve your privacy, but in an experiment to see just how far Google's reach extends it makes sense to block everything and see what unexpected 3rd party services also fail - such as Uber or Dropbox

neurobashing 8y ago

I am the only person on Earth, I think, that has had 0 problems with Apple Maps (at least, in the past year). I have never aimed for Cleveland and ended up in the Atlantic; and I've never been late or gotten lost. I think I've disagreed with its shortcuts once or twice. Not denying your bad Apple Maps experience - just, I have no idea why mine is so trouble-free because so many have bad ones. (For calibration, I live in NoVA)

mereel 8y ago
Same for me and I've used Apple Maps all over the US. Although there have been instances of Google Maps finding something Apple Maps couldn't, I've never actually gotten wrong directions.
NikolaNovak 8y ago
You might be! Occasionally I'll rent a car that only has Apple's Car Play and have to use my work iPhone to navigate (gawd forbid Apple would let us use Google Maps on Car Play;). My experience has been universally poor: - it provides no instructions for major actual intersections. It thinks you're staying on same main road even when there's a confusing Y in front of the driver. I have constant moments of panic when I see the intersection coming and no help from the maps. - It provides confusing instructions on straight roads ("Turn right in 100 meters" when there's a stretch of straight road) - It'll reference names for a road that are nowhere near what any of the signs indicate - "Keep in right three lanes to stay on the road" - when the rightmost lane is actually a turning lane - Something that is admittedly tricky, it struggles to provide useful instructions on more than four-way roads (e.g. if it's a 5-way or 6-way, "Turn right" has multiple interpretations). It doesn't use, at least not in my cases "bear right" or "slight right" or similar vs "turn right" or "acute right" or "sharp right" - and again, it gets the road names wrong. - When Searching: * it'll show me Bedford England 5000km away, but not Bedford NS 12km away * It has some weird internal naming so searching for actual address will again not lead me anywhere near to what I want Basically it's been a constant source of frustration beyond what I believe could reasonably be attributed to my inexperience with its UI :-/ EDIT/UPDATE: Thx for feedback; my work phone is on iOS 11, good to know that (*recently, after 4 years without it) CarPlay now supports other maps; note that I don't think it in any way makes Apple Maps experience itself any better 0:-)

bpicolo 8y ago

> “Your smart home pings Google at the same time every hour in order to determine whether or not it’s connected to the internet,” Dhruv tells me. “Which is funny to me because these devices’ engineers decided to determine connectivity to the entire internet based on the uptime of a single company. It’s a good metaphor for how far the internet has strayed from its original promise to decentralize control.” The alternative is effectively DDoSing random websites from 100 million devices, which is definitively an uncool move.

jm_l 8y ago
The requests wouldn't be synchronized, so probably wouldn't cause a DoS
- bpicolo 8y ago
  Once an hour means they're doing ~30k qps if they have 100 million devices (and traffic is well-distributed, which admittedly is pretty easy to do), though 100 million is potentially an overestimate. Point is, you can't just fire that traffic into the nether / to domains you don't control from IoT devices. Those providers will happily cut off your automated traffic.
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    > Point is, you can't just fire that traffic into the nether / to domains you don't control from IoT devices. Those providers will happily cut off your automated traffic. Which reminds me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911501 TP-Link firmware sends six DNS requests and one NTP query every 5 seconds https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/tplink-aggressive-ntp https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/tplink-aggressive-ntp
- puzzle 8y ago
  Even if they don't start synchronized, something as simple as a hiccup on the receiving side of all such pings would make them more and more synchronized over time. Such is the life of anyone operating large sites.

Slippery_John 8y ago

I've taken similar steps, though have not gone so far as to set up a vpn block to all google ips. I do have as much fingerprinting and privacy protection as possible enabled in Firefox though. I find the worst experience is captcha, it will no longer give me free passes and I regularly have to sit there for several minutes providing training data that they reject. It's to the point where I just avoid sites that require it. Newegg is a particularly egregious offender as they seem to require a very high degree of certainty.

ggpsv 8y ago
What set up are you using in Firefox for fingerprint and privacy protection?
- fencepost 8y ago
  (not the GP) For blocking I'm using uMatrix, plus uBlock Origin and Ghostery. There's a lot of overlap and it might not be the most efficient, but there are reasons. This is fine for sites that I'm on regularly, but is annoying for one-offs. I actually flip to Chrome with only uBlock Origin for some purchases and for some specific websites that work better there (like GMail), though I could probably use the Firefox beta channel builds as a non-locked-down browser for that. uMatrix generally blocks third-party items, though it defaults to allowing CSS and images from anywhere and I haven't changed that. uBlock Origin provides list-based blocking instead and is a failover if I give up and temporarily turn off uMatrix for a site. Ghostery is useful for a quick reference of why various things are blocked in terms of website categories (trackers, discussion, ads, etc.). I'm also using DeCentralEyes, which provides locally-injected versions of a lot of CDN-based resources.
- Slippery_John 8y ago
  Extensions: uBlock, Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes, DDG Privacy Essentials, HTTPS Everywhere, and most importantly Containers I try to keep as many sites as possible into relevant containers. Facebook and Google get their own containers just for them (there are additional addons which will handle this for you as getting all of Google siloed off is cumbersome otherwise). I also make use of the built in tracker blocking, blocking all third party cookie use entirely. There's also an option to resist fingerprinting that I enable, which does a ton of things [1] [1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting

pleasecalllater 8y ago

... except that Google still has most of my emails as people who send me them or whom I send to are using Gmail...

dylan604 8y ago
This. Same with Facebook. Even if I choose to not use a particular service, these services still know about me because so many other people I interact with do use these services. I get that as a Gmail user, you've agreed to allow them to read emails for whatever they choose. However, I did not. If I hit reply to a Gmail account, I'm not agreeing to the ToS. Just because I visit a site that has chosen to use G*/FB does not mean that I agree to the ToS. A website's cookie notices give me the option to leave if I don't agree, but by then, all of the tracking has already started without my agreement.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jm_l 8y ago

Worth noting that by blocking all Google IPs, the author is not only cutting out Google services, but also any other application that relies on Google services. For example, there's a bit in there about not being able to use Dropbox because it uses Captcha.

jplayer01 8y ago
Or an alarming amount of sites completely unrelated to Google that use Google captchas.
auslander 8y ago
Google fonts are used by all websites. And from Referrer header, Google has your browsing history.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Google also hosts a plethora of standard JS libraries. I wonder how many web pages fail to work with their JS at all if you block Google?
- extra88 8y ago
  Google font logs are not dumped into their analytics and they take a number of steps that greatly reduce requests made for fonts in the first place. https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_...
  - auslander 8y ago
    There is no mention of which browser they refer to. I don't use Chrome, and I see requests to fonts on every website. And requests do contain Referer (what I browse) and, of course, my IP. And in Private browsing, no caches should be saved anyway.
    - extra88 8y ago

aboutruby 8y ago

> Next up: Microsoft. That will be pretty easy. Only thing I used of Microsoft website for is to get .NET for a one-off project that required it.

detaro 8y ago
Random stuff you don't know about might be on Azure. But yes, their general services reach is probably lower.
- aboutruby 8y ago
  It seems like it's mostly used by large corporations for intranets. Ebay, EasyJet and maybe Samsung are most likely to be the ones internet users would encounter. [0]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/case-studies https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/case-studies [1]: https://www.quora.com/What-are-publicly-known-biggest-customers-of-the-Microsoft-Azure-Platform https://www.quora.com/What-are-publicly-known-biggest-custom...
icebraining 8y ago
And you never use GitHub either? Don't forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- extra88 8y ago
  Yes, and that will include static sites hosted on GitHub Pages. Avoiding Microsoft is often a problem when exchange documents with someone and the files don't work well with whatever not-Office you choose (Apple Page/Numbers/Keynote, LibreOffice, etc.). I wonder if they can even attempt to block receiving or placing phone calls from/to a number with Skype on the other end.
- aboutruby 8y ago
  Thanks for reminding me of this tragedy :(

xamlhacker 8y ago

For maps, I use HERE maps on Android and it works great. Offline capability is particularly good. I am not sure if it is available on iOS.

fencepost 8y ago

For maps, I'd add Here (https://wego.here.com/ https://wego.here.com/) to the Apple Maps and Mapquest options she chose. It's the mapping solution that Microsoft got from Nokia, and is used by a lot of in-car navigation systems IIRC. It suffers by comparison to Google Maps mostly in the lack of integration with the full database of businesses/reviews/etc. though I think it probably has most of the business listings. I suspect its traffic info is weaker as well, though I haven't really checked.

Klonoar 8y ago

So much of this is overblown... and I say this as someone who goes out of their way to avoid using Amazon/Google/etc for privacy reasons. The biggest problem with debating privacy and security these days is the sheer paranoia running rampant from people who don't understand the workings behind the scenes, coupled with the people behind the scenes assuming defensive tones from the get-go whenever stuff is brought up.

faitswulff 8y ago

Anyone know why she chose RiseUp.net for personal email?

Animats 8y ago

I've pretty much run in that mode for years. No big problems. With Ghostery and Privacy Badger turned up to high, and third party cookies blocked, Google doesn't get much through. My phone, a ruggedized Android model from Caterpillar Tractor, has no Google apps other than the Google Play Services middleware. I've never had Facebook on a phone. Mail is on Thunderbird and an IMAP server at an ISP. My email address is on my own domain. If I want to make something available to others, I put it on Github, or an "outgoing" directory on my web site. Documents are edited with LibreOffice. Browsing is with Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on the phone. A few sites don't load properly, but they're marginal ones for which there are better alternatives. More often, the site loads but the ads don't, which is nice. I don't see many ads. It's just easier this way. The junk level is way down.

johnchristopher 8y ago

> I create new email addresses on Protonmail and Riseup.net (for work and personal email, respectively) [..] I wouldn't do that. Riseup is providing email on a very tight budget. They are activists and every free account they give out is using some precious resources. Unless you really need it for specific purposes I believe it's better to go to fastmail or protonmail for "general purposes" email needs.

CydeWeys 8y ago

Is trading Google cloud products for Apple cloud products really such a big change? I could see the truly privacy paranoid running away from all cloud services and running their own everything, but just switching cloud providers doesn't seem like a meaningful difference to me. OK, so now Apple has all of your data instead of Google. Either way it's in the hands of a big corporation, and by extension, the government.

bootlooped 8y ago
Google's core business is advertising, while Apple's core business is hardware. One has a much greater incentive to collect, store, and exploit users' data.
- bitpush 8y ago
  and yet Apple comes up with some of the biggest privacy blunders in their offerings.
athenot 8y ago
Apple's business model relies first and foremost on selling hardware, not knowing as much as possible about you. Recently they realized they can turn this into a selling point, so they try to do more locally and NOT store your data server-side. Technically this is a lot more challenging but I appreciate the privacy aspect. Here's a paper they put out about how they handle learning from their users in aggregate without knowing anything about specific users—they call it differential privacy: https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/12/06/learning-with-privacy-at-scale.html https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/12/06/learning-with-p...
51lver 8y ago
Apple has a phone number you can call and talk to someone who can actually fix your problems. Google does not. Wife's appleid got broken into last year and some stuff was purchased with funds in the account. One call, and we got our money back and the account all reset. After being the administrator of a google business account for a few years, I was astonished. I'm not really ok with how much information apple OR google has on their users, but I am absolutely sure that apple is doing a better job and is more trustworthy.

YjSe2GMQ 8y ago

I think we as a community need to embrace a more holistic approach to the problem of privacy. It's great that some of us can protect privacy by going crazy on each channel that leaks our personal data. But the remaining >7B people on the planet will still leak a lot of personal details, undermining their authority over their choices. If the data creep continues we'll one day find ourselves in a dystopia, and we'll be the people to blame. Much like the 2008 crisis is the fault of bankers because it was easiest for them to figure out that the human project is headed towards suffering.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

I am guessing that if she has already dropped Microsoft that is why she can't use Bing maps. Not as ubiquitous as Google Maps, or as featured as even Apple maps, but still ahead of Mapquest :-)

Spearchucker 8y ago

I get the world's Google dependency. I really do. I tried most of their mainstream services myself and they were indeed as good as I'd been told. But they're online only. And their Office apps tank next to Microsoft Office. And nothing I've seen matches the utility of Outlook. Besides, the prospect of transferring all my meticulously collected birthdays from Outlook to Gmail didn't float my boat at all. In the 00's I eventually switched from IE to Firefox, and have never tried Chrome. One employer used Gmail, and I happily used it whilst employed there, but that didn't do nearly enough to change my mind. And so I never did buy into Google like the linked article describes. To this day I cannot imagine a scenario in which I'd trust my world to a single vendor, in a single location. It's no surprise that the non-technical great unwashed don't think this way, but it surprises me that technically literate and able people do not care for reducing or eliminating the risk posed by depending on a single vendor for... everything. Especially given what we know about Google.

wishinghand 8y ago

A lot of commenters in here are saying "oh yeah, I've done something similar, not that hard/different." What they're glossing over is how the author also blocked all Google IPs, meaning that Google Cloud Platform is no longer available, along with assorted services. This means authentication like captchas, anything that uses maps besides Google's own offering (Lyft, Uber, Yelp, etc), and photos being hosted on their version of AWS S3 is included. There is a ton of web and data infrastructure being hosted/ran by Microsoft, Google, and Amazon that we often don't think about. The only big service provider I can think of besides those three is Digital Ocean, and it's not a 1:1 comparison, since they're more like infrastructure. *edit: Basically, if you find Amazon so abhorrent that you want to cut them out of your life, you can't unless you eschew huge swathes of the internet. Which might work for you. But think about that: they own the digital land under our feet.

pbalau 8y ago
jQuery foundation, nobody thinks about how much they might know about you...

charliebrownau 8y ago

Gday Platforms that censor speech List :- * Facebook * Twitter * Google * Youtube * TUMBLR * Pateron * Stripe * Paypal * Twitch * Spotify * Apple * pin interest * LinkedIn * Mailchimp * Wordpress * mastodon * azure * Mastercard * Godaddy * MEDIUM * Shopify * Cloudflare * pusher * WIKI * Reddit * teespring * Slack * coinbase * GOFUNDME * VISA * Square * Bitpay * ROKU

auct 8y ago

Turn off internet. Would be much easier xD

auslander 8y ago

Why the title was changed from article's one? Mods?

budadre75 8y ago

This non-tech person's attempt looks to me is futile, just switching from Google to Apple or other companies doesn't mean you won't be tracked. To me the best solution will be self-hosting cloud services for email, calendar, and using TomTom or Garmin GPS.