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The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoSo what's the action items? How do we identify apps that include that Yandex SDK (apart, obviously, from those that have Yandex in their name)? How can we block sending any data to Yandex or to Ruzzia in general?
- lfmunoz4 3y ago[dead]
- gumballindie 3y agoFunny how news loves to refer to russian companies as "giants". Russian oil "giant", search "giant", etc. Just an amusing fact.
- kkfdkerpoe 3y agoYes, lots of giants for a country with GDP lower than that of Italy. Perhaps they refer to the bellies of the oligarchy that owns the companies.
- gumballindie 3y agoA GPD lower than that of Italy? Here's something better: per capita is lower than that of Bulgaria's. Perhaps Putin's plan is to lower the country's population to increase the per capita ratio?
- orangepurple 3y agoSpeculation: Putin's plan is definitely not to lower the population. His people need young men to wage war against the West.
- malaya_zemlya 3y agoIs that surprising for a resource oriented economy? Aramco (Saudi Oil) is the second biggest company in the world, yet GDP of Saudi Arabia is about that of Poland
- sgt 3y agoI think the frequent comparisons of GDP leads the West to heavily underestimate Russia. While GDP may be lower than Italy and per capita is weak, a nation like Russia can probably accomplish an order of magnitude more large scale projects, and also sustain a certain economy climate for much much longer than we think. So don't underestimate Russia, even though we'd like to think they're soon running out of steam to continue the war in Ukraine.
- mcpackieh 3y agoOn the other side of the comparison, I think Italy is a lot more capable than many people give them credit for, so the comparison is not quite as damning as it may first seem. On just one axis of consideration, Italy has a blue water navy with power projection capabilities roughly similar to Russia and India, surpassed only by the United States, the UK and France. I think Italy also ranks higher than most anglosphere laypeople would estimate in terms of GDP and scientific output, although this is hard to pin down since I'm talking about layperson perception. Basically, I think Italy is more relevant and capable than people generally give it credit for.
- sgt 3y agoFair enough, Italy is actually known for science and entrepreneurship. People forget that.
- VancouverMan 3y agoGDP seems like a very questionable, and likely misleading, measure to me, even for Western nations. For example, Canada's inflation-adjusted per-capita GDP has supposedly increased over time, yet for many Canadians, the standard of living is now noticeably lower than it was (or would have likely been) two or three decades ago. In terms of production, Canadian businesses and governments generally don't seem to have become more capable and productive, and actually seem to struggle now with the sorts of fundamental work that they managed to pull off in the past. Many common services and products are noticeably worse now than in the past, in terms of cost, quality, reliability, delivery time, and so forth. GDP is a metric that I can't trust.
- veave 3y agoAnd lobbyists are not lobbyists, they are oligarchs.
- sdfghswe 3y ago> And lobbyists are not lobbyists, they are oligarchs. ??? No, this is nonsense. The normal meaning of the word "lobbyist" is an _employee_ who uses political connections to push corporate interests. The normal meaning of the word "oligarch" is someone with large wealth. These two are not similar at all. So the phrase you're looking for is probably "And billionaires are not billionaires, they're oligarchs".
- Dah00n 3y ago1. a ruler in an oligarchy. 2. a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (particularly with reference to individuals who benefited from the privatization of state-run industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union).
- orangepurple 3y agoLobbyists are not oligarchs. They are middlemen and facilitators of corruption and bribery that provide plausible deniability.
- pavlov 3y agoThey are giants in the local market, one where making it big practically requires support from the highest level of government. So “Russian [x] giant” really means “Putin’s favored [x] company”.
- tasogare 3y agoSo quite similar to the US where oligarchs (oups, billionaires) are invited at the White House and companies provide algorithmic censorship favoring a particular political camp (obvious with Twitter before its recent purchase, YouTube actions against public free discourse on covid, Google removing pages related to a certain laptop, etc.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- boeingUH60 3y agoThey are giants as far as Russia is concerned...Yandex is the biggest tech company there. Gazprom is a Russian gas giant, Rosneft is an oil giant, etc..
- gumballindie 3y agoYeah but that term is just you know comical. “Giants”. As if meant to inflate one’s ego, cover insecurity, and project power, like those tom and jerry cartoon episodes where they’d call in their giant friends to save the day. It amuses me every time.
- tenpies 3y agoAlso Western billionaire versus Russian oligarch - even if the source of wealth is virtually identical and their political power probably higher in the West.
- sidibe 3y agoI do think they don't use oligarch for all Russian billionaires. For example it isn't used for Tinkov or Durov. In 90s-00s there really were oligarchs, now they use it for the ones that are or were maybe affiliated with government, like the childhood friends of Putin or former KGB/St Petersburg mayor's office employees who all happen to be CEOs of huge companies
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoI've heard successive stories of oligarchs getting shaken down for money or outright purged by Putin that I don't think Russia is an oligarchy. That implies some collective decision making. The Ukraine war is madness and reflects a ruler with absolute power.
- boeingUH60 3y ago"Oligarchs" refer to underground Russian businessmen that cheaply bought up state assets after the USSR collapsed and sold it for exceedingly higher sums later. It's a blasphemy to capitalism to conflate those bandits with Western entrepreneurs that founded and built their own companies from scratch, even though they have their own set of issues.
- Dah00n 3y agoIs it really? I'm positive most would very likely do the same if (when) they get a chance at a collapse.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoThey would but they didn't. It's not about intentions.
- malaya_zemlya 3y agoIt's all relative. By western standards, Yandex is a mid-cap company, but whereas US has FAANG+, Russia has just Yandex and maybe VK/Mail.ru
- HPsquared 3y agoIt's a bit like how republicans always "pounce" and "seize".
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoTotally agree, has google ever been referred to as American giant Google I wonder. My search threw up a few.
- poppytaker 3y ago[dead]
- doubelstandard 3y ago[flagged]
- VincentEvans 3y agoAs russian, when I encounter people comparing the state of media in Russia to the worst excesses of government influence in media in US like they are comparable - I think to myself “what a bunch of fucking idiots”. It’s the same ignorant halfwit crowd that compares minor inconvenience to Holocaust, having to follow an HOA rule to Stalin’s repressions, and anyone telling them what they don’t like to Hitler. I live in US now and I complain periodically about various imperfect, unfair, annoying things that are associated with any society. Humans suck. They are selfish and dishonest in large proportions, some of the time. But what is happening right now in Russia has brought back into focus for me and reminded me just how much better the West is. Fucking treasure it while you have it.
- doubelstandard 3y ago[flagged]
- dep_b 3y agoHe's rude but right though. Nothing in the West is even closely comparable to what is happening to Russia nowadays let alone the First and Second World War. People that say the West is about as bad as Russia really don't have any sense of what is really going on in the world and really can be defined as "idiots" in the context of this discussion. A person actually from Russia that also lived in the West usually has a bit better perspective on these matters.
- doubelstandard 3y ago[flagged]
- doubelstandard 3y ago[flagged]
- doubelstandard 3y agoRussia: tight control of user data US and EU: guaranteeing user privacy
- bigbacaloa 3y ago[flagged]
- azangru 3y agoAnother example of political language from the article, in addition to what was described in a sibling comment: > Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow? Not "at a time when the UK considers Russia as an enemy". There is something of a Russell conjugation here.
- 7moritz7 3y agoMakes a big difference. Truly.
- RugnirViking 3y agoin this case it just makes sense to write it that way though? leading you to consider, primarily, that the russians might try to do something with the information, rather than an abstract "we think they're probably bad". Like sure its leading you but imo its leading you to consider the actual issue rather than unrelated questions
- azangru 3y ago> rather than an abstract "we think they're probably bad". I think this is the inflection they actually used when they talked about Huawei routers.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago>Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow? Depends how good the search is. Google doesn’t seem to want to provide me proper results anymore, even very basic image search tasks on google now net you only about 20 results all of which are wrong or useless. Yandex image search actually works. If you don’t want me to use the Russian tech that helps me get my job done then roll back the Google Search codebase 10 years to when it worked as well as Yandex does today. (Only partially joking)
- GaggiX 3y agoThe thing I found ridiculous about Google today is the image reverse search, unusable, but I have an extension to use the previous one before Google Lens was a thing.
- Alifatisk 3y agoWhat’s the name of the extension? Didn’t know you could use the old Google images.
- dessant 3y agoThe classic reverse image search results from Google will not be around for much longer, I've been getting reports about my browser extension no longer working with Google Images in some regions. Yandex Images also possibly going away or becoming heavily censored is also an issue for journalists and researchers, since it is the best performing publicly available reverse image search engine.
- secondary_op 3y ago> jdangu > co-founder Confiant > Kaileigh McCrea, Privacy Engineer > jdangu on Aug 4, 2015 > We (ClarityAd) do this for major ad platforms. We use a mix of static and dynamic analysis to assess risk. Fuck off. And since you here, you might tell us all how much you get incentive by aligning with U.S. owned Ad platforms, that also align with U.S. national interest to smear foreign tech giant Ad business?
- mrguyorama 3y agoFour month old account who's only submissions are explicitly Russian propaganda aligned...
- throw-ru-938 3y agoContext: Yandex is in the news right now because a couple of days ago its cofounder and former CEO Arkady Volozh was caught trying to hide his Russian past [0], and today he finally issued a public statement condemning the war [1], almost 1.5 years after the full-scale invasion began. [0] https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2023-08-07/co-founder-of-yandex-erases-russia-from-his-biography-and-reflects-on-kazakhstan/ https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2023-08-07/co-founder-of-yandex-e... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-yandex-volozh/yandex-co-founder-volozh-slams-russias-barbaric-invasion-of-ukraine-idINR4N36T02J https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-yandex-volozh...
- secondary_op 3y ago[flagged]
- londons_explore 3y ago> today he finally issued a public statement condemning the war Would you issue such a statement in his position? Think carefully. If you don't, you will probably have twitter brigades trying to smear your name. If you do, your family back home might be at risk, and you will probably never be able to visit them again. Personally, I cannot in good faith demand anyone condemn the war, if to do so, they are putting family and friends freedoms at risk.
- azangru 3y ago> If you don't, you will probably have twitter brigades trying to smear your name. Do Twitter crowds actually do that? Do they keep track of anyone more or less prominent, and write in their comments "Have you spoken out against the war yet?" "I haven't seen you denounce the war"?
- londons_explore 3y agoIt mostly happens via private messaging, but yes. It's part of the "you are either with us or against us" mentality of many campaign groups. See ~2 years ago when every opensource project was forced to publish a code of conduct and diversity and inclusion policy... Often the people asking for the policies weren't even users of the software involved, let alone interested in writing code for the proect. That campaign seems to have ended, and nobody cares if your project has either anymore.
- martinsnow 3y agoMany of the images seems to be broken in the article for me.
- DoItToMe81 3y agoA tech company has ties to its native government and uses user data for its own corrupt ends? Shock of the century.
- DeathArrow 3y ago> Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow? I think I am safer with Russian govt having access to my data vs my local govt having access to my data.
- dotcoma 3y agoThey are not worried about what the Russian government can do to you; they are worried about what they can do to them, to your own government.
- undefinedland 3y agoThey are worried that their populations might work out that Western populations are kept enthralled to the US security state and rebel. Russia is bad but US blows up gas pipeline for democracy and freedom. Now hand over $800 billion dollars for 'defense'. And $368 billion for AUKUS. And the European bill will be interesting to watch over the next few years. Just don't think about that F word - fascism.
- batter 3y agoThose who are reluctant to feed their own army shall feed a foreign army.
- mcpackieh 3y agoSomething to consider: Your local government might need a warrant to spy on you, but they don't need a warrant to spy on Russia and they can get data about you like that.
- Dah00n 3y ago>what I’ve found is both fascinating and deeply unsettling. I see nothing unsettling, unless one considers Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple.... unsettling too (which I do, but then I don't act surprised and unsettled by a non-US company doing what everyone else is doing).
- bionhoward 3y agoGreat content. Just some feedback for the webmaster: it’s annoying when you scroll up one line of text and the header nav inserts itself into your view frame on mobile. I wish the header nav was not sticky / popup!
- denton-scratch 3y ago> but they’re still going to be very unique and therefore uniquely identifying (likely more so than before because of the entropy the hashing algorithm adds). Surely hashing something can't add entropy? Assuming the hash output is smaller than its input, in the general case I'd expect the hash to have less entropy than its input.
- beardyw 3y agoUse of SSID seems odd. That can be changed any time. MAC address is rarely changeable on WiFi (regularly changes on your phone).
- tuukkah 3y agoThe name of the Yandex taxi service that shares data with Russian FSB is Yango: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yango_(ride_sharing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yango_(ride_sharing) In EU, it's registered in Amsterdam so the responsible authority is Dutch data protection authority, who should force the service to shut down.
- whimsicalism 3y agoI feel like this whole neo-cold war against China & Russia was never put up for a vote. Where can I vote against it? Please, let's all just get rich together. Governments democratize over time - the UK wasn't a democracy when it started out but over 1000 years of governance transitioned into being one. I suspect it will be much faster nowadays, but in the meantime - please no war.
- hunters_laptop 3y ago[flagged]
- NelsonMinar 3y agoFolks are focussing on the Russian part of this. But Yandex just happens to be the one whose source code got analyzed; you can safely substitute "Google" or "Facebook" or any of the other various behavior advertising companies here. They're all doing similar things and it's terrific to have such a detailed analysis of how it works. Wired has a good summary if you want something more like a mainstream press article: https://www.wired.com/story/yandex-leaks-crypta-ads/ https://www.wired.com/story/yandex-leaks-crypta-ads/
- darthrupert 3y agoOf course we are focusing on the Russian part. Russia has made themselves the enemy of the west, so their spying is several factors more serious case than just a simple violation of privacy.
- andreygrehov 3y ago> Russia has made themselves the enemy of the west Well, either that or the west has decided that Russia is the enemy. I honestly don't buy the saying "Russia has made themselves the enemy of the west". Why would anybody want to be the enemy of the global superpower?
- qingcharles 3y agoWhy would any sane person want to be an enemy of the West?
- pphysch 3y agoIMHO it is only appropriate to call someone "insane" after genuinely trying to understand their actions and motivations.
- cynicalsecurity 3y agoGo try to genuinely understand the actions and motivations of Nazi Germans. Good luck, mate.
- tri5635hhfgvv5r 3y ago[flagged]
- darthrupert 3y agoI would also be quite worried of Telegram, with their lack of default encryption, and a bit suspicious unblocking in Russia in 2020[0]. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/telegram-russia-ban-lift-messaging-app-encryption-download-a9573181.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/telegram-russia-ban-lift-...
- jdangu 3y agoSince this is taking off, Confiant is hiring in engineering and security to work alongside Kaileigh on projects like this. jerome at confiant. Pardon the plug.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoKind of funny to see how quickly authoritarianism can destroy something that was profitable and usable. I used to use the image search sometimes when google was failing miserably and it worked pretty well. I'm afraid to visit there now as it's not unlikely they could inject a virus into your system.