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Google’s Surveillance: The Shocking Truth – Simplified Privacy

19 points by janandonly 3y ago

tantalor 3y ago
Reads like an ad for their phone: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/degoogledphoneinfo/ https://simplifiedprivacy.com/degoogledphoneinfo/
- yashasolutions 3y ago
  it is just a regular phone with GrapheneOS [1], anyone can install it by themselves. They just provide a convenient way to get one. 1: https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/
vxNsr 3y ago
seems to be down, here's the archive: https://archive.ph/L2cHM https://archive.ph/L2cHM
gruez 3y ago
While the claim of google being a privacy nightmare is broadly correct, the page is full of incorrect/misleading claims and half-truths. Here are the issues I can find with the first 5 claims: >2) Reading all your emails. Even if you don’t use Gmail directly, but you’re sending email to someone who does. [5] [6] Didn't they say they stopped scanning emails for advertising purposes? I guess it's technically true that they still scan for anti-spam purposes, but even privacy-minded email providers like protonmail do that. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/23/15862492/google-gmail-advertising-targeting-privacy-cloud-business https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/23/15862492/google-gmail-adv... >3) Saving all your web traffic if the website uses Google Ads, Captchas, or Analytics This is misleading because "your web traffic" implies all the content that's on the page or you submit. Google is getting all the urls of the pages you visit, but I highly doubt they're exfiltrating page content or form submissions. >4) Everything you do in Google’s Chrome Browser is recorded, including even how long you are idle on a page. [7] [8] Isn't "everything you do" in firefox recorded as well, through browser history? floc just provides a way to report that to sites in the form of cohort categories. I'd prefer if my browser didn't report my interests to whatever site I visit, but "everything do [...] is recorded" is a terrible way of describing the issue. Also, I can't find anything supporting the claim of "including even how long you are idle on a page" in the eff link, and the other link is broken. >Even if you turn location features off [...], it still saves your location via Wifi triangulation, which is the process of pinging nearby This claim is not supported by the sources cited, and is explicitly denied by google. https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwhen-location-is-off https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281?hl=en#zipp... >[...] or set the phone to airplane mode Is this an issue? It's called "airplane mode", not "privacy mode". If you want to turn off location services, turn off location services. >Wifi triangulation can figure out your real location, even if you have a fake IP address from a VPN. [14] Well no shit. Anyone with the slightest knowledge about how geolocation apis work will know that they're unaffected by that.

19 points by janandonly 3y ago

Reads like an ad for their phone: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/degoogledphoneinfo/ https://simplifiedprivacy.com/degoogledphoneinfo/

yashasolutions 3y ago
it is just a regular phone with GrapheneOS [1], anyone can install it by themselves. They just provide a convenient way to get one. 1: https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/

vxNsr 3y ago

seems to be down, here's the archive: https://archive.ph/L2cHM https://archive.ph/L2cHM

gruez 3y ago

While the claim of google being a privacy nightmare is broadly correct, the page is full of incorrect/misleading claims and half-truths. Here are the issues I can find with the first 5 claims: >2) Reading all your emails. Even if you don’t use Gmail directly, but you’re sending email to someone who does. [5] [6] Didn't they say they stopped scanning emails for advertising purposes? I guess it's technically true that they still scan for anti-spam purposes, but even privacy-minded email providers like protonmail do that. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/23/15862492/google-gmail-advertising-targeting-privacy-cloud-business https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/23/15862492/google-gmail-adv... >3) Saving all your web traffic if the website uses Google Ads, Captchas, or Analytics This is misleading because "your web traffic" implies all the content that's on the page or you submit. Google is getting all the urls of the pages you visit, but I highly doubt they're exfiltrating page content or form submissions. >4) Everything you do in Google’s Chrome Browser is recorded, including even how long you are idle on a page. [7] [8] Isn't "everything you do" in firefox recorded as well, through browser history? floc just provides a way to report that to sites in the form of cohort categories. I'd prefer if my browser didn't report my interests to whatever site I visit, but "everything do [...] is recorded" is a terrible way of describing the issue. Also, I can't find anything supporting the claim of "including even how long you are idle on a page" in the eff link, and the other link is broken. >Even if you turn location features off [...], it still saves your location via Wifi triangulation, which is the process of pinging nearby This claim is not supported by the sources cited, and is explicitly denied by google. https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwhen-location-is-off https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281?hl=en#zipp... >[...] or set the phone to airplane mode Is this an issue? It's called "airplane mode", not "privacy mode". If you want to turn off location services, turn off location services. >Wifi triangulation can figure out your real location, even if you have a fake IP address from a VPN. [14] Well no shit. Anyone with the slightest knowledge about how geolocation apis work will know that they're unaffected by that.