7 ms·

I'm switching back to Firefox and exploring Yahoo equivalents to google products? Hell must be getting pretty cold right about now.

by pvnick 13y ago

rfctr 13y ago
Yahoo won a right to demonstrate they did resist the government. They did resist, but have lost anyway. So... no. Yahoo is not a NSA-free land.
- pvnick 13y ago
  Nobody on the internet is NSA-free as they're siphoning photons off the fiber optic cables. I choose to give my support to those fighting tooth and nail against the surveillance, and right now the evidence points towards Yahoo doing that better than most. Plus they got a glittery gold star from the EFF!
  - rfctr 13y ago
    > right now the evidence points towards Yahoo doing that better than most I see your point. Still, Yahoo may be just the first to win the right to disclose. Similar decisions may follow towards Google and MS, for example, and -- oh horror -- HN.
    - pvnick 13y ago
      I hope you're right, I may have to reconsider. But honestly I love a good comeback story and have been rooting for Yahoo since Mayer took over.
    - unimpressive 13y ago
      HN is all public messages anyway. There's no private message feature. The only data they have to give is what you've upvoted and your email. (Though that former set of data might be interesting.)
    - mjolk 13y ago
      E-mail comes with some expectation of privacy due to addressing and targeted communication. Hackernews is public content. Apples and oranges.
      - rfctr 13y ago
        Yes, on HN is it public (for example) that a user with a nickname "abcdefg" made some statement about cryptography in general and some government projects in particular. What is not public is who is "abcdefg" in the real life? What is their IP, for instance, at time moment T? Under some conditions NSA may be interested and request this information from HN.
        mjolk 13y ago
        Sure, but it's a public forum. Only a naive person has any expectation of long-term anonymity.
  - crag 13y ago
    I agree. Time to take a look at Yahoo and Firefox. Been years.
  - barbs 13y ago
    Look at that giffy glitter!! https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/images_insert/sparklystarnew.gif https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/images_insert/sparkl...
  - kllrnohj 13y ago
    > right now the evidence points towards Yahoo doing that better than most. Evidence still points to Google quite solidly leading in this area. Yahoo has 1 gold star from the EFF, Google has considerably more. Assuming you place any value in glittery gold stars from the EFF, that is.
  - motters 13y ago
    It's unclear whether Yahoo did fight tooth and nail. They were assimilated into PRISM on 3/12/2008 according to the leaked slide. Other companies (particularly Apple) took longer to undermine and presumably put up more of a fight.
    - scott_w 13y ago
      Not necessarily. Remember that Apple is a hardware company first. They may simply have had nothing of interest to the NSA until more recently.
- jevinskie 13y ago
  Lesser of many evils? What about DDG? How accurately can the NSA track DDG queries that get farmed out to the 3rd party search engines (Bing? and others?)?
- deathhand 13y ago
  Yes all major firms are culpable in this but if their beliefs are in line with mine(We should know what the gov does) then I should support them and use their product.
psbp 13y ago
Wait, what? Yahoo is still part of PRISM. We don't really know how Google, Apple, Dropbox, etc. reacted to attempts by the NSA to be put under PRISM. We only know that Microsoft wilfully made it as easy and accessible as possible, but no other company has revealed to be more culpable (or victimized?) than the rest.
- bennyg 13y ago
  Well, Apple was the last of the bigs to buckle.
  - kllrnohj 13y ago
    Apple was probably the last approached as until fairly recently they didn't have any data as their cloud services were categorical failures.
    - SilasX 13y ago
      No data? What about iTunes?
      - mrmekon 13y ago
        If the NSA actually pays any consideration to how the value of their data helps find "terrorists"/criminals, iTunes data is probably not particularly valuable.
        Osmium 13y ago
        I don't know. Apparently Syria's Assad used iTunes: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/14/assad-itunes-emails-chris-brown http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/14/assad-itunes-ema... I imagine it'd be an easy way of finding the IP addresses of the devices actually being personally used by him (hypothetically speaking).
      - Ntrails 13y ago
        itunes is not the product that would get the NSA salivating - not much of it's data was that useful imo before the phones came out. It's about phones and messaging. When did imessage get released? How long have apple been able to track your location with GPS? How long have you been storing your photos on the cloud (whether or not you realised it) etc etc. Once they had 1-2 of the big tech companies as precedent they really just would have started to go round to anyone they thought might be of interest. Because that is the whole point. Collect everything you can get your grubby mitts on and sort through it later.
csoghoian 13y ago
Yahoo still doesn't use HTTPS by default, for email or search. Not using HTTPS is huge, gift-wrapped present to the NSA. It also means that the NSA can get Yahoo users' communications without even having to bother Yahoo, as they can get it with the assistance of backbone networks. Lower legal compliance costs for Yahoo, and the NSA gets what they need. Seriously, Yahoo is awful on privacy and security. Don't reward them with your business.
- enko 13y ago
  Hm, I think the HTTPS thing is overblown for sites that are hosted in the US. Almost no large sites do HTTPS termination on the actual app servers; it would be the simplest thing in the world to put the collection device behind the HTTPS endpoint. Why bother trying to piece together data flows over a bunch of disparate backbone networks when you can just hook up a collector at the wellspring? I'd sure they'd be delighted to be able to tick off that whole company as "done", and set the verizon taps etc to ignore anything to them, secure in the knowledge they were getting it all elsewhere.
  - mjolk 13y ago
    You're thinking about it incorrectly. While termination at a load balancer is common, at least then you're in the company's network by the time your data is being transmitted in the clear. It's far different for traffic to be plaintext from a load balancer backend, switch, to server interface than over X number of hops.
    - enko 13y ago
      > you're in the company's network Yes, of course. What's incorrect? I'm just saying that if you have unlimited ability to make secret tapping demands from whoever you want, you might as well make it easy for yourself and just go straight to the source.
      - mjolk 13y ago
        >you might as well make it easy for yourself and just go straight to the source. I feel as if I'm not fully understanding you. Are you saying that because you expect your traffic to be read by a government agency, you might as well let any/everyone see your data?
kllrnohj 13y ago
Yahoo still ranks far, far behind Google (and Twitter, and Dropbox, and etc...) according to the EFF: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/who-has-your-back-2013-report-20130513.pdf https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/who-has-your-back-20...
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  As far as this NSA stuff goes though, May 13th is painfully out of date.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
mtgx 13y ago
Yahoo should buy Blekko, and then try to develop its own search engine again.
celwell 13y ago
Chrome > Firefox

I'm switching back to Firefox and exploring Yahoo equivalents to google products? Hell must be getting pretty cold right about now.

by pvnick 13y ago

I'm switching back to Firefox and exploring Yahoo equivalents to google products? Hell must be getting pretty cold right about now.

rfctr 13y ago

Yahoo won a right to demonstrate they did resist the government. They did resist, but have lost anyway. So... no. Yahoo is not a NSA-free land.

pvnick 13y ago
Nobody on the internet is NSA-free as they're siphoning photons off the fiber optic cables. I choose to give my support to those fighting tooth and nail against the surveillance, and right now the evidence points towards Yahoo doing that better than most. Plus they got a glittery gold star from the EFF!
- rfctr 13y ago
  > right now the evidence points towards Yahoo doing that better than most I see your point. Still, Yahoo may be just the first to win the right to disclose. Similar decisions may follow towards Google and MS, for example, and -- oh horror -- HN.
  - pvnick 13y ago
    I hope you're right, I may have to reconsider. But honestly I love a good comeback story and have been rooting for Yahoo since Mayer took over.
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    HN is all public messages anyway. There's no private message feature. The only data they have to give is what you've upvoted and your email. (Though that former set of data might be interesting.)
  - mjolk 13y ago
    E-mail comes with some expectation of privacy due to addressing and targeted communication. Hackernews is public content. Apples and oranges.
    - rfctr 13y ago
      Yes, on HN is it public (for example) that a user with a nickname "abcdefg" made some statement about cryptography in general and some government projects in particular. What is not public is who is "abcdefg" in the real life? What is their IP, for instance, at time moment T? Under some conditions NSA may be interested and request this information from HN.
      - mjolk 13y ago
        Sure, but it's a public forum. Only a naive person has any expectation of long-term anonymity.
- crag 13y ago
  I agree. Time to take a look at Yahoo and Firefox. Been years.
- barbs 13y ago
  Look at that giffy glitter!! https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/images_insert/sparklystarnew.gif https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/images_insert/sparkl...
- kllrnohj 13y ago
  > right now the evidence points towards Yahoo doing that better than most. Evidence still points to Google quite solidly leading in this area. Yahoo has 1 gold star from the EFF, Google has considerably more. Assuming you place any value in glittery gold stars from the EFF, that is.
- motters 13y ago
  It's unclear whether Yahoo did fight tooth and nail. They were assimilated into PRISM on 3/12/2008 according to the leaked slide. Other companies (particularly Apple) took longer to undermine and presumably put up more of a fight.
  - scott_w 13y ago
    Not necessarily. Remember that Apple is a hardware company first. They may simply have had nothing of interest to the NSA until more recently.
jevinskie 13y ago
Lesser of many evils? What about DDG? How accurately can the NSA track DDG queries that get farmed out to the 3rd party search engines (Bing? and others?)?
deathhand 13y ago
Yes all major firms are culpable in this but if their beliefs are in line with mine(We should know what the gov does) then I should support them and use their product.

psbp 13y ago

Wait, what? Yahoo is still part of PRISM. We don't really know how Google, Apple, Dropbox, etc. reacted to attempts by the NSA to be put under PRISM. We only know that Microsoft wilfully made it as easy and accessible as possible, but no other company has revealed to be more culpable (or victimized?) than the rest.

bennyg 13y ago
Well, Apple was the last of the bigs to buckle.
- kllrnohj 13y ago
  Apple was probably the last approached as until fairly recently they didn't have any data as their cloud services were categorical failures.
  - SilasX 13y ago
    No data? What about iTunes?
    - mrmekon 13y ago
      If the NSA actually pays any consideration to how the value of their data helps find "terrorists"/criminals, iTunes data is probably not particularly valuable.
      - Osmium 13y ago
        I don't know. Apparently Syria's Assad used iTunes: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/14/assad-itunes-emails-chris-brown http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/14/assad-itunes-ema... I imagine it'd be an easy way of finding the IP addresses of the devices actually being personally used by him (hypothetically speaking).
    - Ntrails 13y ago
      itunes is not the product that would get the NSA salivating - not much of it's data was that useful imo before the phones came out. It's about phones and messaging. When did imessage get released? How long have apple been able to track your location with GPS? How long have you been storing your photos on the cloud (whether or not you realised it) etc etc. Once they had 1-2 of the big tech companies as precedent they really just would have started to go round to anyone they thought might be of interest. Because that is the whole point. Collect everything you can get your grubby mitts on and sort through it later.

csoghoian 13y ago

Yahoo still doesn't use HTTPS by default, for email or search. Not using HTTPS is huge, gift-wrapped present to the NSA. It also means that the NSA can get Yahoo users' communications without even having to bother Yahoo, as they can get it with the assistance of backbone networks. Lower legal compliance costs for Yahoo, and the NSA gets what they need. Seriously, Yahoo is awful on privacy and security. Don't reward them with your business.

enko 13y ago
Hm, I think the HTTPS thing is overblown for sites that are hosted in the US. Almost no large sites do HTTPS termination on the actual app servers; it would be the simplest thing in the world to put the collection device behind the HTTPS endpoint. Why bother trying to piece together data flows over a bunch of disparate backbone networks when you can just hook up a collector at the wellspring? I'd sure they'd be delighted to be able to tick off that whole company as "done", and set the verizon taps etc to ignore anything to them, secure in the knowledge they were getting it all elsewhere.
- mjolk 13y ago
  You're thinking about it incorrectly. While termination at a load balancer is common, at least then you're in the company's network by the time your data is being transmitted in the clear. It's far different for traffic to be plaintext from a load balancer backend, switch, to server interface than over X number of hops.
  - enko 13y ago
    > you're in the company's network Yes, of course. What's incorrect? I'm just saying that if you have unlimited ability to make secret tapping demands from whoever you want, you might as well make it easy for yourself and just go straight to the source.
    - mjolk 13y ago
      >you might as well make it easy for yourself and just go straight to the source. I feel as if I'm not fully understanding you. Are you saying that because you expect your traffic to be read by a government agency, you might as well let any/everyone see your data?

kllrnohj 13y ago

Yahoo still ranks far, far behind Google (and Twitter, and Dropbox, and etc...) according to the EFF: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/who-has-your-back-2013-report-20130513.pdf https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/who-has-your-back-20...

sliverstorm 13y ago
As far as this NSA stuff goes though, May 13th is painfully out of date.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

mtgx 13y ago

Yahoo should buy Blekko, and then try to develop its own search engine again.

celwell 13y ago

Chrome > Firefox