5 ms·

A perfect reason to NOT let Google own all layers of the stack between you and the internet (or indeed the real world). Search - Check (goog.com) Mail - Check

A perfect reason to NOT let Google own all layers of the stack between you and the internet (or indeed the real world). Search - Check (goog.com) Mail - Check (Gmail) Browser - Check (chrome) Devices - Check (Android/Chrome books) Websites - Check (Double click/AdMob, Unknown number of other companies) Google Analytics - Check Your DNA - Check (23&Me) Cars - Check (self-driving cars) I am probably missing large chunks of tracking even with this list. Where do you draw the line so that organizations like Google do not handover (willingly or inadvertently) our life to NSA, GCHQ, ASIO, CSIS & whatever New Zealand's Intelligence spooks go by, on a platter? Heterogeneity - Make the buggers at least have to work a little bit to invade your privacy.

eli 13y ago
Your larger point might be true, but has nothing to do with the current revelation. If every site switched from Google Analytics to, say, Mixpanel... nothing would change. The NSA would just target the equivalent mixpanel cookie. So long as their are popular third-party cookies, this will be a problem.
- jdubs 13y ago
  It also seems like does the risk of being eased dropped upon outway the benefit of having data to drive business needs?
IBM 13y ago
Search was easy to replace. Bing and DuckDuckGo are both good. Firefox was an easy switch now that Chrome seems to be much more of a resource hog (and the extensions are better). I don't have an Android phone. For e-mail I've switched to Fastmail but Outlook is also a good alternative if you want something free. I don't use anything else. I'd say e-mail was the hardest friction point of them all, but overall it was pretty easy to leave Google.
- psbp 13y ago
  Switching to Microsoft from Google is not an ethical accomplishment.
  - girvo 13y ago
    Despite the fact that I'm not the kind of person who "hates" Microsoft, you've got a point there: they were implicated in the NSA docs as much as Google was. In fact it sounded like they cooperated more than Google. Stick to smaller independent companies that have a good privacy track record.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      If you care about e-mail privacy, you should consider desktop/native e-mail clients instead of webmail and IMAP. Having all your mail sitting on someone else's server means it can be handed over by that company in response to a government request, legal or otherwise. After 6 months, it's not even a fourth amendment issue and no warrant is required; it's not "your" mail when it's data on someone else's server. This doesn't require technical prowess the average person doesn't have. You can use your ISP's mail server, or a professional service like Rackspace Mail. There are free native e-mail clients for every desktop and mobile platform. You can still get instant mail notifications with IMAP Push. Just set at least one of your computers to delete mail from the server after downloading it.
lallysingh 13y ago
I think you're focusing on the wrong (or at least, non-primary) axis: destination. I'd suggest your on-wire image instead: packet header, protocol, encryption, etc. This is all assuming you consider your adversary to be the NSA. If it's google, well, choose other vendors. If it's both, you'll have to consider both your destination and wire-protocol axes. FWIW, if your traffic is split evenly between 3-4 main vendors (e.g., google, amazon, bing, etc), and all HTTPS, it's hard to tell what you're doing.
jodrellblank 13y ago
I am probably missing large chunks of tracking even with this list. Enormous amounts of things have some connection into Google. Other connections into Google's equipment potentially include Voice, Talk, Hangouts, embedded Google Plus +1 buttons, embedded YouTube, Blogspot sites, embedded Picasa images. Google runs ReCAPTCHA. ( http://www.google.com/recaptcha/ http://www.google.com/recaptcha/ ) If you email someone with a GMail account your email address is in Google's servers with the email header containing your IP address. Google's SafeBrowsing URL check built into FireFox which normally works by hashed URLs but could still track that you are using it, but has a simple version of the API so applications could send plain text URLs to it without you knowing ( https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/ https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/ ). Sites hosted on Google AppEngine ( https://developers.google.com/appengine/ https://developers.google.com/appengine/ ). If you have IOS, Safari defaults to Google suggestions - i.e. sending everything you type in the address/search bar to Google. Google Maps, built into other websites and services. Google Geolocation API built into other software ( https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/geolocation/ https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/ge... ). Google DNS (last time I read the privacy policy, it said queries are not combined with other data Google collects). Sites loading popular JavaScript from Google's hosted libraries ( https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide ). Sites embedding Google Sparklines ( https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/imagesparkline https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery... ) Links going via Google's URL shortening service Goo.gl Not counting things you choose to use (Chromecast, music, docs, drive, Now, voice search, News, Groups, Finance, Toolbar, Android sat nav, Chrome's open tab sync between your devices via Google Cloud, etc.). That's not to say they are good or bad, or they are or are not tracked. Just that it's way to late to "avoid Google" just by switching away from GMail and blocking Google Analytics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

eli 13y ago

Your larger point might be true, but has nothing to do with the current revelation. If every site switched from Google Analytics to, say, Mixpanel... nothing would change. The NSA would just target the equivalent mixpanel cookie. So long as their are popular third-party cookies, this will be a problem.

jdubs 13y ago
It also seems like does the risk of being eased dropped upon outway the benefit of having data to drive business needs?

IBM 13y ago

Search was easy to replace. Bing and DuckDuckGo are both good. Firefox was an easy switch now that Chrome seems to be much more of a resource hog (and the extensions are better). I don't have an Android phone. For e-mail I've switched to Fastmail but Outlook is also a good alternative if you want something free. I don't use anything else. I'd say e-mail was the hardest friction point of them all, but overall it was pretty easy to leave Google.

psbp 13y ago
Switching to Microsoft from Google is not an ethical accomplishment.
- girvo 13y ago
  Despite the fact that I'm not the kind of person who "hates" Microsoft, you've got a point there: they were implicated in the NSA docs as much as Google was. In fact it sounded like they cooperated more than Google. Stick to smaller independent companies that have a good privacy track record.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    If you care about e-mail privacy, you should consider desktop/native e-mail clients instead of webmail and IMAP. Having all your mail sitting on someone else's server means it can be handed over by that company in response to a government request, legal or otherwise. After 6 months, it's not even a fourth amendment issue and no warrant is required; it's not "your" mail when it's data on someone else's server. This doesn't require technical prowess the average person doesn't have. You can use your ISP's mail server, or a professional service like Rackspace Mail. There are free native e-mail clients for every desktop and mobile platform. You can still get instant mail notifications with IMAP Push. Just set at least one of your computers to delete mail from the server after downloading it.

lallysingh 13y ago

I think you're focusing on the wrong (or at least, non-primary) axis: destination. I'd suggest your on-wire image instead: packet header, protocol, encryption, etc. This is all assuming you consider your adversary to be the NSA. If it's google, well, choose other vendors. If it's both, you'll have to consider both your destination and wire-protocol axes. FWIW, if your traffic is split evenly between 3-4 main vendors (e.g., google, amazon, bing, etc), and all HTTPS, it's hard to tell what you're doing.

jodrellblank 13y ago

I am probably missing large chunks of tracking even with this list. Enormous amounts of things have some connection into Google. Other connections into Google's equipment potentially include Voice, Talk, Hangouts, embedded Google Plus +1 buttons, embedded YouTube, Blogspot sites, embedded Picasa images. Google runs ReCAPTCHA. ( http://www.google.com/recaptcha/ http://www.google.com/recaptcha/ ) If you email someone with a GMail account your email address is in Google's servers with the email header containing your IP address. Google's SafeBrowsing URL check built into FireFox which normally works by hashed URLs but could still track that you are using it, but has a simple version of the API so applications could send plain text URLs to it without you knowing ( https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/ https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/ ). Sites hosted on Google AppEngine ( https://developers.google.com/appengine/ https://developers.google.com/appengine/ ). If you have IOS, Safari defaults to Google suggestions - i.e. sending everything you type in the address/search bar to Google. Google Maps, built into other websites and services. Google Geolocation API built into other software ( https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/geolocation/ https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/ge... ). Google DNS (last time I read the privacy policy, it said queries are not combined with other data Google collects). Sites loading popular JavaScript from Google's hosted libraries ( https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide ). Sites embedding Google Sparklines ( https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/imagesparkline https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery... ) Links going via Google's URL shortening service Goo.gl Not counting things you choose to use (Chromecast, music, docs, drive, Now, voice search, News, Groups, Finance, Toolbar, Android sat nav, Chrome's open tab sync between your devices via Google Cloud, etc.). That's not to say they are good or bad, or they are or are not tracked. Just that it's way to late to "avoid Google" just by switching away from GMail and blocking Google Analytics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products