6 ms·

None of this is shocking except for maybe how unavoidable sharing all this information online actually is. The default settings on most devices are not designed

by exelius 12y ago

None of this is shocking except for maybe how unavoidable sharing all this information online actually is. The default settings on most devices are not designed with privacy in mind. In order to avoid this type of data collection, you'd have to walk around with a dumbphone, avoid using any bank-connected services and basically only log on to the Internet via a VPN. Ironically, this usage pattern is so far out of the ordinary that it would make you stick out like a sore thumb. In the decade between this type of data collection becoming possible and the mass populace becoming concerned about it, I fear we've passed a threshold we can't un-cross. This type of technology is so intertwined in our daily lives that avoiding it isn't a realistic option. Things like Apple using random MAC addresses to scan for Wi-Fi APs are a start; but too many devices (Android included) use default settings that are far from secure. But it's up to the companies that make usable, mass-market devices to ratchet up the security, and I fear that they have little incentive to do so when their own ambitions include the same type of data collection.

sroerick 12y ago
> In order to avoid this type of data collection, you'd have to walk around with a dumbphone, avoid using any bank-connected services and basically only log on to the Internet via a VPN. Ironically, this usage pattern is so far out of the ordinary that it would make you stick out like a sore thumb. Have you considered trying this, or some implementation of it? I, for one, would like to see websites that didn't install any tracking software. Specifically, I mean no Google metrics. If there was a news website that didn't install any tracking software, but instead just offered pages with cryptocurrency addresses, I would switch to that as my default news source in a second.
- rev_bird 12y ago
  Google metrics aren't always used for spying on people -- news sites in particular drool over every possible metric to measure popularity, referrals, etc. to better tailor their online marketing (and sometimes story selection). It sounds weird, but I'm not sure a website without tracking would be as good.
  - pdkl95 12y ago
    Website owners can still get most of their metrics without google the same way we did it before google existed: they can analyze their Apache/Nginx logfiles. Stats is hard? Find some software that does if for you. Better yet, figure out how to do some of it yourself (it's not paritc8ularly hard). Or hire some statisticians. This way, you free your business from being dependent on a 3rd party.
  - sroerick 12y ago
    No, I don't think it would be. For a company to announce that they were forgoing tracking would be a brave step. I understand that analytics is a really really useful thing for a company. But, as a corrolary, what if Google Analytics alters the content in a way that makes it less useful? The obvious example here is clickbait articles (See, Clickhole), but I think there's other more subtle problems here. Isn't the job of a reporter to report what _they_ think is news, rather than what people want to read? Beyond that, I am troubled by the spying on people. It occurs to me that even if I remove Google Analytics from my website, anyone coming to or going from my website will be subject to monitoring by Google. It's not exactly opt out. Microtransactions are hard, though, that problem still hasn't been solved.
- XorNot 12y ago
  "If there was a news website that didn't install any tracking software, but instead just offered pages with cryptocurrency addresses, I would switch to that as my default news source in a second." No you wouldn't. You might be hard-minded enough to try and commit to it, but instead you'd almost certainly just stop reading any news...then go back to aggregators/blogs whatever. It's a well studied problem that as soon as something becomes not free, people change their behaviour dramatically. Of course, if you really don't care about the news (and broadly normals news websites are pretty useless to me), then you can cheaply skip a step...
  - sroerick 12y ago
    > No you wouldn't. You might be hard-minded enough to try and commit to it, but instead you'd almost certainly just stop reading any news...then go back to aggregators/blogs whatever. Yes I would. I do soft boycotts of all music that isn't Creative Commons, and movies by major media companies. I've listened to almost exclusively free music for years. (Libre music for close to 6 mo.) I still go to movies sometimes, but who cares? The point of a boycott isn't necessarily to hurt a company's revenue, it's also to drive change in consumption habits. I'm not trying to quit the normal web altogether, I'm just saying that if there were ONE news website that didn't have tracking software installed, I would switch to it as my default news source. I can't say for sure if I would donate to articles via a bitcoin link, but I would imagine it would be optional. HN is nice, but it's just an aggregator. Even though it doesn't have tracking software, everything that it links to does. EDIT: Oh, and I meant to say, I have indeed switched to a dumbphone, and I use a VPN. I still use bank related services, but I try to use bitcoin when I can. I have no illusions about its anonymity, I just try to vote with my feet and my dollars. Just because there are a lot of consumers who don't change their consumption habits doesn't mean that some won't.
    - XorNot 12y ago
      Creative Commons is different - you don't pay. The point I was making was that the act of knowing that every click through was costing you some small but real amount of money, would change your behavior dramatically. So that's the challenge: you need no tracking, but no obvious fees either.
bentcorner 12y ago
> basically only log on to the Internet via a VPN Even if you did this it doesn't guarantee that your data doesn't travel through data centers you would rather it not travel through, right?
doctorshady 12y ago
> This type of technology is so intertwined in our daily lives that avoiding it isn't a realistic option. That seems like somewhat of an apathetic attitude to have. Try living without internet for a week, or even a day. It isn't so bad.
- schoen 12y ago
  I just read the book Two Cheers for Anarchism, where James Scott describes his experiences of "anarchist calisthenics". He suggests, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that practicing occasionally disobeying laws in minor ways like jaywalking could help develop a disobedience skill that he might need some day for an important moral reason. I think in the same way that we who live in an exceptionally wealthy society often get little practice in giving things up, but that this practice might be beneficial. It's not a very original observation to notice how having so many resources and opportunities and conveniences available to us makes us feel more and more dependent and averse to every sort of inconvenience. As a vegan, I always find it remarkable how emphatically people feel that it would be impossibly difficult for them to go without eating animal products, or that they can't imagine how someone could possibly manage without them. Maybe that's literally true in the Aleutian Islands or the Australian Outback or something, but not so much in New York City or Portland, where one could eat in a different restaurant every day for a year without running out of vegan entrées to order directly off the menu. But there are plenty of resources and technologies that I have that my parents and aunts and uncles grew up and lived and worked without for decades and that even today most of the world's population doesn't use—but that it's hard for me to imagine life without. (When I visit friends in Brazil, they don't have a machine to dry their laundry, but use a clothesline, the way almost everybody in history has done it, and to my amazement the clothesline still works OK. It's not even much more labor, just more latency in the clothes-washing process.) The habits we form from being well-off and having so much access to everything we want, worry some people because they consider how something could go wrong and there are skills we might need that we haven't developed. (We might also feel more acute suffering from losing what we're used to; psychologists have documented that losing what you had is consistently perceived as a much greater cost than failing to gain what you didn't have.) War or social unrest or natural disasters or ecological disruption could strike middle-class city dwellers pretty hard because we mostly don't know how to grow food, how to fix things, and so on. But another consequence of our abundance of resources and choices, one that I think is more core to what the parent commenter is getting at, is that when we become dependent on technologies and products and resources, our demand curve for them shifts. The people who supply these things to us have more power over us in terms of extracting money or concessions, because we and then understand that we're unlikely to actually give up our habits. That has consequences in terms of the difficulty in resisting changes that harm us (a classic example is if an Internet service changes its privacy policy in a way that reduces existing users' protections; service operators know that very few people will stop using the service even if most users dislike the change). It also means that the prospect of boycotts over ethical issues that affect others is dimmer. Manufacturers think that there's not that much chance many people would actually stop buying something because of disagreements with how it was made. I think it would be amazing to have a culture where people commonly had the experience of successfully giving up a habit or a product that they liked quite a bit, without being forced to, just as a result of a conscious choice. My Catholic friends often do this once a year during Lent (the religious tradition in many communities used to be to give up specific foods, but many people today interpret it more broadly and personally pick something to give up temporarily—normally, something that they enjoy and that it will be an effort for them to give up). From what I hear, many people find it satisfying and empowering when they succeed. And following Scott's idea, it might be good practice for when you decide that you do have an important reason to give something up.

by exelius 12y ago

sroerick 12y ago

> In order to avoid this type of data collection, you'd have to walk around with a dumbphone, avoid using any bank-connected services and basically only log on to the Internet via a VPN. Ironically, this usage pattern is so far out of the ordinary that it would make you stick out like a sore thumb. Have you considered trying this, or some implementation of it? I, for one, would like to see websites that didn't install any tracking software. Specifically, I mean no Google metrics. If there was a news website that didn't install any tracking software, but instead just offered pages with cryptocurrency addresses, I would switch to that as my default news source in a second.

rev_bird 12y ago
Google metrics aren't always used for spying on people -- news sites in particular drool over every possible metric to measure popularity, referrals, etc. to better tailor their online marketing (and sometimes story selection). It sounds weird, but I'm not sure a website without tracking would be as good.
- pdkl95 12y ago
  Website owners can still get most of their metrics without google the same way we did it before google existed: they can analyze their Apache/Nginx logfiles. Stats is hard? Find some software that does if for you. Better yet, figure out how to do some of it yourself (it's not paritc8ularly hard). Or hire some statisticians. This way, you free your business from being dependent on a 3rd party.
- sroerick 12y ago
  No, I don't think it would be. For a company to announce that they were forgoing tracking would be a brave step. I understand that analytics is a really really useful thing for a company. But, as a corrolary, what if Google Analytics alters the content in a way that makes it less useful? The obvious example here is clickbait articles (See, Clickhole), but I think there's other more subtle problems here. Isn't the job of a reporter to report what _they_ think is news, rather than what people want to read? Beyond that, I am troubled by the spying on people. It occurs to me that even if I remove Google Analytics from my website, anyone coming to or going from my website will be subject to monitoring by Google. It's not exactly opt out. Microtransactions are hard, though, that problem still hasn't been solved.
XorNot 12y ago
"If there was a news website that didn't install any tracking software, but instead just offered pages with cryptocurrency addresses, I would switch to that as my default news source in a second." No you wouldn't. You might be hard-minded enough to try and commit to it, but instead you'd almost certainly just stop reading any news...then go back to aggregators/blogs whatever. It's a well studied problem that as soon as something becomes not free, people change their behaviour dramatically. Of course, if you really don't care about the news (and broadly normals news websites are pretty useless to me), then you can cheaply skip a step...
- sroerick 12y ago
  > No you wouldn't. You might be hard-minded enough to try and commit to it, but instead you'd almost certainly just stop reading any news...then go back to aggregators/blogs whatever. Yes I would. I do soft boycotts of all music that isn't Creative Commons, and movies by major media companies. I've listened to almost exclusively free music for years. (Libre music for close to 6 mo.) I still go to movies sometimes, but who cares? The point of a boycott isn't necessarily to hurt a company's revenue, it's also to drive change in consumption habits. I'm not trying to quit the normal web altogether, I'm just saying that if there were ONE news website that didn't have tracking software installed, I would switch to it as my default news source. I can't say for sure if I would donate to articles via a bitcoin link, but I would imagine it would be optional. HN is nice, but it's just an aggregator. Even though it doesn't have tracking software, everything that it links to does. EDIT: Oh, and I meant to say, I have indeed switched to a dumbphone, and I use a VPN. I still use bank related services, but I try to use bitcoin when I can. I have no illusions about its anonymity, I just try to vote with my feet and my dollars. Just because there are a lot of consumers who don't change their consumption habits doesn't mean that some won't.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Creative Commons is different - you don't pay. The point I was making was that the act of knowing that every click through was costing you some small but real amount of money, would change your behavior dramatically. So that's the challenge: you need no tracking, but no obvious fees either.

bentcorner 12y ago

> basically only log on to the Internet via a VPN Even if you did this it doesn't guarantee that your data doesn't travel through data centers you would rather it not travel through, right?

doctorshady 12y ago

> This type of technology is so intertwined in our daily lives that avoiding it isn't a realistic option. That seems like somewhat of an apathetic attitude to have. Try living without internet for a week, or even a day. It isn't so bad.

schoen 12y ago
I just read the book Two Cheers for Anarchism, where James Scott describes his experiences of "anarchist calisthenics". He suggests, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that practicing occasionally disobeying laws in minor ways like jaywalking could help develop a disobedience skill that he might need some day for an important moral reason. I think in the same way that we who live in an exceptionally wealthy society often get little practice in giving things up, but that this practice might be beneficial. It's not a very original observation to notice how having so many resources and opportunities and conveniences available to us makes us feel more and more dependent and averse to every sort of inconvenience. As a vegan, I always find it remarkable how emphatically people feel that it would be impossibly difficult for them to go without eating animal products, or that they can't imagine how someone could possibly manage without them. Maybe that's literally true in the Aleutian Islands or the Australian Outback or something, but not so much in New York City or Portland, where one could eat in a different restaurant every day for a year without running out of vegan entrées to order directly off the menu. But there are plenty of resources and technologies that I have that my parents and aunts and uncles grew up and lived and worked without for decades and that even today most of the world's population doesn't use—but that it's hard for me to imagine life without. (When I visit friends in Brazil, they don't have a machine to dry their laundry, but use a clothesline, the way almost everybody in history has done it, and to my amazement the clothesline still works OK. It's not even much more labor, just more latency in the clothes-washing process.) The habits we form from being well-off and having so much access to everything we want, worry some people because they consider how something could go wrong and there are skills we might need that we haven't developed. (We might also feel more acute suffering from losing what we're used to; psychologists have documented that losing what you had is consistently perceived as a much greater cost than failing to gain what you didn't have.) War or social unrest or natural disasters or ecological disruption could strike middle-class city dwellers pretty hard because we mostly don't know how to grow food, how to fix things, and so on. But another consequence of our abundance of resources and choices, one that I think is more core to what the parent commenter is getting at, is that when we become dependent on technologies and products and resources, our demand curve for them shifts. The people who supply these things to us have more power over us in terms of extracting money or concessions, because we and then understand that we're unlikely to actually give up our habits. That has consequences in terms of the difficulty in resisting changes that harm us (a classic example is if an Internet service changes its privacy policy in a way that reduces existing users' protections; service operators know that very few people will stop using the service even if most users dislike the change). It also means that the prospect of boycotts over ethical issues that affect others is dimmer. Manufacturers think that there's not that much chance many people would actually stop buying something because of disagreements with how it was made. I think it would be amazing to have a culture where people commonly had the experience of successfully giving up a habit or a product that they liked quite a bit, without being forced to, just as a result of a conscious choice. My Catholic friends often do this once a year during Lent (the religious tradition in many communities used to be to give up specific foods, but many people today interpret it more broadly and personally pick something to give up temporarily—normally, something that they enjoy and that it will be an effort for them to give up). From what I hear, many people find it satisfying and empowering when they succeed. And following Scott's idea, it might be good practice for when you decide that you do have an important reason to give something up.