10 ms·

> "Like most people, I don't like to be tracked. I also am the founder of the search engine that doesn't track you, DuckDuckGo." It pains me to hear intelligen

> "Like most people, I don't like to be tracked. I also am the founder of the search engine that doesn't track you, DuckDuckGo." It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as something "bad" a priori. While there are certainly plenty of examples of abuse of knowledge, I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." Let me explain... Google is a service provider that I frequent, just like my coffee roaster or my stock broker or whatever. Over time, service providers develop a relationship with their customers based on knowledge of that customer. This knowledge helps inform how they provide and improve their service. My coffee roaster knows what kinds of coffee I like and makes appropriate recommendations when new beans arrive. My stock broker knows what kinds of risks I like to take and gives appropriate investment direction. Ok, so I don't really have a stock broker but... My point is: I appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first. The problem (as with most things that are hot-button issues) is that the most talked about thing - "tracking" - is a red herring. The REAL issue is accountability. True information lockdown rarely benefits anyone, but openness without accountability is useless and downright dangerous. Suggesting people flee one provider's services and head to other providers who are not concretely more accountable (just because they "say so" doesn't make it true) is simply being petty. We should instead be spending out breath advocating for greater accountability in the system as a whole.

Semaphor 12y ago
> My point is: I appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first. That's the reason I always come back to google and search logged in. Almost all my searches are computer or more generally electronic related. On other search engines I get useless results.
chimeracoder 12y ago
> appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first. Really? For that exact query, I get the Wikipedia page for "Salt (Cryptography)", "How to Hash Passwords", and "Salt the Hash - Security tutorial"... you get the idea[0]. AFAIK, the stuff you're seeing at the top is their 'zero click' information, which Google never provided (until after DDG added it and promoted it as a selling point). That's a little hit-or-miss, sure, but the actual search results of DDG are generally just as relevant. I've been using DDG as my primary search engine for years now - I still resort to "!g" searches sometimes, but I have to do it far less than I used to. [0] https://i.imgur.com/qt2Xpfm.png https://i.imgur.com/qt2Xpfm.png
- astrocat 12y ago
  It's true - the standard results on-point, but the top of the page is filled with images of food and links to recipes. This is, ultimately, a nuanced point. It's a bit difficult to contrive a situation where the discrepancies are extremely stark in a single case, but over time and with consistent use (especially something like Google search which i use literally hundreds of times each day) the differences add up to make a pretty pronounced impact.
Spearchucker 12y ago
Tracking is an issue in that your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer. Hey if that's ok with you then I'm cool with that. I'm not cool with me doing that. I run ad blockers. If you make a living from ads then offer me a paid-for alternative. I avoid everything Google. I use a Windows Phone without a Microsoft account. If an app wants access to my contacts it doesn't get installed. My blog is my own code because I own what I write so I want control. In the absolute sense. I'd rather pay than use a free service, because being a cynic I don't believe altruism in it's truest sense exists. I interact on my terms, or not at all.
- kllrnohj 12y ago
  It sounds a lot more like you don't actually understand how advertising works. No, tracking helps to provide you with better services, full stop. Since you use an adblocker, tracking isn't making anyone money at all. Your personal information is worth exactly $0.00 on its own.
  - pyre 12y ago
    > No, tracking helps to provide you with better services, full stop No. Tracking is about allowing advertisers to better target people that they want to advertise to. A side-effect is providing you with 'better' services.
    - kllrnohj 12y ago
      > No. Tracking is about allowing advertisers to better target people that they want to advertise to. A side-effect is providing you with 'better' services. Those two are NOT exclusive. Targetted advertising only works because you the user find it more useful. And, no, it's not about better ads, it's about better services. The vast, VAST majority of tracking is never used in targetted ads. Targetted advertising is a very wide net, not hyper-focused.
- astrocat 12y ago
  > your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer. Your logic here villainizes a behavior simply because it benefits someone else. Let's say that every day you stop at Starbucks and order a cappuccino. The people who work at there recognize that you always show up at 8:10am and order the same thing so they begin to make sure it is ready for you every day so you don't have to wait. Did you give them explicit permission to notice your habits? No. Does their behavior benefit them? Yes, they keep you satisfied and paying obscene amounts of money for coffee on a daily basis. It's mutually beneficial. Now an employee of Starbucks could potentially give information about your daily routine to someone else who was looking for you (say to the police for whatever reason) but you don't hear anyone lamenting the presence of eyeballs in the heads of baristas as massive privacy invasions. I believe what you are really getting at is that these companies like Google and others can - and have at times - abuse the information they have available. This is exactly my point: what's needed is greater accountability.
flinkblink 12y ago
Nice to hear thoughts on this subject i agree with. Myself, i've long used Google and hadn't cared at all what information they collect about me. Rather, i openly give them information. Sure, if the world turns to hell and suddenly the government is at my door because Google "knew too much" then the naysayers can laugh at me all they like.. Then again, the world has turned to hell already, so is it really a time to laugh? In the mean time, i want to give Google my info, because "Google Now" is a great example of a service attempting to predict my needs. Keeping up to date with my life, and giving me information i want, without having to even ask for it. I don't want dumb computers, i want intelligent meaningful interactions, tailored to my life. And i can't get that by being a black box.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Why can't we have something like that running locally, on hardware we control?
- sasidharm 12y ago
  Congratulations. You get the google customer of the year award.
dskhatri 12y ago
His point is more about not putting all your eggs in one basket; you certainly don't tell your barista about an upcoming physician's appointment, or that you are in the market for a house. Your barista is also disconnected from parties who may leverage the information you provide him/her. Similarly, you don't tell your broker that you prefer Ethiopian coffee. Google offers so many services that it has a much broader insight into who you are. To the privacy-conscious, that's an unacceptable fact. Nothing to be pained about.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  If knowing that I prefer Ethiopian coffee helps my broker better serve me, I'd tell them in a heartbeat.
  - andersonvom 12y ago
    What if knowing you prefer Ethiopian coffee would make your insurance company charge you more because statistically these people are more prone to medical issues? Would you tell them in a heart beat? The pendulum swings both ways, and this is the reason why all of this should be opt-in.
    - icantthinkofone 12y ago
      Like many here, you are pretending that happens, and it doesn't. Too many are living that lie.
      - pyre 12y ago
        Just because something isn't currently happening doesn't mean that it won't. You're ignoring the fact that the data isn't transient. It persists into the future, at which point these things can (and probably will) happen. It's like arguing in favor of a monarchy just because the current ruler is just, competent and benevolent; while ignoring the possibility that the next ruler will be violent and vicious.
pessimizer 12y ago
Why would you read "Like most people, I don't like to be tracked" and understand "tracking is, a priori, something bad, even when it's open and part of a relationship in which you appreciate the other party remembering certain things about you" ?
GhotiFish 12y ago
Truthfully. I would have no problem with the amount of data google aggregated on me, if I could depend on them not using that data against me, or to manipulate me, or to sell it to someone who would do either of those two. If someone came up to me and said "I'll give you 5 dollars if you give me the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and personal vulnerabilities of all your friends", agreeing to that would be considered a massive breach of trust and a horrible act. On the web it seems like standard procedure. I will give you that tracking isn't innately bad, but it is an act of trust, and the question is: do you trust google?
- astrocat 12y ago
  > the question is: do you trust google? This is too myopic of a question. Do you trust Apple? Do you trust Microsoft? Do you trust ____? There are arbitrarily many of these questions to ask. What really needs to be asked is: how can we establish levels of trust in companies and services that handle our digital information that approaches the level of trust we have in our direct, inter-personal connections? Not ratting on your friend is trust established through close social connections. Trusting Google to not sell you out is a level of trust established... how?
  - rtpg 12y ago
    >Trusting Google to not sell you out is a level of trust established... how? It's trust from potential destruction. If Google was obviously using your email contents to sell you out, then people would stop using the service. It's like how people don't want to give out their email address to certain organisations out of fear of spam and phishing. Google can't exist without that trust, so they're incentivised to act in a trustworthy manner.
- zmmmmm 12y ago
  > do you trust google Ironically, exactly because of the intense scrutiny they face with every small decision they make, I have a lot more faith in Google's inability to be evil than just about any other player. I certainly can't spend the time to verify that all the other players I might give my data to are honest and well intentioned will always stay that way. But at least with Google I have pretty good faith that others are going to do that for me. Sometimes I wonder if the critics of Google's privacy realise they may be having the opposite effect they intend in this way ...
boling11 12y ago
Advocating for greater accountability across the board sounds great in principle, but what does that even mean? Are we to hold Google, accountable for monetizing the data they collect on us? That's the social contract you engage in with Google, when you use their services. Looking at the underlying business model is more effective. I am confident that DDG is going to respect my privacy, because that's what their whole business is built on! Similarly, I would be shocked if Apple turned around and started selling my data to advertisers, because I am their customer and I am the one paying them.
- fidotron 12y ago
  The problem with Google's methodology is destroying the market for others through "free" alternatives. When the Chinese do this it's called product dumping, and rightly criticized.
- eevilspock 12y ago
  [EDIT] Both my comments critiquing advertising are getting downvoted, as usual with no reply explaining where I'm wrong. Sigh. One way to advocate for greater accountability across the board is to advocate against the "free through advertising" business model: 1. It's a lie. It's not free. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 2. It undermines free-market mechanisms by having the paying customer be other than the consumer. And as fidotron points out, it also has the same effects as dumping against any non-advertising business model. What is the underlying business model of Apple? Make products that consumers are willing to pay for. DDG's underlying business model seems to rely on sales kick-backs and minimal advertising[1]. Not perfect, but not as bad as Google's. - [1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-DuckDuckGos-business-model https://www.quora.com/What-is-DuckDuckGos-business-model
chestnut-tree 12y ago
"It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as something "bad" a priori." Tracking is bad when you know little to nothing about what is being is tracked about you and how that information is used. While you might get targeted or personalised results as a result of tracking, that is likely just a small outcome of the data collected about you. Who knows what else is being analysed or number-crunched about your online behaviour? If you read Google's privacy policy, the most notable aspect is how little it tells you. Nothing about how your data is aggregated, who sees your data, how long that data is kept for, whether it's anonymised. Is the data collected to "protect Google and our users" (their words) used solely for that purpose? (For example, providing your date-of-birth for age verification and your mobile number for two-factor authentication.) Or is this information also used for tracking and profile-building? These are all reasonable questions to ask any company that tracks you online or asks for your personal information. But Google aren't giving answers. And Google arguably tracks online behaviour more than anyone else.
- jfuhrman 12y ago
  A big example of the intentionally murky and everchanging privacy policy confusion was in how it applied to student emails in Google Apps for Education: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.ht...
vram1994 12y ago
The issue here is information monopoly. If one provider controls every bit of information about you than it eventually leads to a master/puppet scenario. With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about - Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google. That's the issue here.
- astrocat 12y ago
  Monopoly situations certainly make abuse easier but the monopoly isn't inherently problematic. Government and law enforcement are essentially monopolies in their own right and we see the results when those powers are abused. But instead of being anarchists we call for transparency and accountability. The same applies here - if we spend our time trying to become "black boxes" (as someone else here called it) we're not really going to get anywhere. If we push for greater transparency and accountability of the companies that handle our information we can better trust that they will continue to act in ways that are mutually beneficial.
siculars 12y ago
The problem is that Google attaches your real identity to your activities.
- jpadkins 12y ago
  not anymore. And you have full visibility/control of what google 'remembers' about your account.
wzdd 12y ago
> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." That is just another term (and a significantly creepier one) for the same thing, for those people who don't want that kind of relationship. A good rule of thumb would be to assume that people who "don't want to be tracked" have already considered the fact that tracking may help the company in question improve its service to them -- after all, this is frequently given as the justification for tracking. From this viewpoint ("I don't want that kind of relationship, and am prepared to live with the associated service degradation"), it is logical to switch to services for which your envisaged greater accountability isn't necessary. Incidentally, I have issues with DDG simply because it will return Android programming results from 2011 in preference to those from 2014, despite the entire state of play having changed in those three years, because it was a really good result in 2011 -- or because it simply doesn't seem to index as much of the Web. These are just anecdotes, but in my personal experience the "relationship" I have with Google search isn't a very large part of why it's good.
SeanDav 12y ago
There is an additional problem (over and above privacy concerns) with putting all your eggs in one basket that is not mentioned - namely if you are cut off from the service for 1 reason or another. This can happen because you do something on 1 of the many services that goes against the TOS and you get cut off from all services. There are other reasons of course: The site could go down, the suite of services may be vulnerable to a tailored malware attack etc.
brave-new 12y ago
We live in the information age and information now is the ultimate power. Many people don't believe it, the same way that before the Civil and Crimean Wars not everybody believed that industry is the ultimate power of the industrial age. By letting Google collect enormous amounts of data about you, you are letting them have power over you. It can be used for pushing you to buy stuff against your rational will or for killing you, if say at any point you decide to not fully cooperate with a future totalitarian government.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  One can't live ones live today driven by an assumption that they'll be ruled by a totalitarian government in the future. Your mind is already trapped; you're effectively living in fear today that one day in the future you'll be living in fear.
  - throwaway7808 12y ago
    Most likely you and your kids are gonna be wiped out by intellegent machines just in a few decades.
    - jusben1369 12y ago
      Better have fun now then!
  - twobits 12y ago
    "One can't live ones live today driven by an assumption that they'll be ruled by a totalitarian government in the future." You may have heard it, but humans have this shit called "intelligence". It's some times used to predict future outcomes. (Yeah, I didn't believe this shit neither, the first time I heard about it. But please, do look it up online.)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
eevilspock 12y ago
> The REAL issue is accountability. True information lockdown rarely benefits anyone, but openness without accountability is useless and downright dangerous. Google is accountable. The problem is that they are accountable to advertisers, currently to the tune of about $55 billion per year. For consumers to hold Google accountable, they have to fight against their addiction to free web content and services, and start directly paying for what they consume. It's important to note that "Google is free!" is an outright lie, and in fact we are paying more for Google through advertising than if we just paid straight up[1]. > We should instead be spending our breath advocating for greater accountability in the system as a whole. The best way to do that is to advocate against ad-supported websites and services, and to advocate (and invent if missing) honest ways to get necessary revenue[2]. - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 [2] I avoid the term "monetization" which to me is a word invented to make it easier to be dishonest. [EDIT] Sigh. As usual, either Google or advertising apologists are downvoting without supplying a reason. Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Too many people here have a salary dependent on advertising, or an identity dependent on Google fanboyism.
- astrocat 12y ago
  > The best way to do that is to advocate against ad-supported websites and services, and to advocate (and invent if missing) honest ways to get necessary revenue I like this. I mean, not gonna lie I love free stuff as much as the next guy but most services that offer to remove ads for a subscription (Spotify/Pandora for example) I pay for. Even journalism - support your local NPR!
- Oletros 12y ago
  Do you want a reason? None of your post give any single proof, just some grandiloquent claims. [Too many people here have a salary dependent on advertising, or an identity dependent on Google fanboyism.] Tinfoil too much?
  - eevilspock 12y ago
    I provided plenty of facts and logic behind my statements. Did you even follow my link? And how do you refute my claims? You label them "grandiloquent" and say I must be wearing too much tinfoil. I bow deeply to your logic, reason and debate skills. It's obvious from your comment history that you're a Google fanboy. And an Amazon fanboy. And an Apple hater. Good luck with that.
skierscott 12y ago
> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." I'm fine with relationship building. Google can give me better search results based on other activity they observe; I'm perfectly fine with that. They're simply trying to better their product for the user. What I'm not fine with is the fact that Google is an advertising company. We're not the end-users, we're the product. Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers. This means that our valuable information is being leaked to third parties I'm not sure I can trust. At the core of it, I only want to give my information out to parties I trust. I don't care if it's valuable information or not, I just want to be in control. I don't want my info being sold to some advertising company -- after all, I'll only buy their product after I build a relationship with Google and they can provide the most relevant links.
- spot 12y ago
  > Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers. In this case your intuition has failed you.
  - skierscott 12y ago
    You're right; I was wrong. It makes complete sense for an advertiser to say, "Sell adds to people interested in X" and for i.e. Google to show those ads. Even for less reputable companies, it seems you're right: it makes more sense to sell ads for a keyword rather than to make the advertisers sort through a mass of data. Is that the case?
icantthinkofone 12y ago
On point!
quadrangle 12y ago
Actually search DDG for "hash salt" and although it shows some recipe images at the top, the first 6 and the vast majority of all the actual search results are specifically about cryptography, the top result being Wikipedia's article on the topic of salt in cryptography.
sroerick 12y ago
> While there are certainly plenty of examples of abuse of knowledge, I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." Not to accuse you of anything, but I would imagine that this is what most stalkers think, as well.
stonogo 12y ago
Pervasive surveillence is too high a price to pay for the convenience of being able to type "hash salt" instead of "hash salt computers". "Relationships" are built by two people, not by one person being followed around the entire interney by a multibillion dollar international conglomerate.
hartator 12y ago
I like that everyone seems to have a way better barista than I have.
twobits 12y ago
"The REAL issue is accountability." You are very naive. Nature hates a power vacuum. Accountability, requires being able to enforce, if the other party is not accountable. Otherwise, it's just a matter of time before you are being used in some, or many, ways. The asymmetry of power between Joe Doe, you, and a huge multi national, assures that you can't enforce, and so you can't keep the other party accountable.

Semaphor 12y ago

> My point is: I appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first. That's the reason I always come back to google and search logged in. Almost all my searches are computer or more generally electronic related. On other search engines I get useless results.

chimeracoder 12y ago

> appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first. Really? For that exact query, I get the Wikipedia page for "Salt (Cryptography)", "How to Hash Passwords", and "Salt the Hash - Security tutorial"... you get the idea[0]. AFAIK, the stuff you're seeing at the top is their 'zero click' information, which Google never provided (until after DDG added it and promoted it as a selling point). That's a little hit-or-miss, sure, but the actual search results of DDG are generally just as relevant. I've been using DDG as my primary search engine for years now - I still resort to "!g" searches sometimes, but I have to do it far less than I used to. [0] https://i.imgur.com/qt2Xpfm.png https://i.imgur.com/qt2Xpfm.png

astrocat 12y ago
It's true - the standard results on-point, but the top of the page is filled with images of food and links to recipes. This is, ultimately, a nuanced point. It's a bit difficult to contrive a situation where the discrepancies are extremely stark in a single case, but over time and with consistent use (especially something like Google search which i use literally hundreds of times each day) the differences add up to make a pretty pronounced impact.

Spearchucker 12y ago

Tracking is an issue in that your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer. Hey if that's ok with you then I'm cool with that. I'm not cool with me doing that. I run ad blockers. If you make a living from ads then offer me a paid-for alternative. I avoid everything Google. I use a Windows Phone without a Microsoft account. If an app wants access to my contacts it doesn't get installed. My blog is my own code because I own what I write so I want control. In the absolute sense. I'd rather pay than use a free service, because being a cynic I don't believe altruism in it's truest sense exists. I interact on my terms, or not at all.

kllrnohj 12y ago
It sounds a lot more like you don't actually understand how advertising works. No, tracking helps to provide you with better services, full stop. Since you use an adblocker, tracking isn't making anyone money at all. Your personal information is worth exactly $0.00 on its own.
- pyre 12y ago
  > No, tracking helps to provide you with better services, full stop No. Tracking is about allowing advertisers to better target people that they want to advertise to. A side-effect is providing you with 'better' services.
  - kllrnohj 12y ago
    > No. Tracking is about allowing advertisers to better target people that they want to advertise to. A side-effect is providing you with 'better' services. Those two are NOT exclusive. Targetted advertising only works because you the user find it more useful. And, no, it's not about better ads, it's about better services. The vast, VAST majority of tracking is never used in targetted ads. Targetted advertising is a very wide net, not hyper-focused.
astrocat 12y ago
> your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer. Your logic here villainizes a behavior simply because it benefits someone else. Let's say that every day you stop at Starbucks and order a cappuccino. The people who work at there recognize that you always show up at 8:10am and order the same thing so they begin to make sure it is ready for you every day so you don't have to wait. Did you give them explicit permission to notice your habits? No. Does their behavior benefit them? Yes, they keep you satisfied and paying obscene amounts of money for coffee on a daily basis. It's mutually beneficial. Now an employee of Starbucks could potentially give information about your daily routine to someone else who was looking for you (say to the police for whatever reason) but you don't hear anyone lamenting the presence of eyeballs in the heads of baristas as massive privacy invasions. I believe what you are really getting at is that these companies like Google and others can - and have at times - abuse the information they have available. This is exactly my point: what's needed is greater accountability.

flinkblink 12y ago

Nice to hear thoughts on this subject i agree with. Myself, i've long used Google and hadn't cared at all what information they collect about me. Rather, i openly give them information. Sure, if the world turns to hell and suddenly the government is at my door because Google "knew too much" then the naysayers can laugh at me all they like.. Then again, the world has turned to hell already, so is it really a time to laugh? In the mean time, i want to give Google my info, because "Google Now" is a great example of a service attempting to predict my needs. Keeping up to date with my life, and giving me information i want, without having to even ask for it. I don't want dumb computers, i want intelligent meaningful interactions, tailored to my life. And i can't get that by being a black box.

nitrogen 12y ago
Why can't we have something like that running locally, on hardware we control?
sasidharm 12y ago
Congratulations. You get the google customer of the year award.

dskhatri 12y ago

His point is more about not putting all your eggs in one basket; you certainly don't tell your barista about an upcoming physician's appointment, or that you are in the market for a house. Your barista is also disconnected from parties who may leverage the information you provide him/her. Similarly, you don't tell your broker that you prefer Ethiopian coffee. Google offers so many services that it has a much broader insight into who you are. To the privacy-conscious, that's an unacceptable fact. Nothing to be pained about.

sliverstorm 12y ago
If knowing that I prefer Ethiopian coffee helps my broker better serve me, I'd tell them in a heartbeat.
- andersonvom 12y ago
  What if knowing you prefer Ethiopian coffee would make your insurance company charge you more because statistically these people are more prone to medical issues? Would you tell them in a heart beat? The pendulum swings both ways, and this is the reason why all of this should be opt-in.
  - icantthinkofone 12y ago
    Like many here, you are pretending that happens, and it doesn't. Too many are living that lie.
    - pyre 12y ago
      Just because something isn't currently happening doesn't mean that it won't. You're ignoring the fact that the data isn't transient. It persists into the future, at which point these things can (and probably will) happen. It's like arguing in favor of a monarchy just because the current ruler is just, competent and benevolent; while ignoring the possibility that the next ruler will be violent and vicious.

pessimizer 12y ago

Why would you read "Like most people, I don't like to be tracked" and understand "tracking is, a priori, something bad, even when it's open and part of a relationship in which you appreciate the other party remembering certain things about you" ?

GhotiFish 12y ago

Truthfully. I would have no problem with the amount of data google aggregated on me, if I could depend on them not using that data against me, or to manipulate me, or to sell it to someone who would do either of those two. If someone came up to me and said "I'll give you 5 dollars if you give me the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and personal vulnerabilities of all your friends", agreeing to that would be considered a massive breach of trust and a horrible act. On the web it seems like standard procedure. I will give you that tracking isn't innately bad, but it is an act of trust, and the question is: do you trust google?

astrocat 12y ago
> the question is: do you trust google? This is too myopic of a question. Do you trust Apple? Do you trust Microsoft? Do you trust ____? There are arbitrarily many of these questions to ask. What really needs to be asked is: how can we establish levels of trust in companies and services that handle our digital information that approaches the level of trust we have in our direct, inter-personal connections? Not ratting on your friend is trust established through close social connections. Trusting Google to not sell you out is a level of trust established... how?
- rtpg 12y ago
  >Trusting Google to not sell you out is a level of trust established... how? It's trust from potential destruction. If Google was obviously using your email contents to sell you out, then people would stop using the service. It's like how people don't want to give out their email address to certain organisations out of fear of spam and phishing. Google can't exist without that trust, so they're incentivised to act in a trustworthy manner.
zmmmmm 12y ago
> do you trust google Ironically, exactly because of the intense scrutiny they face with every small decision they make, I have a lot more faith in Google's inability to be evil than just about any other player. I certainly can't spend the time to verify that all the other players I might give my data to are honest and well intentioned will always stay that way. But at least with Google I have pretty good faith that others are going to do that for me. Sometimes I wonder if the critics of Google's privacy realise they may be having the opposite effect they intend in this way ...

boling11 12y ago

Advocating for greater accountability across the board sounds great in principle, but what does that even mean? Are we to hold Google, accountable for monetizing the data they collect on us? That's the social contract you engage in with Google, when you use their services. Looking at the underlying business model is more effective. I am confident that DDG is going to respect my privacy, because that's what their whole business is built on! Similarly, I would be shocked if Apple turned around and started selling my data to advertisers, because I am their customer and I am the one paying them.

fidotron 12y ago
The problem with Google's methodology is destroying the market for others through "free" alternatives. When the Chinese do this it's called product dumping, and rightly criticized.
eevilspock 12y ago
[EDIT] Both my comments critiquing advertising are getting downvoted, as usual with no reply explaining where I'm wrong. Sigh. One way to advocate for greater accountability across the board is to advocate against the "free through advertising" business model: 1. It's a lie. It's not free. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 2. It undermines free-market mechanisms by having the paying customer be other than the consumer. And as fidotron points out, it also has the same effects as dumping against any non-advertising business model. What is the underlying business model of Apple? Make products that consumers are willing to pay for. DDG's underlying business model seems to rely on sales kick-backs and minimal advertising[1]. Not perfect, but not as bad as Google's. - [1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-DuckDuckGos-business-model https://www.quora.com/What-is-DuckDuckGos-business-model

chestnut-tree 12y ago

"It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as something "bad" a priori." Tracking is bad when you know little to nothing about what is being is tracked about you and how that information is used. While you might get targeted or personalised results as a result of tracking, that is likely just a small outcome of the data collected about you. Who knows what else is being analysed or number-crunched about your online behaviour? If you read Google's privacy policy, the most notable aspect is how little it tells you. Nothing about how your data is aggregated, who sees your data, how long that data is kept for, whether it's anonymised. Is the data collected to "protect Google and our users" (their words) used solely for that purpose? (For example, providing your date-of-birth for age verification and your mobile number for two-factor authentication.) Or is this information also used for tracking and profile-building? These are all reasonable questions to ask any company that tracks you online or asks for your personal information. But Google aren't giving answers. And Google arguably tracks online behaviour more than anyone else.

jfuhrman 12y ago
A big example of the intentionally murky and everchanging privacy policy confusion was in how it applied to student emails in Google Apps for Education: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.ht...

vram1994 12y ago

The issue here is information monopoly. If one provider controls every bit of information about you than it eventually leads to a master/puppet scenario. With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about - Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google. That's the issue here.

astrocat 12y ago
Monopoly situations certainly make abuse easier but the monopoly isn't inherently problematic. Government and law enforcement are essentially monopolies in their own right and we see the results when those powers are abused. But instead of being anarchists we call for transparency and accountability. The same applies here - if we spend our time trying to become "black boxes" (as someone else here called it) we're not really going to get anywhere. If we push for greater transparency and accountability of the companies that handle our information we can better trust that they will continue to act in ways that are mutually beneficial.

siculars 12y ago

The problem is that Google attaches your real identity to your activities.

jpadkins 12y ago
not anymore. And you have full visibility/control of what google 'remembers' about your account.

wzdd 12y ago

> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." That is just another term (and a significantly creepier one) for the same thing, for those people who don't want that kind of relationship. A good rule of thumb would be to assume that people who "don't want to be tracked" have already considered the fact that tracking may help the company in question improve its service to them -- after all, this is frequently given as the justification for tracking. From this viewpoint ("I don't want that kind of relationship, and am prepared to live with the associated service degradation"), it is logical to switch to services for which your envisaged greater accountability isn't necessary. Incidentally, I have issues with DDG simply because it will return Android programming results from 2011 in preference to those from 2014, despite the entire state of play having changed in those three years, because it was a really good result in 2011 -- or because it simply doesn't seem to index as much of the Web. These are just anecdotes, but in my personal experience the "relationship" I have with Google search isn't a very large part of why it's good.

SeanDav 12y ago

There is an additional problem (over and above privacy concerns) with putting all your eggs in one basket that is not mentioned - namely if you are cut off from the service for 1 reason or another. This can happen because you do something on 1 of the many services that goes against the TOS and you get cut off from all services. There are other reasons of course: The site could go down, the suite of services may be vulnerable to a tailored malware attack etc.

brave-new 12y ago

We live in the information age and information now is the ultimate power. Many people don't believe it, the same way that before the Civil and Crimean Wars not everybody believed that industry is the ultimate power of the industrial age. By letting Google collect enormous amounts of data about you, you are letting them have power over you. It can be used for pushing you to buy stuff against your rational will or for killing you, if say at any point you decide to not fully cooperate with a future totalitarian government.

jusben1369 12y ago
One can't live ones live today driven by an assumption that they'll be ruled by a totalitarian government in the future. Your mind is already trapped; you're effectively living in fear today that one day in the future you'll be living in fear.
- throwaway7808 12y ago
  Most likely you and your kids are gonna be wiped out by intellegent machines just in a few decades.
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    Better have fun now then!
- twobits 12y ago
  "One can't live ones live today driven by an assumption that they'll be ruled by a totalitarian government in the future." You may have heard it, but humans have this shit called "intelligence". It's some times used to predict future outcomes. (Yeah, I didn't believe this shit neither, the first time I heard about it. But please, do look it up online.)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

eevilspock 12y ago

> The REAL issue is accountability. True information lockdown rarely benefits anyone, but openness without accountability is useless and downright dangerous. Google is accountable. The problem is that they are accountable to advertisers, currently to the tune of about $55 billion per year. For consumers to hold Google accountable, they have to fight against their addiction to free web content and services, and start directly paying for what they consume. It's important to note that "Google is free!" is an outright lie, and in fact we are paying more for Google through advertising than if we just paid straight up[1]. > We should instead be spending our breath advocating for greater accountability in the system as a whole. The best way to do that is to advocate against ad-supported websites and services, and to advocate (and invent if missing) honest ways to get necessary revenue[2]. - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 [2] I avoid the term "monetization" which to me is a word invented to make it easier to be dishonest. [EDIT] Sigh. As usual, either Google or advertising apologists are downvoting without supplying a reason. Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Too many people here have a salary dependent on advertising, or an identity dependent on Google fanboyism.

astrocat 12y ago
> The best way to do that is to advocate against ad-supported websites and services, and to advocate (and invent if missing) honest ways to get necessary revenue I like this. I mean, not gonna lie I love free stuff as much as the next guy but most services that offer to remove ads for a subscription (Spotify/Pandora for example) I pay for. Even journalism - support your local NPR!
Oletros 12y ago
Do you want a reason? None of your post give any single proof, just some grandiloquent claims. [Too many people here have a salary dependent on advertising, or an identity dependent on Google fanboyism.] Tinfoil too much?
- eevilspock 12y ago
  I provided plenty of facts and logic behind my statements. Did you even follow my link? And how do you refute my claims? You label them "grandiloquent" and say I must be wearing too much tinfoil. I bow deeply to your logic, reason and debate skills. It's obvious from your comment history that you're a Google fanboy. And an Amazon fanboy. And an Apple hater. Good luck with that.

skierscott 12y ago

> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." I'm fine with relationship building. Google can give me better search results based on other activity they observe; I'm perfectly fine with that. They're simply trying to better their product for the user. What I'm not fine with is the fact that Google is an advertising company. We're not the end-users, we're the product. Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers. This means that our valuable information is being leaked to third parties I'm not sure I can trust. At the core of it, I only want to give my information out to parties I trust. I don't care if it's valuable information or not, I just want to be in control. I don't want my info being sold to some advertising company -- after all, I'll only buy their product after I build a relationship with Google and they can provide the most relevant links.

spot 12y ago
> Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers. In this case your intuition has failed you.
- skierscott 12y ago
  You're right; I was wrong. It makes complete sense for an advertiser to say, "Sell adds to people interested in X" and for i.e. Google to show those ads. Even for less reputable companies, it seems you're right: it makes more sense to sell ads for a keyword rather than to make the advertisers sort through a mass of data. Is that the case?

icantthinkofone 12y ago

On point!

quadrangle 12y ago

Actually search DDG for "hash salt" and although it shows some recipe images at the top, the first 6 and the vast majority of all the actual search results are specifically about cryptography, the top result being Wikipedia's article on the topic of salt in cryptography.

sroerick 12y ago

> While there are certainly plenty of examples of abuse of knowledge, I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." Not to accuse you of anything, but I would imagine that this is what most stalkers think, as well.

stonogo 12y ago

Pervasive surveillence is too high a price to pay for the convenience of being able to type "hash salt" instead of "hash salt computers". "Relationships" are built by two people, not by one person being followed around the entire interney by a multibillion dollar international conglomerate.

hartator 12y ago

I like that everyone seems to have a way better barista than I have.

twobits 12y ago

"The REAL issue is accountability." You are very naive. Nature hates a power vacuum. Accountability, requires being able to enforce, if the other party is not accountable. Otherwise, it's just a matter of time before you are being used in some, or many, ways. The asymmetry of power between Joe Doe, you, and a huge multi national, assures that you can't enforce, and so you can't keep the other party accountable.