I left gmail for self-hosted email. I host a matrix server. I left reddit for Lemmy. I left Android for iPhone. These and many other decisions have been about increasing data privacy.
In a sense, I stopped working for a corporation and pursued my own life for similar reasons. If others are telling me what to do, I am being limited, because I have found my own ideas to be better. Instead of being bitter about that, it is better to execute on them.
In the pursuit of privacy, many other things snap into place. A questioning of authority. A questioning of how society is run. A tracing of the root causes. It becomes very clear the situation we are in on a planetary scale. That clarity spreads to a realization of the extremely limited and self serving ambitions held by those driving the collective human vehicle, whether corporate or government.
Long story short, yes, privacy affects my decisions, and it is one of many starting points to reach some obvious and inevitable conclusions.
Graphene has questionable dev choices, especially given the limited hardware options -- basically, Google hardware. I do not trust Google at all anymore. Their interests align directly against privacy.
If you can't attack their code/work, you attack the person ?
Atleast one of their devs is being gangstalked by Kiwifarms and has powerfull adversaries in the weapons industry who work against him and his work.
Please be careful with your criticism because there is entire troll-farms/PR-bureaus out to hurt them. Glowies are probably not happy with them either, so that's a tough world they live in .
The questionable dev choices I am talking about is such limited hardware support, pixel devices only being officially supported. That is Google hardware and I don't trust it.
That isn't attacking a person, that is a direct criticism of a project.
Your argument puts the world upside down. Non supported hardware/platforms have limited support for the latest hard & software security features.
Pixels simply lag least behind the curb compared to other devices. And if Google, Qualcomm or Intel for that matter where to be trusted they would have made onto the Wassenaar lists as Dual-Use goods already.
There are limits to as far as you can go.
If you have your mail server in order, think SPF, DKIM/DMARC, this rarely if ever happens and when it does you will be notified.
These days, i know more private individuals who configured their mail server well than that i know businesses who do.
This is true in an ideal sense, but when it comes to phones, you have to look at the whole spectrum of the situation. Given you can sneak a SoC in a phone with backdoor access to everything, can you really ever make it secure? You need open source hardware along with software, and that just isn't where we are at.
Apple is more aligned with privacy than other megacorps, so I trust their hardware more. I don't trust their software, but we need to make compromises in today's world to function.
Android devices, on the other hand, I do not trust at all. Google / Samsung / etc all have high motivations to compromise security for profit, higher than Apple.
More than privacy, I want safety. So, I don’t mind that much that Apple or Google got my home address details or bank cards: I know it’s very unlikely that those details will land in the wrong hands (i.e., illegal stuff). I know the data will be used for selling me stuff. I can live with that.
On the other hand, I don’t like to give my home address and or passport details to a random website (like airlines or shops) because I fear they will be sold (or stolen) and I may be in trouble.
You know, everyday there is a non-null probability of a massive data leak from Google (or any of the big data hoarder). Everyday we roll the dice of this eventuality and law of large numbers tells us that it will happen.
when I first saw how the hotel I was working at was saving credit card information of all their customers forever in plaintext (to charge them later), it appalled me. all it takes is one indecent employee to take that information and sell it, and then think of how many hotels there are in the world, almost all of them also saving this info. (this does not account for booking.com stuff where there is an in-between credit card to preserve your privacy)
I think it's important for a small minority of people. Most of the population does not give a second thought, as long as it doesn't affect their lives in an obvious way. Most people are fine sharing their data, if it leads to better more personalized ads, most people gladly share their personal information on social media.
Data privacy is of course very important, but not something the general public is super interested in.
I used to be very into privacy, and in my case it became a sort of purist extremism where I felt a sort of superiority for using tools that were open-source, private or disconnected from the internet. I deleted all my social accounts etc.
when I saw that despite my efforts, companies were still able to track, target and advertise to me, and in more ingenious ways than I could combat, I lost interest. not to say that privacy isn't important or that I don't take steps to maintain mine, but along the way I accepted a certain level of giving up privacy in order to have a sane life.
Most people, when talking abstractly about data privacy, are all for it, I think. But then see how many of us participate in bonus programs when shopping, carry smartphones that track our locations at all times, give all kinds of permissions to apps, or accepting away annoying pop up banners.
So, is it all just talk, and in practice, we don't really worry about data privacy?
If so, what are the reasons? Is it because we don't really experience an immidiate negative impact? Or perhaps the alleged negative implications have been overemphasized?
Surveillance being directly unpleasant would be detrimental to the task at hand and is not beneficial to the surveillant, I'm not sure why we should use the absolute worst case scenarios (dystopian future, social credit systems, massive data breaches, blackmail, etc.) as a measuring stick.
I think I know what you're getting at with the objection against the abstract conception of surveillance technologies or 'privacy' matters, but I don't think it is entirely fair; I reckon that if you were to give this hypothetical group some concrete examples as opposed to abstract ones, they would object just the same. For example, do you reckon most Nissan drivers would be okay with their car collecting data on that owner's sex life?
Probably not. On the other hand, it is more likely they would be "okay" with this data collection if it's presented to them hidden within a tome of general, mundane sounding tech speak abstracted under a surface layer of Legalese.
But making this exclusively an issue of privacy I think misses the point for most Westerners, leading us to be swayed by arguments such as the one you reiterated about the aspect of self-surveillance/voluntary data donation.
It hardly requires an argument, in my opinion, to state that it is true that people now frequently hand over their data to companies, and that in recent years it is indeed true that companies have given something in exchange for this data. But that in itself does not say much, nor does it help us decide on whether or not this exchange or aspects of it are in any way problematic. Donation that either is voluntary or seems voluntary but is rewarded socially is nothing new; blood donation is a pretty good example of it.
Where I see a problem in regards to this situation is that such a situation would be desirable compared to our current one. It sometimes is portrayed as if it were our current situation, which to me borders on normalized dishonesty (for the record, I know you're simply throwing it up for discussion). Data, of course, is and has been so profitable for more than half of a century that it is already a cliché to call it the new oil.
It is problematic to me that the inoffensive claim that data collection could improve a product or process is coupled with other inoffensive claims and the nearly universally acceptable desire of some mutual benefit arising from nearly any situation with two parties in exchange, and is then somehow used to justify what is in essence a vastly asymmetrical relationship where it seems more that the customer was deceived by the world's largest corporations in a vicious cycle of having to keep up the facade of eternal rapid expansion on the basis of unstoppable technological innovation, not being able to deliver on this promise, and having to meet profits another way (worse every cycle, seemingly).
Painting this as only (or even mostly) a privacy problem is faulty at best and counterproductive at worst. One of the biggest 'privacy scandals' in recent years that I can think of, for example, Cambridge Analytica, was one where in actuality privacy hardly comes into play beyond the peripheral discussion generated by it. The issue there is that it does not entail the absence of a massive problem, but rather that there is a massive misdiagnosed problem, or several sizable misdiagnosed problems. It's hardly a challenge to think of situations of such data collection/digital surveillance and find problems that are barely privacy problems, if at all, but are predominantly discussed as such. Not only is that not helpful as the problems aren't tackled, but it can lead to the undesirable situation where the problem is not addressed but swept aside as privacy is found to not be an issue. Data being stored encrypted in the Cloud does not do away with the issues of surveillance and data collection (amongst others), Google making an advertising profile of you is not perfectly acceptable as long as it's abstracted as a hashed ID, Tesla Sentry mode not recording 24/7 and data being encrypted does not make it okay, Amazon's Ring camera doorbell activating and tracking based on a black box algorithm is problematic regardless of whether or not their promise of employees not viewing the data holds or not.
Not that privacy does not have a part to play here, it has, from memory all three of those I named have had scandals where a rogue employee viewed customer data, but the problem(s) neither starts or ends there.
Having said that, my claim is deliberately quite modest. There's an argument to be made that some might have more urgent and legitimate issues squarely in the domain of privacy here, and that I am underselling those issues. That's not my intention, quite the opposite. For myself and I would assume most other Westerners—dissidents, (sexual or religious) minority groups, journalists, and other vulnerable people aside— it is quite easy to diminish the importance of privacy due to a lack of realistic consequence, and on that basis selfishly deciding that there's no consequences for anyone. I believe my position still works for both, and will always be on the side of privacy, just not because of privacy alone.
In short, I think both situations you describe are likely true, but I reject both the implication that this alleged hypocrisy makes it a non-issue, and the implication that if this is not an issue of privacy for a privileged majority, there is no issue at all.
Apologies, poor joke around 'proving a negative' in a sense :P
My delay with a lot of these things could be related to privacy implications, but really, it's mostly autonomy.
A lot of what's sold/offered has become depdendency forming. Either fairly obviously as a subscription, or more nefariously, a constant drip of feel-good chemicals.
Behind all of this, no need is really serviced, so I consider a lot of it twisted rent-seeking 'opportunity cost'.
I realize this is nearing Marxist talk or something, but there hasn't been some life-changing invention that's caught my interest since the desktop computer. I've bought/sold several laptops without using them.
My phone is on life support. If not for the occasional trip, I wouldn't even be eyeing a flip phone/burner. I'd go off-grid like it's 1995 but occasionally 'dial in' on a land line.
My thesis, really, is this: it's everything else that's making me this way. Reaction to overwhelming loudness!
There's a lot of PR about this stuff, but I think it's rooted in reality. Privacy/autonomy are related and I'm not smart enough to split the difference :D
Apologies, poor joke around 'proving a negative' in a sense :P
Dang, no, I apologize, my pun detector doesn't work at the weekend.
I can relate to a lot of your reasoning, I would probably even cancel my internet at home if it wasn't for close relatives that live abroad. It would become a lot harder to stay in touch. But, like you say, this is not so much related to privacy as it is to other concerns.
I refuse to use any site that is not compatible with the “I don’t care about cookies” extension. If I see the popup or the site breaks, I’m out.
Professionally, we decided to defer some app updates on several occasions when pushing an update required extra work to check some checkboxes in the extremely useless data & privacy mandatory sections in both app stores.
The whole point is that I literally don't care. Nothing ever has, nothing ever will and nothing ever could happen to me because of cookies or whatever data the browser extension can use. So much time wasted managing this.
Because I notice that in a lot of everyday activities, people seem to favor convenience of privacy in many circumstances. Here are a few examples:
- let Google index your private emails
- share your shopping habits with reward point programs
- allow big phone providers to track your location
- post your life details on social media
I think it's important to point out that I don't think it's a black and white matter. You can easily care about data privacy in one sector but not at all in another part of your life. But I think it's a point worth discussing that when you ask people about data privacy in the abstract, most people will probably stress that it's very important. Yet in everyday life, we have stuff like the examples above, where people don't seem to put their money where their mouth is.
Are there any specific examples that you have in mind when you say "of course it affects decisions both personal and in business"?
I would expect businesses to be much more privacy aware than Joe Private.
data privacy is all good and well on phones and computers...but shop online and use creditcard/paypal...then what? My decisions to use Graphene, and switch to Fastmail seem in vain when I consider i dont know how to shop online "privately"...
I quit Google Search (for DDG), Chrome (for Iridium on OSX and Safari on iOS), Android (for iPhone), Dropbox (for Internxt). I am still using Gmail but only for dumb emails. For the important ones, I moved to Tuta.
I also quit Facebook, but firstly because it’s a shithole, it’s the place where you ‘reconnect’ with ‘friends’ from Junior High… Good Lord!
I don’t have accounts on Instagram, Snap and, God forbid, TikTok. I only access Twitter via XDeck, and for no more than 5 minutes a day.
I don’t know if I will ever drop Gmail because
having a second email address is useful, and Tuta, while wonderful, is perhaps still lacking a thing or two, but for the rest, I would never go back!
I left gmail for self-hosted email. I host a matrix server. I left reddit for Lemmy. I left Android for iPhone. These and many other decisions have been about increasing data privacy.
In a sense, I stopped working for a corporation and pursued my own life for similar reasons. If others are telling me what to do, I am being limited, because I have found my own ideas to be better. Instead of being bitter about that, it is better to execute on them.
In the pursuit of privacy, many other things snap into place. A questioning of authority. A questioning of how society is run. A tracing of the root causes. It becomes very clear the situation we are in on a planetary scale. That clarity spreads to a realization of the extremely limited and self serving ambitions held by those driving the collective human vehicle, whether corporate or government.
Long story short, yes, privacy affects my decisions, and it is one of many starting points to reach some obvious and inevitable conclusions.
One of your choice felt odd to me, why choose iPhone over privacy focused forks of Android like Graphene?
Graphene has questionable dev choices, especially given the limited hardware options -- basically, Google hardware. I do not trust Google at all anymore. Their interests align directly against privacy.
If you can't attack their code/work, you attack the person ? Atleast one of their devs is being gangstalked by Kiwifarms and has powerfull adversaries in the weapons industry who work against him and his work. Please be careful with your criticism because there is entire troll-farms/PR-bureaus out to hurt them. Glowies are probably not happy with them either, so that's a tough world they live in .
?
The questionable dev choices I am talking about is such limited hardware support, pixel devices only being officially supported. That is Google hardware and I don't trust it.
That isn't attacking a person, that is a direct criticism of a project.
Your argument puts the world upside down. Non supported hardware/platforms have limited support for the latest hard & software security features. Pixels simply lag least behind the curb compared to other devices. And if Google, Qualcomm or Intel for that matter where to be trusted they would have made onto the Wassenaar lists as Dual-Use goods already. There are limits to as far as you can go.
Their hardware aligns with security, because you cannot have one without the other.
The software is where their privacy invasions begin.
Upon further inspection, they're the only place to find something resembling secure hardware.
Just don't run their software or use their services.
Cool!
I keep hearing that self-hosted email gets discriminated against these days, in terms of delivery rejection. Is that your experience, too?
Yes, this is true. But I rarely send emails, it is basically the corporate communication channel these days.
I use a wildcard domain and give each business a different email, for security and privacy. I almost never need to respond.
Generally, when responding, the email is always accepted.
If you have your mail server in order, think SPF, DKIM/DMARC, this rarely if ever happens and when it does you will be notified. These days, i know more private individuals who configured their mail server well than that i know businesses who do.
Privacy and closed source don't go hand in hand together unless you have a different opinion.
This is true in an ideal sense, but when it comes to phones, you have to look at the whole spectrum of the situation. Given you can sneak a SoC in a phone with backdoor access to everything, can you really ever make it secure? You need open source hardware along with software, and that just isn't where we are at.
Apple is more aligned with privacy than other megacorps, so I trust their hardware more. I don't trust their software, but we need to make compromises in today's world to function.
Android devices, on the other hand, I do not trust at all. Google / Samsung / etc all have high motivations to compromise security for profit, higher than Apple.
> I don't trust their software, but we need to make compromises in today's world to function.
Perhaps, but that's not one of them.
More than privacy, I want safety. So, I don’t mind that much that Apple or Google got my home address details or bank cards: I know it’s very unlikely that those details will land in the wrong hands (i.e., illegal stuff). I know the data will be used for selling me stuff. I can live with that.
On the other hand, I don’t like to give my home address and or passport details to a random website (like airlines or shops) because I fear they will be sold (or stolen) and I may be in trouble.
You know, everyday there is a non-null probability of a massive data leak from Google (or any of the big data hoarder). Everyday we roll the dice of this eventuality and law of large numbers tells us that it will happen.
when I first saw how the hotel I was working at was saving credit card information of all their customers forever in plaintext (to charge them later), it appalled me. all it takes is one indecent employee to take that information and sell it, and then think of how many hotels there are in the world, almost all of them also saving this info. (this does not account for booking.com stuff where there is an in-between credit card to preserve your privacy)
I think it's important for a small minority of people. Most of the population does not give a second thought, as long as it doesn't affect their lives in an obvious way. Most people are fine sharing their data, if it leads to better more personalized ads, most people gladly share their personal information on social media.
Data privacy is of course very important, but not something the general public is super interested in.
Which begs the question: if the general public is not super interested in data privacy, is it still fair to call it very important?
Is it okay to steal from someone if they never notice?
Who gets to decide what is considered important and what isn't?
Since it's my stuff, I get to decide if it's important or not, don't you ?
I used to be very into privacy, and in my case it became a sort of purist extremism where I felt a sort of superiority for using tools that were open-source, private or disconnected from the internet. I deleted all my social accounts etc.
when I saw that despite my efforts, companies were still able to track, target and advertise to me, and in more ingenious ways than I could combat, I lost interest. not to say that privacy isn't important or that I don't take steps to maintain mine, but along the way I accepted a certain level of giving up privacy in order to have a sane life.
Most people, when talking abstractly about data privacy, are all for it, I think. But then see how many of us participate in bonus programs when shopping, carry smartphones that track our locations at all times, give all kinds of permissions to apps, or accepting away annoying pop up banners.
So, is it all just talk, and in practice, we don't really worry about data privacy?
If so, what are the reasons? Is it because we don't really experience an immidiate negative impact? Or perhaps the alleged negative implications have been overemphasized?
What are your thoughts...?
Surveillance being directly unpleasant would be detrimental to the task at hand and is not beneficial to the surveillant, I'm not sure why we should use the absolute worst case scenarios (dystopian future, social credit systems, massive data breaches, blackmail, etc.) as a measuring stick.
I think I know what you're getting at with the objection against the abstract conception of surveillance technologies or 'privacy' matters, but I don't think it is entirely fair; I reckon that if you were to give this hypothetical group some concrete examples as opposed to abstract ones, they would object just the same. For example, do you reckon most Nissan drivers would be okay with their car collecting data on that owner's sex life? Probably not. On the other hand, it is more likely they would be "okay" with this data collection if it's presented to them hidden within a tome of general, mundane sounding tech speak abstracted under a surface layer of Legalese.
But making this exclusively an issue of privacy I think misses the point for most Westerners, leading us to be swayed by arguments such as the one you reiterated about the aspect of self-surveillance/voluntary data donation. It hardly requires an argument, in my opinion, to state that it is true that people now frequently hand over their data to companies, and that in recent years it is indeed true that companies have given something in exchange for this data. But that in itself does not say much, nor does it help us decide on whether or not this exchange or aspects of it are in any way problematic. Donation that either is voluntary or seems voluntary but is rewarded socially is nothing new; blood donation is a pretty good example of it. Where I see a problem in regards to this situation is that such a situation would be desirable compared to our current one. It sometimes is portrayed as if it were our current situation, which to me borders on normalized dishonesty (for the record, I know you're simply throwing it up for discussion). Data, of course, is and has been so profitable for more than half of a century that it is already a cliché to call it the new oil. It is problematic to me that the inoffensive claim that data collection could improve a product or process is coupled with other inoffensive claims and the nearly universally acceptable desire of some mutual benefit arising from nearly any situation with two parties in exchange, and is then somehow used to justify what is in essence a vastly asymmetrical relationship where it seems more that the customer was deceived by the world's largest corporations in a vicious cycle of having to keep up the facade of eternal rapid expansion on the basis of unstoppable technological innovation, not being able to deliver on this promise, and having to meet profits another way (worse every cycle, seemingly).
Painting this as only (or even mostly) a privacy problem is faulty at best and counterproductive at worst. One of the biggest 'privacy scandals' in recent years that I can think of, for example, Cambridge Analytica, was one where in actuality privacy hardly comes into play beyond the peripheral discussion generated by it. The issue there is that it does not entail the absence of a massive problem, but rather that there is a massive misdiagnosed problem, or several sizable misdiagnosed problems. It's hardly a challenge to think of situations of such data collection/digital surveillance and find problems that are barely privacy problems, if at all, but are predominantly discussed as such. Not only is that not helpful as the problems aren't tackled, but it can lead to the undesirable situation where the problem is not addressed but swept aside as privacy is found to not be an issue. Data being stored encrypted in the Cloud does not do away with the issues of surveillance and data collection (amongst others), Google making an advertising profile of you is not perfectly acceptable as long as it's abstracted as a hashed ID, Tesla Sentry mode not recording 24/7 and data being encrypted does not make it okay, Amazon's Ring camera doorbell activating and tracking based on a black box algorithm is problematic regardless of whether or not their promise of employees not viewing the data holds or not. Not that privacy does not have a part to play here, it has, from memory all three of those I named have had scandals where a rogue employee viewed customer data, but the problem(s) neither starts or ends there. Having said that, my claim is deliberately quite modest. There's an argument to be made that some might have more urgent and legitimate issues squarely in the domain of privacy here, and that I am underselling those issues. That's not my intention, quite the opposite. For myself and I would assume most other Westerners—dissidents, (sexual or religious) minority groups, journalists, and other vulnerable people aside— it is quite easy to diminish the importance of privacy due to a lack of realistic consequence, and on that basis selfishly deciding that there's no consequences for anyone. I believe my position still works for both, and will always be on the side of privacy, just not because of privacy alone.
In short, I think both situations you describe are likely true, but I reject both the implication that this alleged hypocrisy makes it a non-issue, and the implication that if this is not an issue of privacy for a privileged majority, there is no issue at all.
I'm twenty years behind my peers with adopting quite a few things, so I don't think I'm all talk.
Not really sure how to prove it, though
No need to prove it. Is this specificially because of doubts about the privacy implications?
Apologies, poor joke around 'proving a negative' in a sense :P
My delay with a lot of these things could be related to privacy implications, but really, it's mostly autonomy.
A lot of what's sold/offered has become depdendency forming. Either fairly obviously as a subscription, or more nefariously, a constant drip of feel-good chemicals.
Behind all of this, no need is really serviced, so I consider a lot of it twisted rent-seeking 'opportunity cost'.
I realize this is nearing Marxist talk or something, but there hasn't been some life-changing invention that's caught my interest since the desktop computer. I've bought/sold several laptops without using them.
My phone is on life support. If not for the occasional trip, I wouldn't even be eyeing a flip phone/burner. I'd go off-grid like it's 1995 but occasionally 'dial in' on a land line.
My thesis, really, is this: it's everything else that's making me this way. Reaction to overwhelming loudness!
There's a lot of PR about this stuff, but I think it's rooted in reality. Privacy/autonomy are related and I'm not smart enough to split the difference :D
Apologies, poor joke around 'proving a negative' in a sense :P
Dang, no, I apologize, my pun detector doesn't work at the weekend.
I can relate to a lot of your reasoning, I would probably even cancel my internet at home if it wasn't for close relatives that live abroad. It would become a lot harder to stay in touch. But, like you say, this is not so much related to privacy as it is to other concerns.
I refuse to use any site that is not compatible with the “I don’t care about cookies” extension. If I see the popup or the site breaks, I’m out.
Professionally, we decided to defer some app updates on several occasions when pushing an update required extra work to check some checkboxes in the extremely useless data & privacy mandatory sections in both app stores.
wasn't "I don’t care about cookies" bought by Avast? they don't have great track record of respecting privacy
The whole point is that I literally don't care. Nothing ever has, nothing ever will and nothing ever could happen to me because of cookies or whatever data the browser extension can use. So much time wasted managing this.
Of course it affects decisions both personal and in business? What makes you think it doesn't?
Because I notice that in a lot of everyday activities, people seem to favor convenience of privacy in many circumstances. Here are a few examples:
- let Google index your private emails - share your shopping habits with reward point programs - allow big phone providers to track your location - post your life details on social media
I think it's important to point out that I don't think it's a black and white matter. You can easily care about data privacy in one sector but not at all in another part of your life. But I think it's a point worth discussing that when you ask people about data privacy in the abstract, most people will probably stress that it's very important. Yet in everyday life, we have stuff like the examples above, where people don't seem to put their money where their mouth is.
Are there any specific examples that you have in mind when you say "of course it affects decisions both personal and in business"?
I would expect businesses to be much more privacy aware than Joe Private.
I still refuse to use a smartphone or social media.
That makes two of us.
data privacy is all good and well on phones and computers...but shop online and use creditcard/paypal...then what? My decisions to use Graphene, and switch to Fastmail seem in vain when I consider i dont know how to shop online "privately"...
I actually don't care about it anymore. But I want a cut of the profit when they sell my data.
I quit Google Search (for DDG), Chrome (for Iridium on OSX and Safari on iOS), Android (for iPhone), Dropbox (for Internxt). I am still using Gmail but only for dumb emails. For the important ones, I moved to Tuta.
I also quit Facebook, but firstly because it’s a shithole, it’s the place where you ‘reconnect’ with ‘friends’ from Junior High… Good Lord!
I don’t have accounts on Instagram, Snap and, God forbid, TikTok. I only access Twitter via XDeck, and for no more than 5 minutes a day.
I am doing my best.
More power to you!
How is that working for you, though?
It’s working very well, thanks.
I don’t know if I will ever drop Gmail because having a second email address is useful, and Tuta, while wonderful, is perhaps still lacking a thing or two, but for the rest, I would never go back!