I feel like I'm in the minority, but I'm mostly ok with Google. I feel like they are good stewards of my data (encrypting even internal traffic, severe restrictions on who can get access to my data, doing useful things with that data). I believe Facebook has similar policies in place.
I think their biggest sins are just being big. It makes them a larger target (which probably necessitates them taking extreme protections, otherwise they WOULD be taken down). Others that are much more concerning don't get attacked simply because they are smaller. For example Lyft and Uber who have both been found to have all sorts of personally identifiable information available to random employees. Or various ISPs tracking of data flowing through it.
To me, the cost of being google's product, is outweighed by what they provide me with. Search, news, music, assistant functions, "remember this day", "here is your family growing up", e-mail, automation of e-mails into actionable widgets... These things all are powered by Google knowing kind of a lot about me.
I don't know of any alternative to Google for these services, that respects privacy.
2) The NSA in turn shares information with law-enforcement agencies. ICREACH contains information on the private communications millions of American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
3) The DEA (and possibly other agencies) uses this information to target Americans, and then lies about the origins of the information in a process called "parallel construction."
It's not difficult to see the potential for abuse in a shadowy process that surveils the private communications of Americans, applies unknown selectors and data mining algorithms, and then reports the results to law enforcement.
> I feel like they are good stewards of my data (encrypting even internal traffic...)
I hate it when people use this as an argument against "Google invading privacy", it's an argument that doesn't make any sense at all;
Encrypting your data in transit prevents outsiders from reading your data, obviously it doesn't prevent Google itself from accessing your data.
This article is about how Google (and FB, etc.) invades everyone's privacy (even non-customers).
> To me, the cost of being google's product, is outweighed by what they provide me with
This can also be achieved without invading your privacy.
Google should at least let people CHOOSE whether they want to use their products at the cost of privacy. Currently you cannot choose, your data is simply collected, even when browsing websites totally unrelated to Google, where people are absolutely unaware of Google tracking them.
PS.
This guy is awesome, he has had success fighting against Facebook, for privacy (in Europe):
My concern about Google is not so much now, but maybe 20 years from now when they're desperate for revenue. Something akin to Yahoo's position in the last few years, except Yahoo didn't know almost everything about half the planet.
The need for exponential growth will force all big players into making more money and doing shadier things more and more. I am especially concerned about Google and Facebook since they haven't figured any way for making for making money other than selling ads. Apple and MS at least have products they sell.
I think we really should start making it difficult for companies to grow beyond a certain size. I think they are a big net minus for the whole economy.
Ultimately the problem is that their incentives aren't really aligned with yours. They're only incentivized to do the absolute minimum it takes to keep you around. As they control more and more of your world, they've increased your cost to leave and they can do even less to benefit you explcitly.
I like google's services. What I want is the ability to pay for them and not be a part of the product they sell in ads. Basically a freemium model.
I don't know how much money in ad revenue I earn google, but I'd probably happily pay it for a more transparent, less sketchy, and more commonly-aligned product. (This would also give me recourse for all the times the google services I rely on go down....)
> I feel like I'm in the minority, but I'm mostly ok with Google. I feel like they are good stewards of my data (encrypting even internal traffic, severe restrictions on who can get access to my data, doing useful things with that data).
Even if they aren't doing anything reprehensible now, can you guarantee that they won't in future?
> I feel like they are good stewards of my data (encrypting even internal traffic, severe restrictions on who can get access to my data, doing useful things with that data)
The more info someone has on you (your preferences, habits, how price sensitive you are to certain products, ...), the more disadvantaged you are negotiating with them.
Facebook's "X years ago today, you posted this ..." has been amazing. I don't usually re-share it but it really brightens my morning or day to see photos of my kids when they were 4-5 years younger, and marvel at how much they've grown.
I mean, I'd still think about that even without FB showing me things, but I would not have managed to build a "here's a flashback!" photo-reminder system. In an age when we take SO MANY PHOTOS (and don't even bother curating them because we don't have time for it), it's nice to have that too.
That's great for you. But do you not agree that every user should be properly educated on what Google does with her data without having to read through pages of legalese, and then she should also be able to give her consent for that tracking and data collection?
I don't want all my eggs in one basket. I don't mind using search and email, but I disable all the analytics and tracking. Basically, if I'm on a Google site, that's fine; if I'm elsewhere on the web, it's not. Similarly for Firefox on Android, to the extent I'm able.
I block everything to do with Facebook every which way on my primary browser.
Google and Facebook have no choice but to reveal your data to governments that ask for it. While the companies themselves might protect your data, simply giving that data to a third party renders it readable by the government. Any protections provided by the constitution (4th amendment) at that point are null and void. So by definition, Google and Facebook cannot be good stewards of your data while complying with American law. Neither can any other third party. Period.
yes, in fact they have become almost absolute monopolists (together with FB and a couple of others).
this is really bad.. if google decides not to show you something _it effectively does not exist_
i _really_ hope they still have the mantra of not being evil, but the temptation is trillions of dollars big :)
if they abuse your information, e.g. use it as fore knowledge, and act on it quicker than you can, they can do that in subtle ways without you even realising it.
so many ways to benefit from all this data.. who can monitor / control this?
I read the opening paragraph and thought 'wow, this guy has clearly just taken the release statement from Duckduckgo's privacy app announcement (or possibly their much-upvoted AMA) and just copied and pasted some statistics.'
Google and Facebook also use your data as input for increasingly sophisticated AI algorithms that put you in a filter bubble — an alternate digital universe that controls what you see in their products, based on what their algorithms think you are most likely to click on.
These echo chambers distort people's reality, creating a myriad of unintended consequences such as increasing societal polarization.
How is this any different from the pre- or sans-Google and Facebook world? People have always lived in bubbles, always been funneled down a particular path by their experiential influences. Without Google or Facebook, if you were a white supremacist, it’s probably because you were influenced by white supremacists and you would continue to surround yourself with them. If you were someone who really strived to expose yourself to different ideas and things outside your bubble, you can arguably do that easier than ever now.
This isn’t really to “exonerate” FB and Big G, but I think it’s worth asking what impact they’ve really had on this basic facet of life.
>> Google and Facebook also use your data as input for increasingly sophisticated AI algorithms that put you in a filter bubble
> How is this any different from the pre- or sans-Google and Facebook world?
Easy: the bubbles are tighter and harder to pierce. In the old days, you'd have to get your information from the same news sources as everyone else, only customized at a fairly coarse level (e.g. a city). That regularly pierced your bubble and gave the community a common reference point. Now, many, many more people get all their information from individually-customized feeds that are precisely matched to their biases and their bubble. There's so many fewer common reference points which makes is harder for many people in the same communities to even communicate.
tl;dr: it's an emergent qualitative difference caused by scale.
A common behavior I witness, is people using ad/tracker blockers such as ublock origin and/or umatrix and yet continue to consult websites that makes use of those trackers. Worse, they link those sites to other people that might not make use of those blockers. They don't think much of it, but ain't that evil?
Most of the times they don't even notice anymore that trackers were blocked on the page they consult.
Just look at links posted here on HN, most are of hostile websites.
I'd love to see a browser extension more radical: if it detects such third party scripts or cookies it simply stop loading the page and display a message explaining why instead.
Someone sends you a link to an article on cnn.com? Answer with this message telling why you won't consult it.
Going further: the extension attempts to extract the content, strip it of anything useless (some js libs works OK for such tasks), and share this version with others using this extension.
I don't know what I would read all day if I had that extension installed. There'd be nothing left.
Classic quote, semi-relevant: "I'm pretty sure that if you took all the porn off the internet there would only be one site left and it would be called 'bring back the porn'" -Dr Cox
FTA: “What you may not realize, though, is 76 percent of websites now contain hidden Google trackers, and 24 percent have hidden Facebook trackers, according to the Princeton Web Transparency & Accountability Project. The next highest is Twitter with 12 percent.”
Article postscript: “Commentary by Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo, which makes online privacy tools, including an alternative search engine to Google. Follow him on Twitter @yegg .
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.”
The metaphorical Pandora's box has been opened, and the contents aren't going back in. Best we can hope for is practical legislation. The EU is ahead on this one. Its GDPR is going to throw a massive wrench in these practices.
I don't think that GDPR is going to disrupt the google/facebook dominance in advertising nor curtail their collecting data about you. In fact, I believe GDPR rewards their walled garden/integration strategy.
The most onerous and problematic parts of GDPR for adtech companies is the acquisition of consent to share the data they gather with their partners. This means that every barrier from publisher, to ad network, to advertiser needs to be consented. Google/Facebook are themselves massive players at each of those levels and therefore can skip that step.
We don't know what will happen in the future, but I suspect that Google/Facebook will leverage their systems at both the publisher and advertiser areas to put more of the ecosystem into their systems.
This may be ok, consolidating your information into a couple of big players that have an even more holistic view of you might be preferable to having little views of you all over the internet. But its worse for advertisers and publishers and I find it disconcerting.
* Disclaimer: I work on GDPR related topics, this is my opinion and not that of my employer
Honest question. I'm unsure what the danger is in letting these companies acquire data on us. We get a lot of benefit from using their products for free. Why should I care about giving my data to them as a cost of admission?
The aggregation of data is extensive and the ubiquity of the net means the data covers nearly every aspect of your life. Such information can be misused in many ways. Unfortunately, those misuses don't really become clear until the data set is already built, so there is no way to undo it. Even if Facebook or Google don't exploit the data themselves, the data could be stolen by criminals or seized by the government.
Are there personal things in your past you don't want your insurance company to know about? How about your employer? Or the IRS? Even your spouse? What if someone showed up one day and threatened to your your secrets unless you pay up?
Is that worth the price free access to your high-school friends' duckface selfies?
>Honest question. I'm unsure what the danger is in letting these companies acquire data on us. We get a lot of benefit from using their products for free. Why should I care about giving my data to them as a cost of admission?
Trivial example: Let's say sometime in the future you plan on running for political office, or you become a journalist writing a story on someone powerful or otherwise become someone who powerful people would like to discredit. Having a log of everything you've ever done online would be very useful in causing you a whole bunch of problems.
Perhaps you don't have any controversial opinions or beliefs. However, that could change. Not because you change your views, but because in the future a power could arise that wants to kill people who believe the things you do, and has no problem using force to acquire the data from Google to make their lists. Suddenly, you have a problem.
They provide free services. What do you expect? The data they have collected is so lucrative for them that they would never offer Facebook, Gmail, Google Search on a premium basis to daily consumer. I mean I would take premium package if they guarantee that they will not parse my images, parse my emails, parse my searches, connect dots among my social peers in order to help train their AI bots. Which/whenever they will use in the future to come up with better products or improve their existing products.
Sure there are problems associated with it. One of them is when malicious players like foreign govts get hold of such data and use it to their advantage.
Writing better articles than this is the way to stop Google/FB/advertising. Educating people on how dangerous ads are and what the solutions are (uBlock origin, turning off JS, VPNs, and hosts files etc.) is the main thing we can do other than making such things the defaults in products like Firefox (which doesn't even have such features built in yet, afaik). Once a large enough percentage of the population is using such solutions, tracking will no longer be a problem. If the argument is that most people won't want to deal with such education or the solutions it proposes, then those people simply do not deserve privacy or security. People that are too lazy/stupid to use computers probably shouldn't without the supervision of someone competent anyway. Yes, that includes the proverbial grandma--I don't let my mother use a computer I haven't prepared for her, for example.
These guys are selling data to "advertisers" that are actually trolls trying to subvert our democracy. They specifically target pain points and make things unbearable online for people. They use their data to alter the subliminal landscape. It made everyone at each other's throats.
I wish that was enough. The articles that show up here on HN from time to time make me think they can cross-reference data and fingerprint you through many data sources and more advanced tracking (things that we discover from time to time like canvas, css). People that have you on their contact list, your e-mails that hit their servers even when you don't have a Gmail, DNS, CDN, cloud services, your phone unless you go full tin foil hat, data they acquire from other companies. I try to protect my privacy but I think it's all futile, they have too much power.
"Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with companies that track that data."
"Google DeepMind's first deal with the NHS [...] gave the Google-owned artificial intelligence (AI) lab access to 1.6 million NHS patient records across three North London hospitals without patient's prior knowledge."
I use gmail and don't wish to give it up for now. I launch gmail in a site-specific browser process so that my login is isolated. This makes it so that in my main browser, I'm not logged into my Google account and they don't see where I go. As a bonus, the "filter bubble" effect is diminished for my Google searches.
That's not a reasonable approach for non-techies, but I thought it might interest the HN audience.
The article seems to argue for a GDPR[1]-like equivalent in the US. It'll be interesting to see how it is enforced in the EU. If applied as intended, it could offer a more realistic alternative to the only other privacy-preserving option at the moment: not using Google/Facebook/etc. 'noyb'[2] is planning to help that along. I just hope we don't get another cookie-law like debacle.
i think many orgs instead of suing google n such orgs if they simply use that money to invest in good organizations which are open and respect an individuals privacy that ll lead to a better world. it is not the law that is going to protect the people it is money in the good people's hand that is going to take us in a positive future. doing one good to cover up 18 other bad things is not considered good.
Addressing root causes one key approach would be for someone to develop a better alternative to google analytics. I'd hazard that the usefulness and ease of use for webmasters to install analytics tracking via google analytics is the number one reasons that 76% of sites include google tracking. Develop a mass replacement for GA and you'll directly hut that number.
How much would it cost to pay off every single Hollywood paparazzi to drive over to Silicon Valley and focus their attention on the Google, Facebook & Microsoft executives for a month?
I use One phone for phone calls and personal use providing a wifi hotspot to another phone for Facebook and Google account.. I just wish I could get two separate phones in one case
imho the current web is broken.. it has become entirely dominated by monopolists, which will only grow larger.. more dominating
we need:
- The Decentralized Web (as it was originally envisioned)
- Users in full control of their own data
- Privacy-first approaches only
- Stricter regulation (though tough to implement well)
> we need: - The Decentralized Web (as it was originally envisioned) - Users in full control of their own data - Privacy-first approaches only - Stricter regulation (though tough to implement well)
You have that now! Just stop giving your data to companies you don't want to have it.
The people who never give their data away wonder at the people who give their data away, then call for regulation.
linsomniac|8 years ago
I think their biggest sins are just being big. It makes them a larger target (which probably necessitates them taking extreme protections, otherwise they WOULD be taken down). Others that are much more concerning don't get attacked simply because they are smaller. For example Lyft and Uber who have both been found to have all sorts of personally identifiable information available to random employees. Or various ISPs tracking of data flowing through it.
To me, the cost of being google's product, is outweighed by what they provide me with. Search, news, music, assistant functions, "remember this day", "here is your family growing up", e-mail, automation of e-mails into actionable widgets... These things all are powered by Google knowing kind of a lot about me.
I don't know of any alternative to Google for these services, that respects privacy.
mr_overalls|8 years ago
1) Google (and other SV giants) share data with the NSA.
https://www.salon.com/2014/11/16/googles_secret_nsa_alliance...
2) The NSA in turn shares information with law-enforcement agencies. ICREACH contains information on the private communications millions of American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-made-its-own-google-to-help-shar...
3) The DEA (and possibly other agencies) uses this information to target Americans, and then lies about the origins of the information in a process called "parallel construction."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-dir...
It's not difficult to see the potential for abuse in a shadowy process that surveils the private communications of Americans, applies unknown selectors and data mining algorithms, and then reports the results to law enforcement.
DavideNL|8 years ago
I hate it when people use this as an argument against "Google invading privacy", it's an argument that doesn't make any sense at all; Encrypting your data in transit prevents outsiders from reading your data, obviously it doesn't prevent Google itself from accessing your data.
This article is about how Google (and FB, etc.) invades everyone's privacy (even non-customers).
> To me, the cost of being google's product, is outweighed by what they provide me with
This can also be achieved without invading your privacy. Google should at least let people CHOOSE whether they want to use their products at the cost of privacy. Currently you cannot choose, your data is simply collected, even when browsing websites totally unrelated to Google, where people are absolutely unaware of Google tracking them.
PS. This guy is awesome, he has had success fighting against Facebook, for privacy (in Europe):
https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/957236189853085696
https://noyb.eu/
blowski|8 years ago
maxxxxx|8 years ago
I think we really should start making it difficult for companies to grow beyond a certain size. I think they are a big net minus for the whole economy.
ryanianian|8 years ago
I like google's services. What I want is the ability to pay for them and not be a part of the product they sell in ads. Basically a freemium model.
I don't know how much money in ad revenue I earn google, but I'd probably happily pay it for a more transparent, less sketchy, and more commonly-aligned product. (This would also give me recourse for all the times the google services I rely on go down....)
LizMcIntyre|8 years ago
For example, Yahoo was caught helping the US government spy on consumers, whether they were suspect or not: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-yahoo-em...
What's more, Yahoo is now owned by Verizon, a company known for anti-consumer practices.
We should all make some easy changes:
- Use DuckDuckGo to get Yahoo /Bing search results in privacy
- Use StartPage.com to get Google search results in privacy
- Use a privacy-friendly email service
- Either quit FB or use it only as a billboard
- Get a Linux distro and avoid Windows OS when possible
- Try LibreOffice. It rivals Office!
etc.
cabalamat|8 years ago
Even if they aren't doing anything reprehensible now, can you guarantee that they won't in future?
LeviEster|8 years ago
The more info someone has on you (your preferences, habits, how price sensitive you are to certain products, ...), the more disadvantaged you are negotiating with them.
gknoy|8 years ago
I mean, I'd still think about that even without FB showing me things, but I would not have managed to build a "here's a flashback!" photo-reminder system. In an age when we take SO MANY PHOTOS (and don't even bother curating them because we don't have time for it), it's nice to have that too.
mtgx|8 years ago
barrkel|8 years ago
I block everything to do with Facebook every which way on my primary browser.
mnm1|8 years ago
rapnie|8 years ago
yes, in fact they have become almost absolute monopolists (together with FB and a couple of others).
this is really bad.. if google decides not to show you something _it effectively does not exist_
i _really_ hope they still have the mantra of not being evil, but the temptation is trillions of dollars big :)
if they abuse your information, e.g. use it as fore knowledge, and act on it quicker than you can, they can do that in subtle ways without you even realising it.
so many ways to benefit from all this data.. who can monitor / control this?
jacksmith21006|8 years ago
I prefer my data be at one place as much as possible instead scattered.
Easisest place to do that is with Google as they have the most comprehensive services.
mattmanser|8 years ago
rhizome|8 years ago
Are you sure about this, or are you limiting "who" to people you already know and/or regularly interact with?
Zhyl|8 years ago
Then I saw the author.
fwdpropaganda|8 years ago
Speaking of which, I recently moved to DDG and couldn't be happier.
Frankly the only thing I don't like about DDG is the name.
resu_nimda|8 years ago
How is this any different from the pre- or sans-Google and Facebook world? People have always lived in bubbles, always been funneled down a particular path by their experiential influences. Without Google or Facebook, if you were a white supremacist, it’s probably because you were influenced by white supremacists and you would continue to surround yourself with them. If you were someone who really strived to expose yourself to different ideas and things outside your bubble, you can arguably do that easier than ever now.
This isn’t really to “exonerate” FB and Big G, but I think it’s worth asking what impact they’ve really had on this basic facet of life.
Slansitartop|8 years ago
> How is this any different from the pre- or sans-Google and Facebook world?
Easy: the bubbles are tighter and harder to pierce. In the old days, you'd have to get your information from the same news sources as everyone else, only customized at a fairly coarse level (e.g. a city). That regularly pierced your bubble and gave the community a common reference point. Now, many, many more people get all their information from individually-customized feeds that are precisely matched to their biases and their bubble. There's so many fewer common reference points which makes is harder for many people in the same communities to even communicate.
tl;dr: it's an emergent qualitative difference caused by scale.
SirFatty|8 years ago
rhizome|8 years ago
Absolutely zero, and have arguably made it worse.
trqx|8 years ago
Most of the times they don't even notice anymore that trackers were blocked on the page they consult.
Just look at links posted here on HN, most are of hostile websites.
I'd love to see a browser extension more radical: if it detects such third party scripts or cookies it simply stop loading the page and display a message explaining why instead.
Someone sends you a link to an article on cnn.com? Answer with this message telling why you won't consult it.
Going further: the extension attempts to extract the content, strip it of anything useless (some js libs works OK for such tasks), and share this version with others using this extension.
metalliqaz|8 years ago
Classic quote, semi-relevant: "I'm pretty sure that if you took all the porn off the internet there would only be one site left and it would be called 'bring back the porn'" -Dr Cox
Daycrawler|8 years ago
IncRnd|8 years ago
rand0mthought|8 years ago
igravious|8 years ago
Article postscript: “Commentary by Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo, which makes online privacy tools, including an alternative search engine to Google. Follow him on Twitter @yegg .
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.”
Kind of set off my irony detector!
zevv|8 years ago
ISL|8 years ago
Fej|8 years ago
kasey_junk|8 years ago
The most onerous and problematic parts of GDPR for adtech companies is the acquisition of consent to share the data they gather with their partners. This means that every barrier from publisher, to ad network, to advertiser needs to be consented. Google/Facebook are themselves massive players at each of those levels and therefore can skip that step.
We don't know what will happen in the future, but I suspect that Google/Facebook will leverage their systems at both the publisher and advertiser areas to put more of the ecosystem into their systems.
This may be ok, consolidating your information into a couple of big players that have an even more holistic view of you might be preferable to having little views of you all over the internet. But its worse for advertisers and publishers and I find it disconcerting.
* Disclaimer: I work on GDPR related topics, this is my opinion and not that of my employer
astro_robot|8 years ago
metalliqaz|8 years ago
Are there personal things in your past you don't want your insurance company to know about? How about your employer? Or the IRS? Even your spouse? What if someone showed up one day and threatened to your your secrets unless you pay up?
Is that worth the price free access to your high-school friends' duckface selfies?
rahoulb|8 years ago
alasdair_|8 years ago
Trivial example: Let's say sometime in the future you plan on running for political office, or you become a journalist writing a story on someone powerful or otherwise become someone who powerful people would like to discredit. Having a log of everything you've ever done online would be very useful in causing you a whole bunch of problems.
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
programmarchy|8 years ago
danjc|8 years ago
CodeSheikh|8 years ago
Sure there are problems associated with it. One of them is when malicious players like foreign govts get hold of such data and use it to their advantage.
tomc1985|8 years ago
mnm1|8 years ago
DaniFong|8 years ago
ucaetano|8 years ago
Disable 3rd party cookies, delete your Google & Facebook accounts, and done.
Easy peasy.
randomString1|8 years ago
kuschku|8 years ago
"Google DeepMind's first deal with the NHS [...] gave the Google-owned artificial intelligence (AI) lab access to 1.6 million NHS patient records across three North London hospitals without patient's prior knowledge."
"Google starts tracking offline shopping"
Sure. Deleting the accounts surely is enough.
rectang|8 years ago
That's not a reasonable approach for non-techies, but I thought it might interest the HN audience.
rapnie|8 years ago
marten-de-vries|8 years ago
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula... [2]: https://noyb.eu/
ielfkd|8 years ago
evolve2k|8 years ago
bogomipz|8 years ago
Are these "hidden trackers" mentioned in the article just the normal beacons or are they referring to something new?
Are these relevant if a person is not logged into neither FB or Google or if someone has uBlock Origin/Privacy Badger installed?
yjftsjthsd-h|8 years ago
no_identd|8 years ago
basicplus2|8 years ago
rapnie|8 years ago
we need: - The Decentralized Web (as it was originally envisioned) - Users in full control of their own data - Privacy-first approaches only - Stricter regulation (though tough to implement well)
IncRnd|8 years ago
You have that now! Just stop giving your data to companies you don't want to have it.
The people who never give their data away wonder at the people who give their data away, then call for regulation.
bb88|8 years ago
featherverse|8 years ago
[deleted]
lerie82|8 years ago
[deleted]
mar77i|8 years ago
mar77i|8 years ago
ielfkd|8 years ago