Ask HN: How do you deal with software tracking your data?
1 points| tavro | 24 days ago
big companies often profit from this data and often there is no way to opt-out from stats reporting.
how do you reason about this? how do you handle this in your daily life? do you avoid certain software? or do you just accept it? are there apps that respect user data?
:o)
JohnFen|24 days ago
For my smartphone, I run a bare minimum of apps and refuse to install new ones without an extremely good reason. I also pipe all smartphone data through a VPN I run at home, specifically so that I can run it through my firewall and make the block-by-default policy I mentioned above cover the phone as well.
tavro|23 days ago
> I avoid software that I know to be problematic. Also, I firewall off all outgoing network traffic by default, and whitelist very sparingly.
how do you stay informed about what software is problematic? what are examples of addresses you whitelist? if you feel comfortable sharing.
> For my smartphone, I run a bare minimum of apps and refuse to install new ones without an extremely good reason. I also pipe all smartphone data through a VPN I run at home, specifically so that I can run it through my firewall and make the block-by-default policy I mentioned above cover the phone as well.
what would be an example of "an extremely good reason"? what VPN solution do you have?
:o)
functionmouse|24 days ago
Assume every system on Earth is breached
tavro|23 days ago
> Don't do anything secret on the computer
i think that might be unavoidable.
> Assume every system on Earth is breached
you probably say this jokingly, but this is not a bad take. or rather, "assume every system on earth can/will be breached". that is a good motivation to improve the security for your system, if you have the resources to.
:o)