Whilst reading this post, I could actually hear your tinfoil hat crinkling
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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Privacy is the ability for an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
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Then you’ve misunderstood. It’s not a security move. It’s a boycott. I will not financially support fossil fuel partners with profitable data.
Google is partnered with Total Energy and uses AI to help them find where to drill. Likewise, Microsoft is partnered with Chevron and Exxon, again using AI to help them drill for oil. Microsoft also has many other matters of ethical wrongdoing. Not a good company to support. Not to mention the lack of ethics of targeted advertising in general.
So it’s privacy for the sake of ethics, not privacy for the sake of security. These are the top reasons not to feed Google or MS, though it’d be poor judgement to also suggest there is no security problem with personal disclosure to such a centralized corporate PRISM venues outside of a GDPR region in a country with no notable privacy safeguards.
It’s also notable that Chevron is an #ALEC member, thus supports US republicans. #ExxonMobil is also an abhorrent company to support (#ExxonKnew).
You are definitely wearing some tin foil, OP. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, more people should put on a shiny hat and learn to be a little more cautious with the very public world of the Internet.
You are definitely wearing some tin foil, OP.
You have definitely failed to understand how capitalism works and how money flows in relation to data, and the ethical history of corporations involved.
Or I understand perfectly well how capitalism works and you didn't read the rest of my comment properly.
I'm merely trying to point out that there is a healthy middle ground between the extremes of internet usage where people can interact with each other in a meaningful way while also being aware of the inherent risks and realities of using the internet today.
I’m merely trying to point out that there is a healthy middle ground between the extremes of internet usage where people can interact with each other in a meaningful way while also being aware of the inherent risks and realities of using the internet today.
You’re mistaken where compromise is needed and where it is not. There are ways to communicate without putting Google or MS in the loop and you’re at the unethical extreme if you have opted to support GAFAM by feeding those platforms.
Ways that are beyond either the capabilities or desires of the average user. I'm not saying Google or Microsoft is good or necessary, but we also don't need to burn the world down around us just to prove a point.
Ways that are beyond either the capabilities or desires of the average user.
You vastly underestimate the average user w.r.t to “capabilities”. You can scrap capability from your statement because the avg user can just as well use protonmail/tuta, or disroot.org, for example.
That leaves “desires”. Two people agree on how to correspond. The desire of someone to use one of the most unethical controversial corporations possible and in an insecure manner that exposes the data to a profitable extent in a privacy-lacking part of the world, and the other party has a higher privacy bar (and/or high moral bar), the party who must adapt is the one with the lower standards. It’s unreasonable to expect someone to lower their privacy standards or to lower their moral standards. If someone’s desire to support Google or MS trumps their desire to stay in touch, then the conversation isn’t worth it to them.
There is a rule of least privilege principle that seems to have escaped you. In the information security discipline, we do not need to justify security measures by default. It’s lack of security that calls for justification. If there were truly a capability problem, that would be reasonable rationale for reduced security. But it’s a phantom excuse. And “desire” is not an acceptable rationale for reduced security.
Your doubling down on the tinfoil claim was a failure simply because the security matter is least important of everything I’ve already said on this. But even if security were purely my sole rationale (as it is for some people), you are still calling the practice of basic well-established infosec principles tinfoil hattery. Pushing this culture of branding sound security practices as paranoia is a socially harmful move that you are partaking in.
I think we might be on slightly different pages here. Nobody is disagreeing with you or saying your wrong, but maybe you should take a step back and look at what your saying. Your calling for a certain level of extremism, which, as I said before, there is nothing inherently wrong with and from your point of view is probably perfectly reasonable. However, it's not really realistic to expect everyone to abandon the easy and useful tools that they're comfortable with just to match your views, regardless of the ethics or logic involved.
Nobody is disagreeing with you or saying your wrong
At least 10 people here believe Google/MS avoidance is “tinfoil hat” paranoia. It’s a stark disagreement on infosec principles. All responders in this thread (apart from 3 exceptions) come from privacy-hostile #Cloudflare instances including yourself. This crowd has little hope of taking privacy seriously.
However, it’s not really realistic to expect everyone to abandon the easy and useful tools that they’re comfortable with just to match your views, regardless of the ethics or logic involved.
You’re probably not going to sell anyone on an idea that requires discarding ethics and logic. That’s actually the crux of the problem. The problem exists because people disregard ethics and logic in pursuit of pragmatism.
You seem to be overlooking the fact that Google and MS are inherently exclusive choices. That is, if I try to connect to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com, the connection is refused, full stop. Google is blocking me before I send the first packet. So you’re implying that I must go through Google’s hoops in order to not be “extreme”. IMO, that’s an extreme position to take. To expect people to go beyond the norms of established open standards to cater for the extra requirements and special needs of a monopolistic corporation. I must either rent an IP address that’s to Google’s liking at my own expense, or I must establish a contract with another third-party who I must then trust with a centralized view on all my outbound traffic. I’m not supporting that abuse and loss of freedom.
Nobody thinks that avoiding the corps is tin-foil paranoia, all any of us are saying it's that the absolute insistence on cutting off Google/MS at the cost of alienating friends is pretty tin-foily. This is of course entirely your prerogative and, as I keep saying, isn't necessarily a bad choice, but it's not really worth it for the rest of us because of the cost of human connection.
Perhaps your right that my instance isn't the most secure, but I don't really give a shit because sometimes connecting with people on the Internet over stupid memes is more important than living a paragon of perfect privacy and security.
At a certain point you need to ask yourself if denying Google the ability to show you ads that are more relevant to your interests than generic ads is worth losing friends over.
This. Life is too short to deny myself human contact.
99% of my messages with friends is a variation on "hey, do you want to get together on Thursday, how about 6 at my place".
This. Life is too short to deny myself human contact.
This is scrapping a long list of old contacts who might at most every 5—20 years briefly exchange life updates from another part of the world. It’s not denying human contact. When I meet someone new, they either need to reach me a way that’s agreeable to both of us or they need to proxy msgs through a mutual friend.
You’ve both demonstrated to easily back the gatekeepers as you’ve both needlessly chosen to create fedi accounts that are centralized on Cloudflare (lemmy world and shit just works both). You can’t speak with any credibility on the privacy front under those circumstances because you compromise digital freedom even when it yields no meaningful gain.
That’s not the trade-off. Google has no opportunity to show me ads anyway. If [email protected] emails [email protected] about a Taylor Swift concert, Google profits from information about both people. Even if Alice does not use Google services, Google’s file on bob shows he knows Alice and Alice is a TS fan. Then when bob searches for gifts, Google shows him TS t-shirts and profits from that. Conversations are two-ways, so when Bob responds to Alice Google learns directly about Bob, such as whether he’s a Swift fan. Alice’s msg therefore generated profitable data about Bob for Google, which potentially works against Alice’s boycott against Google.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg—
human rights
Human rights are important. Embodied therein (among other principles) the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, Article 8 states:
- Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
- Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
- Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.
As you can see from reading this thread, most people irrationally believe these human rights constitute paranoia and tinfoil hattery. My opposition to mass surveillance is not borne out of fear that my data will be used against me personally, but rather an objection to arbitrary systemic collection that comes at the detriment of some people (e.g. abortion seekers) and ultimately disempowers people.
privacy is about control
To have privacy is to have control over information about you. Security from harmful disclosure is only a small component of the utility of privacy. There is a tendency for normies to fixate on that and think that is the sum total purpose of privacy. Having control is also about choosing who gets to profit from your data. It’s about having a right to boycott harmful entities.
digital exclusion and diminished open standards
Google and Microsoft sabotaged the email infrastructure by imposing rules outside of RFC 5321. Up until the 2000s you could send an email to anyone so long as you comply with the open standards expressed in RFCs. The monopolistic tech giants saw an opportunity to take more market share and reduce their costs by introducing restrictions on email that exclude people who are self-serving. They leveraged spam fatigue to coerce people to conform to non-RFC proprietary reqs in addition to already already having a dominant market share (corp greed has no limits).
I reject Google and Microsoft dictating terms that breaks the purpose of open standards (interoperability). Every time you send an email to or from Google or MS servers, you give your support for corporate dictatorship.
So when you say this is about “the ability to show you ads that are more relevant to your interests”, you and at least 5 others have wholly misunderstood the problem.
Very cool blog