Personally, with all this “users can impact their privacy” stuff I see it as just part of a well used and much wider con, bit like political parties.
With political parties we have the illusion of control: We can vote this party out and that party in, and so we have control. But the reality is the parties are all the same, all working for the same people, all you’re doing is changing the personnel, the people with the power never changes.
With online privacy, give users the illusion that they have control over their online data and they will continue to make it available, just by a method that they wrongly consider to be secure.
Your mail is intercepted and ripped for data way before it hits you’re inbox.
Services like Proton may make it a bit harder for people to spy on you, but only a bit. In todays world any business that puts up real barriers to your data either get wiped out or bought out, normally by governments. Which is where my view on Apple stems from, and Google I suspect. They are all extensions of government. In return for their data Google gets to play with the low level data and make money out it, like Facebook, Apple get to commit massive tax fraud and get away with it.
Paul, it’s not just the content of emails. It’s also who I send my email to and who sends it to me. All my transactions through Internet, all my registrations and confirmations—this is the most valuable info for Google.
With political parties, we are all doomed. There is no way out of this mess. By voting, we only choose the lesser evil at the time.
With online privacy, there is still more room for choice, but it is shutting down quickly. So, I am actively looking for that diminishing room, before all is lost.
This is the problem I have with it - not that I think someone is spying on my email.
Correlation of personal habits and data is a big problem and it is not just the drop in an ocean argument. When multiple data sources get correlated massively unforeseen consequences can happen.
The reality is, if data was properly secure on the internet, the internet wouldn’t exist. It exists, not for all the reasons most think, but purely to spy on us. That is it’s main purpose. If governments didn’t get to do that we’d be like China.
If you really care about your data and privacy, as the phrase goes, go “off-grid”. Honestly, the email service you use won’t make the slightest bit of difference, much like unplugging your TV at night.
I don’t use Gmail because I don’t want to do business with Google wherever I have the choice - period. That is not for reasons of email but for larger business practices; for the same reason I do not use Facebook.
Apart from the data collection issues, I really don’t want to do business with anyone who does big whoo haaa announcements on a stage either, especially when they are middle aged men wearing fucking deck shoes. That therefore counts out Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla etc etc.
When a German car manufacturer announces a new car, they stand on stage with a sense of decorum, wearing a sturdy pair of brogues, a suit and sporting a suitably out of date (and somewhat sinister) moustache. Now thats marketing !
But you use an iPhone? By Apple, who more or less invented the bullshit announcements you dislike?
But ya, I totally get your reasoning for not doing the Google thing. That’s a completely valid reason. I feel much the same, but Google makes my life easier, and I have very low morals, so I’m balls deep.
It’s just the privacy argument that doesn’t stack up.
I have to have a phone of some sort and believe me I spent £1200 on a phone under significant protest. The alternative is an Android ad-fest. Prior to iPhones, my previous phones were all Nokia which I used to get for free. I am therefore hugely bitter that I have lost my business class flights to Finland, champagne and free phones; my opinions should, therefore, be totally discounted.
It’s far too late to ‘go back’ it’s like trying to uninvent the wheel, all that can do done is to make a better wheel. The only problem is, is that people have to suffer the wooden wheel before someone invent the solid rubber tyre, then others suffer until they invent the pneumatic tyre, then others suffer until they invent the cross ply, then others suffer until the radial etc etc etc.
Trying to find an email service/browser/whatever with privacy in 2019 is like trying to find a road vehicle without wheels … good luck.
All we have to do is suffer until someone invents something better and then wait for it to kill a few people so that it can be replaced with something else to kill us.
When it comes to data and privacy there no countries or borders. If your data is online, it’s being harvested. There nothing effective you can do to stop it, except not be online.
I admire you’re stance, but you’re doomed to failure.
I’ve long since thought that someones habits should be taken into account regards healthcare. Wanna smoke? No problem, just don’t expect a lot of free healthcare when you’re lungs fail. Obviously an extreme example, but it’s time people take responsibility for their actions. I’ve spent most of my life being overly healthy, paying my subs and putting almost zero strain on the health system. The guy over the road pays the same as me but lives on a diet of fizzy pop and pizza. He takes the car to drop his kids to the school. It’s literally the end of the road, 3min walk. He has lots of health issues, all lifestyle related. Ultimately I’m paying for his healthcare, by way of my subs and also the reduced service I get. Hardly a fair system.
This conversation is all about going back to the good old days when we (thought) we had privacy … well guess what, thats what Brexit was all about; Most of the leave voters were older and they wanted to go back to how it was pre-europe so that (and I saw this on a TV street interview) ‘we can start building ships and cars again like we used to’ … ha, haha, hahahah HA!
The default process for humans is to discover/invent something, take small steps and then go bonkers with it only to find its too fast/expensive/deadly and then take a step back.
Look at aircraft, from biplanes to 3000mph SR-71’s and airline crashes weekly in a blink of an eye and where are we now? Slower, less exciting but cheaper and safer aircraft that don’t make smoking holes in the ground.
We’re currently at the going bonkers stage of online privacy where we’re fucking impressed with our prowess at determining a persons shoe size by what deodorant they buy. We have to wait until enough people suffer before (as a species) we’ll start to do something about it.
Individually there’s nothing we can do other than wait for the rest of the humans to move in a direction … it may be the wrong one but like being at a concert when the music stops … you’re heading for a particular exit like everyone around you whether you want to or not.
We’re a nasty aggressive species that invented social niceties to prevent us from killing each other over unwashed dishes; A handshake is just a way of showing we don’t have a sword in our hand for fucks sake.
We’ll continue to fuck each other over until enough people suffer and we say stop and then we’ll evolve another way to do it.
There is a huge amount of rhetoric and false conflation going on here.
Personal data is a commodity. Intellectual property is well protected and the rules concerning it are simple. Convoluted personal data and trends are more difficult to police but nevertheless the ownership must lie with the individual.
If I take a store loyalty card, I know that I am exchanging a discount for behavioural data about myself. I can choose to not have a loyalty card, pay by cash or go to a different store.
The problem with the web analogue of this, for example Google, is that we are fast approaching a monopoly situation where users have little practical choice and more worryingly less knowledge what data they are divulging.
A technical solution has already been suggested by Tim Berners-Lee, whether or not this or similar technology is the solution, or legislation combined with technology, remains to be seen.
One thing for sure is that those who understand the situation must do the upmost to educate and inform those who do not and in so doing keep pressure on organisations to behave reputably. There certainly will be no return to the old days, that is not at issue here. These are new challenges that require new solutions (without the deck shoes or stupid hipster beards).
Good luck with that! I’m not too bothered with the privacy thing. Yes, it’s wrong, and shit and yada yada yada, but will it kill me, or make me poor, and so on? No. Not yet at least. But I do care about the educational and banking system and how it’s been constructed toput you in debt, keep you poor and filter all the money upwards.
I have tried and tried and tried in the last 15 years to explain to people just how utterly corrupt it is and how it effects every single living person, how much of a real impact it has on everyone lives and about how every day it bends you over and fucks you up the arse. And how much do people care? Not at all. They care about who will win a TV game show, but not at all about the very system that is designed to keep them down.
From the 1910 Jekyll Island meeting, to CDO’s, to QE, to student loans, to interest only mortgages, to the housing market, to bubble and bust, to the fact that wages have not moved in real terms since the mid 70’s coupled with the fact that house prices have tripled, to the fact that the pay gap has never been wider and is getting wider, that banks make more money investing in bad dept than they do in factories, to car leasing, to viewing your house as an asset not a good, to credit card debt, and all the rest. NO ONE GIVES A FUCK. And that shit truly effects them EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Governments have spent over 40 years dumbing down the population and giving them the modern day equivalent of the gladiator fight to keep them occupied and 99% of the population play right alone.