Open letter to Google. Shame on them.

[stols001]

This is true, I agree for the most part it's not nefarious, I don't like the ads stalking me because they know what I like, hence I have a harder time resisting buying it. Also, I agree about the revenues generated and using my data without paying for it, though.

I will state, at this point in my life, I really don't worry about identity theft. Wasn't it YESTERDAY that one of the major credit reporting bureaus was hacked??? We're done. Also, if anyone wants my identity, they are welcome to it, it's not like I have large sums of money sitting around to be stolen, and yes, you can have my mediocre credit score and credit availability of you want it, I won't fight anyone on that, LOL. There's probably a reason no one's hacked me, haha.

I'd be happy to have that first world problem and need to buy "Identity Shield" or whatever nice group of folks that defends the credit and identity of the ultra rich, that would be no problem at all.

Anna

 

[ScottP]

This is true, I agree for the most part it's not nefarious, I don't like the ads stalking me because they know what I like, hence I have a harder time resisting buying it. Also, I agree about the revenues generated and using my data without paying for it, though.

I will state, at this point in my life, I really don't worry about identity theft. Wasn't it YESTERDAY that one of the major credit reporting bureaus was hacked??? We're done. Also, if anyone wants my identity, they are welcome to it, it's not like I have large sums of money sitting around to be stolen, and yes, you can have my mediocre credit score and credit availability of you want it, I won't fight anyone on that, LOL. There's probably a reason no one's hacked me, haha.

I'd be happy to have that first world problem and need to buy "Identity Shield" or whatever nice group of folks that defends the credit and identity of the ultra rich, that would be no problem at all.

Anna

I am the opposite. I am contrarian and skeptical by nature. The more they force me to look at ads the LESS likely I am to buy the product in the ads. Ads annoy me, its like they are a pushy beggar, begging for my money and being pushy makes me think your product must suck if you have to shove it down my throat. We are so inundated with ads today, on the internet, in real life, on tv, radio, and signs. I have no doubt that at some point they are going to want to pump ads directly into our brains. The only way to cope is to get mentally tough and learn to not buy products based on ads, but to wait until you see a real need in your life and then go find a product to fill that need.

Yeah as far as identity theft, thanks to Equifax we no longer have to worry about IF our identities get stolen, they already have been. The only good news is they got so many people's data, they may never get around to using all of it.

 

[stols001]

Yes it has gotten so bad that really premium services like Netflics and Hulu flourish. The incredibly annoying thing is that they offer a paid version with ads, then various tears of increasing pay in order to even be able to FF through ads, and by the time you are ad free it's like $14 a month. When even YouTube (apparently) is offering an ad-free service it's getting pretty awful, in a lot of ways. It's hard on people who've used this in the past to make a living, too, as YouTube is now putting ads on everything, and etc.

I got to be honest, I miss some of the tricky stuff you could do in the past to defray some of this (I think I will choose not to mention what exactly) but those were the true glory days of the internet, sadly. Things were technologically advanced, but not very well regulated and controlled, those days are long over and it's sad.

Of course my favorite days were in the beginning... When alt dot whatever was around. As a miserable youth, I used to hang out on alt.angst and I used my real name, LOL, so glad I got remarried and changed my name, I really didn't need HR having that pop up in a search engine....

I gave up on FB totally when I was searching for a new job and all these random weirdos wanted to befriend me.... Human beings aren't meant to be road kill, with all their guts spread out for everyone to see. There are so many ways social media is nefarious and I am done with that, frankly. Not that I'm doing anything wrong, but it's too invasive for this particular person....

Anna

 

[ScottP]

Yes it has gotten so bad that really premium services like Netflics and Hulu flourish. The incredibly annoying thing is that they offer a paid version with ads, then various tears of increasing pay in order to even be able to FF through ads, and by the time you are ad free it's like $14 a month. When even YouTube (apparently) is offering an ad-free service it's getting pretty awful, in a lot of ways. It's hard on people who've used this in the past to make a living, too, as YouTube is now putting ads on everything, and etc.

I got to be honest, I miss some of the tricky stuff you could do in the past to defray some of this (I think I will choose not to mention what exactly) but those were the true glory days of the internet, sadly. Things were technologically advanced, but not very well regulated and controlled, those days are long over and it's sad.

Of course my favorite days were in the beginning... When alt dot whatever was around. As a miserable youth, I used to hang out on alt.angst and I used my real name, LOL, so glad I got remarried and changed my name, I really didn't need HR having that pop up in a search engine....

I gave up on FB totally when I was searching for a new job and all these random weirdos wanted to befriend me.... Human beings aren't meant to be road kill, with all their guts spread out for everyone to see. There are so many ways social media is nefarious and I am done with that, frankly. Not that I'm doing anything wrong, but it's too invasive for this particular person....

Anna

I could not agree more ... with every single word. I too miss the early days of the internet, back before they invented Javascript which is what lead to all the viruses, malware, ads, and popups. Of course it also gave us interactive content and ecommerce. I actually started with the old BBS services before the internet even existed.

I am pretty anti "social media" as well. Forums (like this one) are the only things I use. Social media has just become a platform for hate and whining. I keep telling people that Twitter's motto should be "Twitter: Allowing idiots to whine about nothing and everything all at once since 2006."

 

[stols001]

"Twitter: Allowing idiots to whine about nothing and everything all at once since 2006."

I loathe Twitter, it's awful. If I had a twitter account though, I'd twitter this to my sister, , she is precious when it comes to social media, not so much for idiocy but she and her husband are social media addicts. It's really serious, when we get together for Christmases and such, they cannot stay off their phones, etc. One time I texted her while she was on a Marathon training run, and got this strange response followed by "Sorry, that was my apple watch."

I decided to answer "What's that?" (Though I did have a vague clue) but if you are responding to a text during a marathon training run, that's a serious addiction right there, which I did not text. I love her to death, but I'm so glad I did not get heavily invested in that stuff, but she's younger than me.

I did not get a cellphone until about 2010, which is when my husband finally convinced me that I had a kid about to be a teen and needed to be available during emergencies.... BUT, I really enjoyed those rare times when people couldn't get ahold of me, frankly. Though, I do not miss printing out (sometimes inaccurate) mapquest directions.... . But, my younger brother is even more of a luddite than me, my older brother started with the Commodore 64 and now manages internet forums (for excellent pay). He also bought the Occulus Rift or whatever it was, but he's the kind of dude who isn't a fan of the real world, particularly.

Anna

 

[ScottP]

I loathe Twitter, it's awful. If I had a twitter account though, I'd twitter this to my sister, , she is precious when it comes to social media, not so much for idiocy but she and her husband are social media addicts. It's really serious, when we get together for Christmases and such, they cannot stay off their phones, etc. One time I texted her while she was on a Marathon training run, and got this strange response followed by "Sorry, that was my apple watch."

I decided to answer "What's that?" (Though I did have a vague clue) but if you are responding to a text during a marathon training run, that's a serious addiction right there, which I did not text. I love her to death, but I'm so glad I did not get heavily invested in that stuff, but she's younger than me.

I did not get a cellphone until about 2010, which is when my husband finally convinced me that I had a kid about to be a teen and needed to be available during emergencies.... BUT, I really enjoyed those rare times when people couldn't get ahold of me, frankly. Though, I do not miss printing out (sometimes inaccurate) mapquest directions.... . But, my younger brother is even more of a luddite than me, my older brother started with the Commodore 64 and now manages internet forums (for excellent pay). He also bought the Occulus Rift or whatever it was, but he's the kind of dude who isn't a fan of the real world, particularly.

Anna

LOL My wife and daughter are like your sister. They charge their phones over night to 100%, then need to recharge at least one more if not two more times per day. Me? I only need to charge my phone about once per WEEK. Yes my battery lasts that long. I use my computer for the internet, and I don't play games on my phone either.

It really annoys the ever living piss out of me when I am trying to have a conversation with one of them, and they keep looking at their phone and responding to texts. I'm like can you please put that down for 5 minutes so we can finish this conversation?

 

[Eskie]

I skimmed through this and didn't see mention of ways around targeted ads. Obviously the first is to simply not click on one. If it's off topic for your interests, you can ignore it without any penalty or something.

Second, there are ad personalization preferences you can see up on your Google account to opt out of personalized ads, either completely or your personal topics you'd like to get ads from.

Finally, the likelihood an actual live person will be looking at your search terms and website visits is really zero, unless it's a legal or criminal matter, in which case a subpoena for your history will be submitted to Google.There are something like a billion accounts maintained with Google. Who could possibly sift through all that to see which vape website you went to?

I'm big on privacy and avoid stuff like social web stuff like Facebook, Twitter, or even Linkedin. But if I turn all my privacy settings to block any notifications, site history, clear out my cookies on a regular basis, and pay attention to my firewall preferences, that's about as much as I can do.

As far as hacks, I worry a lot more about stuff like what happened with Equifax than Google getting hacked and someone going through my spam folder. If you want to assure you're never tracked, get a VPN, turn cookies off, and encrypt your emails.Outside of that, I take the approach if I send/browse/shop online I assume it can become public information at some point and simply don't expect my privacy will never be violated. I don't care if someone reads my emails, but I do care that any financial information is protected, whether through a third party like eBay (or Amazon Pay that's now getting into the market), a separate credit card/debit card/ or even prepaid card to avoid exposing my other ban activity.

 

[somdcomputerguy]

I actually started with the old BBS services before the internet even existed.

BBS's were my start as well. I ran a BBS (RBBS-PC) for a few years as well. Ah, the '80's. Seems like centuries ago..

 

[stols001]

You know, I always though I "missed" the 60s, but it kinda seems like it is coming back around again only with more technology (if I consider that a part of the 60s was corruption,(Nixon!) global unrest, protests and rage).

LOL, I was kinda in it for the free love and hallucinogens, now that I think about it. Those days are over for me, now, so I am missing the wonderful 80s. Everyone says nothing happened with that generation, and they're so forgetting about technology and the internet.... fascinating where it's going, eh?

Anna

 

[Eskie]

BBS's were my start as well. I ran a BBS (RBBS-PC) for a few years as well. Ah, the '80's. Seems like centuries ago..

And who here was so happy with 14.4k modem that was sorta expensive, but it was 14.4k!

 

[bobwho77]

I could not agree more ... with every single word. I too miss the early days of the internet, back before they invented Javascript which is what lead to all the viruses, malware, ads, and popups. Of course it also gave us interactive content and ecommerce. I actually started with the old BBS services before the internet even existed.

I am pretty anti "social media" as well. Forums (like this one) are the only things I use. Social media has just become a platform for hate and whining. I keep telling people that Twitter's motto should be "Twitter: Allowing idiots to whine about nothing and everything all at once since 2006."

Tweets are for TWITS

 

[DaveP]

And who here was so happy with 14.4k modem that was sorta expensive, but it was 14.4k!

I started online with Compuserve back in the early 80s with a 300 baud modem and later went to 1200 and 2400 baud to keep up. I was once an assistant database forum moderator in a GE Genie Database forum! That's why I upgraded to 2400!

All of that was on green screen mono monitors until I finally bought a color monitor. Times have certainly changed in our lifetimes!

If you want to take a technology trip back into the 70s, 80s, and 90s check out the series on Netflix by the same names. Search for "The Seventies" "The Eighties" and "The Nineties"on Netflix and you'll find stories about the rise of technology and the entrepreneurs of companies that made it happen. It will all come up in the search and it's worth a look.

 

[NicotineRush]

'Duck Duck Go' for your search engine.
'Harden' Firefox. Just using 'add-ons' is not enough. The FF config needs to be reconfigured.
If you use windows, you might as well be sitting in Gate's living room telling him, and the world, all your secrets.

 

[DaveP]

'Duck Duck Go' for your search engine.
'Harden' Firefox. Just using 'add-ons' is not enough. The FF config needs to be reconfigured.
If you use windows, you might as well be sitting in Gate's living room telling him, and the world, all your secrets.

Got a favorite link for hardening Firefox properly without locking it so much that it's difficult to use? Most of the search links I've found involve using add-ons.

 

[NicotineRush]

A lot of info here: Privacy

 

[photonfanatic]

Google has devolved into insanity. No big surprise to see this article. Google is ripe for another company to come in and say "Use our service instead! We have a never censor policy".

 

[DaveP]

^^^^This!

It's gotten so that I run CCleaner every morning to eradicate the cache contents of my browsers. Google Chrome typically has almost half a gig of captured activity. That's pretty ridiculous, IMO.

 

[NicotineRush]

@DaveP: If running any version of windows, you should also run PrivaZer and Shellbag AnalyZer. Both free. (same company)