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European Internet Users Urged To Protect Themselves Against Facebook Tracking
An anonymous reader writes: Belgium's Privacy Protection Commission says that Facebook tramples on European privacy laws by tracking people online without their consent and dodges questions from national regulators. They have issued a set of recommendations for both Facebook, website owners and end users. Net-Security reports: "The recommendations are based on the results of an extensive analysis of Facebook's revised policies and terms (rolled out on January 30, 2015) conducted by the inter-university research center EMSOC/SPION, which concluded that the company is acting in violation of European law. According to them Facebook places too much burden on its users to protect their privacy, and then doesn't offer simple tools and settings to do so, and sets up some problematic default settings. They also don't provide adequate information for users to make informed choices."
Your data is a form of payment and you submit to authorizing facebook to use it when you sign up. Why shouldn't Europeans abide by the contract they willfully sign? Facebook is not a public utility, you are not forced to consume it.
The only way to win is not to play.
K-line their links and widgets in your browsers. Don't feed the beast.
This is why "free" is never "free". The internet is mostly based on private enterprise supporting its own sites or advertisement providing the funding. Facebook is no different and relies heavily on finding ways to support all those "free" users. Its interesting, because I wonder how popular these sites like Facebook would be if the end user had to pay for everything in return for no ads, no unwanted loss of privacy? But everyone should know that when you visit a web site you may be providing more information then you want and it may be that you allowed it to happen because you want "free".
The link to the actual report in TFA is broken, as it was on the Belgian commission's own site until a few moments ago. So here it is:
http://www.privacycommission.b...
The recommendations for site owners is to enhance the cookie opt-in banner that you already see on European sites. A cookie for cookies! It's buried deep in the heavily enumerated document, so I'll quote it in full:
I'm glad to see the EU handle Facebook as the disease that it is.
Politicians are practically falling over themselves while rushing to give the people's privacy to Facebook, Google, etc. Everything else is just sweet-talk to placate the critics. Telling people to protect themselves is the height of insolence. Everybody wants to know what everybody else is doing, who they're talking to, and they make the laws to all but prevent privacy. You can't even get a SIM card without "papers please" in many European countries. They compel ISPs to record all sorts of metadata, even in violation of constitutional laws. The telecoms happily oblige - they know the value of that data. And then they have the audacity to tell people that they're in charge of their own privacy!
Facebook is blacklisted here, with every technical measure that I can throw at them. Fat lot of good that does, as everybody else still uses Facebook and gives them everything they have about me. But I'm urged to protect myself against Facebook tracking. Fuckers.
The one (microscopically tiny) thing APK isn't batshit crazy about:
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.facebook.com static.ak.facebook.com
I believe most companies nowadays are using opt-out, "bad user default settings" schemes and most of them simply won't move away from it, well, because it just works so well with their ad-based and big data business model. And you know what? I'm fine with that, it's so much better than a subscription. With that said, there There are only 2 reasons why people deserve the privacy violations they are put through:
So, to be totally honest, I know the harm I'm put through while using Facebook, I know ways to circumvent most of it, and the harm I can't avoid is my own damn fault for posting socially awkward information/comment/photo of myself.
The bottom line is that Facebook-user relations aren't much different from a state-citizen one: when I go about my life in my country of "choice" (i.e. where I happened to be born or end up), I am also supposed to have some kind of omniscience of all types of law, such as fiscal (taxes), penal (crimes), environmental, etc, and even all my own damn rights. Either that or to have the income to hire "omniscient entities" in each of those fields. Only then I become a "perfect citizen" in the eyes of the state, as I abide to every form of policy my country, the EU, and the F'ing UN imposed on me. So the EU doesn't like Facebook for pretty much acting the way they do. That is a load of bull.
The problem is that FB also tracks non-fb-users. You can't opt-out from this.
Fuck those communists in Europe. Facebook is America and America is Freedom. It is their patriotic duty to allow themselves to be monitored and everyone owes a debt of patriotism to America, whether they're American or not!
Just fill out false information, post pictures that are not you, tag things incorrectly, feed the bots dust til they choke.
If you think about it's possible to loop their own ads back to them...just help spread the advertisement.
They agreed to these conditions when they accept me as a user.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Other people can post photos of you and tag you in them. You can't easily stop them doing it... Their phone might even do it automatically. Even if you avoid doing anything embarrassing in public it's easy for photos to be taken out of context.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Just fill out false information, post pictures that are not you, tag things incorrectly, feed the bots dust til they choke."
This "camouflage" or "false positive" technique is way underutilized with cookie tracking and searches tracking.
But it's far more difficult with facial recognition. If you are using someone else's face, it gets tricky, and is also probably fairly easy to sort out electronically.
I've thought about using Photoshopping to slightly change the distance between my eyes, shrink or expand my chin, etc. But that's time consuming and socially awkward if Friends figure it out and wonder what the hell I'm doing.
A late friend who was in the marijuana and drug importing business in the 1980s religiously changed his facial hair every 6 weeks. Full beard, goatee, mustache, clean shave, etc., constantly altering superficial grooming. I didn't realize why he did it until he told me how surprised I'd be at the number of people who were confused by it.
Gently reply
Can you please just go away? Or at least present your information in a clear and readable manner? Non of that @ and + and & bullshit. This ain't perl.
Hold my beer and watch this!
Unhelpful people will point out that such a list isn't and can't be perfectly complete. That's true, but so what, this list blocks a ton of tracking. If I'm missing important domains, please tell me which ones. I've merged in the domains from Blaskowicz's list which weren't already in mine. (I've also heard conflicting opinions on using 127.0.0.1 vs 0.0.0.0. I don't know which is better but I do know the difference is insignificant.)
0.0.0.0 apps.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 connect.facebook.net
0.0.0.0 de-de.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 developers.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 error.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 es-es.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 facebook.com
0.0.0.0 facebook.net
0.0.0.0 fb.com
0.0.0.0 fbcdn-creative-a.akamaihd.net
0.0.0.0 fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net
0.0.0.0 fbcdn.com
0.0.0.0 fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net
0.0.0.0 fbm.mysocialpixel.com
0.0.0.0 fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net
0.0.0.0 fr-fr.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 internet.org
0.0.0.0 l.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 login.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 newsroom.fb.com
0.0.0.0 nl-nl.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 pixel.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 s-static.ak.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 scontent-ams.xx.fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 static.ak.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 static.ak.fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 static.api.ak.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 threatexchange.fb.com
0.0.0.0 upload.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.connect.facebook.net
0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.facebook.net
0.0.0.0 www.fb.com
0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.com
0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 www.login.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.static.ak.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 1-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 2-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 3-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 4-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 5-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 6-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 7-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 8-edge-chat.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 9-edge-chat.facebook.com
Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
Yet you fail to grasp the main divergence between corporate and political oversight: I cannot influence or chose so easily the policies by which I'm managed, while I have the simple option of just not using facebook and get on with my life without it. And even arguing you can switch countries, you will find some sort of policy you don't agree with anywhere you are on earth, and the aforementioned difficulty to influence them to your interest. Both their oversight powers, when limited in scope, are exactly the same, as Facebook can have whatever managerial decision they chose in their closed-source platform, and so can most of the EU in their law-standardizing scheme. That army argument is just proof of that, as it is not in EU's scope to manage that directly, while they can still do so indirectly if you look deep into communitary law.
You can actually preempt those photos from being related to your account (tagged with your profile). Other than that, it's just someone posting photos in the public domain, which is not prohibited under any platform as long as they aren't offensive, abusive, with content in the likes of nude children and whatnot. A paper can just publish photos of individuals, be them famous or just part of an article piece, without any impediment, well, because that is freedom of expression business as usual. The fact you didn't know you could preempt those tags (which I didn't either from the get go but learned), is much the same as learning you have to pay taxes for whatever you do commercially in a country. You just happen to be eased into it since your parents pay most of taxes related to you until you are much aware of them when starting adult life. Analogously, the moment you find more and more undesirable tags of you in facebook, is the moment you decide to look deep enough to find out you can actually preempt it. Same as taxes, you can be caught off-guard.
The state also tracks non-citizens in a country, unemployed/inactive citizens, and even unemployed non-citizens abroad for whatever interests. Tracking is not just web 3.0, it's society/globalization 101. One learns to live with it. The EU wants to force a square peg on a round hole.
Can't really see your point, but I would definitely call hypocrisy on non-racist clansmen. The EU, encompassing a capitalist state-group where internal corporate policy and business models are constantly regulated, arguing citizen protection, is just a more complex form of that same hypocrisy. Uber is the perfect example of the same concept being antithetically applied: "Oh wait, we have taxis, but we can't have non-associative taxis, even if that business is much more for the public-interest (and even pays taxes more assiduously due to high technological dependency!). Why you ask? Because Taxi associations are here for much longer, they have a cultural background (which has nothing to do with cultural history though), but well, they have a lot more political influence than this newcomer..."
And yet, despite all those flawed arguments, you still failed to answer the OP's question. No one is saying DNS is perfect, but sometimes you need a different tool to solve a problem, and unless you can provide some hack/workaround to allow an arbitrary list of subdomains/hosts using nothing more than a hosts file, this is one of those times.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I use the "strangers on a train" plug in. It exchanges all your facebook cookies every 5 minutes with another random person. It doesn't hurt your facebook login itself since you still need your password for that. It just scrambles your identity when you press like. If everyone used this then the "likes" would still add up to being meaningful but the user profiles would be completely homogenized and have no tracking value.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I have the simple option of just not using facebook and get on with my life without it.
No, you don't. That's the point. These organisations built around tracking and data mining are collecting data about you from sources you can't control. Notably, they systematically try to collect information about individuals via for example each individual's friends, without any consent or potentially even knowledge of the data subject.
A feature as simple as having a mobile app that uploads the phonebook to FB gives them a name and number and a link from that shadow account to the phone's owner. All it takes is a few different people installing that app and their mutual friend is associated with all of their accounts, allowing data mining organisations to draw all kinds of probably correct inferences.
And that's just using a single method of data collection via a third party, without any sort of correlation with other data sets, and within a single organisation that at least has a commercial interest in keeping that data very secure and only using it internally. Nothing about your argument guarantees any such favourable conditions, though.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Tracking is not just web 3.0, it's society/globalization 101. One learns to live with it.
Or, like civilised people, we decide that some behaviour is potentially damaging and/or socially unacceptable, we make it illegal, and we punish those who continue to do it.
Also, your continued analogy between what governments do and what private businesses do is silly. Technology is not inherently evil. Storing data about someone is not inherently evil. How you use that technology and what you use that data for may be evil, or may not.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I do not disagree with you in your last 3 sentences. Other than that, I accept the fact that my social condition (that of a working, middle-class citizen, i.e. one vote) simply does not allow me to have that influence in communitary law-making. Democracy allows me this vote every now and then, on a political array of partisan packages I will never entirely agree with. I cope with it yet express my desire to have means to control it in web comments, petitions, but not much else. Civilized people cope. Activists "decide that some behaviour is potentially damaging and/or socially unacceptable", unilaterally. Governments turn actual decisions into law for us in an pseudo-technocratic kind of way, where we, for whatever it may matter, deem (through our vote) the government has the necessary knowledge background in order to make the right decisions, through their elected status. Well, that is the main basis for my comparison of state vs corporations right there: they both have assumed knowledge to act upon the things they are entitled rights to act upon. One just acts upon legislation, the other acts on the development, availability, usage and monetization of their intellectual property.
You always have a choice. Don't supply your phone number to people you know, think or have the risk of making that information public to parties you don't want to interact with. You only lose control when you forfeit that control to another party. It effectively is out of your hands by opting-in, even if unconsciously. That is ignorance. What you can't allow is a bureaucratization spree from entities that they themselves have forfeit their bureaucratization rights by establishing market liberalization. You are either all-in in capitalism, or you aren't, much like communism. Any argument that attempts to say otherwise is moot.
Many people are already running a router 24/7 so electricity usage is not a problem
All operating systems cache DNS lookups. And since the facebook ones are on many many web pages they do tend to be cached so this is not slow.
DNS lookups are quite infrequent when compared to the amount of data transferred so "slow" is probably not going to be noticeable.
Running your own DNS server (locally on your machine) or on your router/modem gives a lot of flexibility.
DNS servers do not take up much in the way of ram or CPU on any computer built in the last 10 years.
So yes APK you do have a point and a product. But no you are not telling the whole truth.
Why am I arguing with APK? I know it is pointless.
Then please tell me how i can preemt pictures of me getting tagged on facebook as a non facebook user.
You do a google instead of using this comment section. If you don't have an account, it only links to a name, which is an ambiguous thing. If it uniquely links to your identity by usage of, e.g. a social security number, you can sue. But stop thinking you can preempt people from being people discriminating the platform. You can't prevent your children being bullied - you can only switch their school. Example below:
https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10152050760878003
Also please note that the privacy laws in the EU do not recognize what you call "public domain," much less if the pictures were taken in a non-public place an uploaded by a facebook member.
If the place happens to be your place, or show any item, artwork or intellectual property under any form that is yours or from your employer, you can also DMCA' it out of facebook. If it only shows your face, well, that depends on your state policy of who owns the right of your face on a picture. In the EU you most likely can use anyone's face as long as it is not unfair use that places you under some legal harm. Not much else though. The bullying argument comes to mind once again...
I do not disagree with you in your last 3 sentences. Other than that, I accept the fact that my social condition (that of a working, middle-class citizen, i.e. one vote) simply does not allow me to have that influence in communitary law-making.
As a 25 year old PhD student, together with a bunch of like-minded people that had no political clout or connections (many of which were students or PhD students), I managed to help block the EU software patents directive back in 2009. This directive had the full support of the European Commission, and initially also of the majority of the largest groups in the European Parliament (the Christian Democrats and the Socialists). Big IT companies (IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, ...) spent over 4 million euro on lobbying. And yet in the end (after 7 years of procedure) they all decided to go for cancelling the directive rather than risking it might get amended do something we may like and they might not.
For me, it started in a very silly way: I sent a mail to all Belgian MEPs, explaining them my view on the directive and on software patents. A week later, I got a call from an assistant of a number of MEPs telling me it was the first mail on the topic that made any sense to her, and asking me (a random student that just mailed them) how they should vote on the report that was being tabled the next week. I kind of panicked, told her I'd get back to her, looked on the Internet who could help me with that, ended up at the FFII and the rest is history.
Seriously, politicians and their aides are also also just people, and if you say something that makes sense, many of them will pay attention. There are of course always those who have made up their mind and won't care, but in my experience of 5 years of talking with them, I did not come to the conclusion that it's the majority of them. Not even close. Especially at the European level, where they are often happy that finally someone from the home country actually cares about what they're doing (as long as you're not sending template mails).
And yes, in the end it did cost lot of effort. But it is patently (hah!) false that there is nothing you can do influence or achieve at the EU level.
Democracy allows me this vote every now and then
That is just one part of democracy. It's an important one, but still just a part. A functional democracy requires way more effort than just voting every couple of years. And you can do it just as well as anyone else.
Donate free food here
The trouble with this argument is that even if you are the most well-informed and capable geek on Earth, many of your friends and family won't be. The only way to keep control by your argument is effectively to completely cut yourself off from normal society and live as a hermit.
There is a reason we have laws (and, often, constitutions) protecting basic human rights and freedoms. We also have laws about consumer rights, and data protection, and regulation of critical industries, and fair contract terms. These protections exist precisely because you should not be forced to give up some things just to live a normal life, and no relatively powerful organisation (including, often, your own government) should be able to compel you to do so.
I don't understand the final point you are trying to make, where you talk about being all-in. You certainly can have an underlying capitalist economic model but with regulations or other adjustments on top to create additional incentives. Most first world nations do.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's very nice to hear the system worked for you. But you have to accept that the whole environment lined up for a favorable conclusion. At quick glance I identify: you were not alone, as you ganged up a scientific group with relevant background on the matter at hand (even if students); you admittedly wasted a lot of effort for a single measure in your professional area; you are also Belgium-based, which does have an influence, be it by language barriers, or the simple fact that if a member of EU counsel needed an in-person technical assertion, it would be much easier to just holler a local.
And in my defense, I didn't say there was nothing we could do to influence such decisions - I said it was difficult. Again, your own argument assumes that difficulty. I'll give you my example: I'm a 26yo CS Researcher based in Portugal, and I vape. I have no background on vape research except articles I read for personal development, which tell me vaping is so much better than smoking. I did what I could, and what I knew was relevant for EU anti-vaping directives to not go ahead - I signed petitions that nobody cared about. The measures went ahead, and my country happened to be the first to ratify that directive last friday, under guise of tobacco product legislation. I time-shifted the entire Assembly of the Republic session to see what would happen. Portuguese people don't have much say on EU down streamed, government sanctioned projects of law, and even the represented parties have low to no opinion on it. The entire discussion point was a farce, focusing on the point of tobacco packaging imagery and completely disregarding the full scale of measures in that law bundle. It was approved unanimously. Nobody cared but the 100 vapers of my country who I predicted watched the plenary. What could I have done more? Switch my career to vape research maybe? I don't have that kind of motivation. I'd rather be arrested for buying vape products online (which is now prohibited here) than waste my life for another line of work. We also now pay 60 cents per ml of e-liquid bought nationally. And that wasn't even part of the EU directive: it was part of the annual government budget - a much larger package made into law which was highly influenced by the troika of lenders to my bankrupt country.
I'm not saying we are not to act. I am stating there are people for that. Elected officials are supposed to be those people, or the ones who connect the relevant parties so they can provide appropriate input (your specific case). But I know, for a fact, there are things worth investing your time, and others you might as well live with them. The privacy rights I lose to a US based company called Facebook are not one of them.
Erratum: In that last sentence, I meant "not one of the former", i.e. worth investing my time, as I deal with it easily with methods Facebook itself provides..
It's not the EU who is trying to stop Facebook but a Belgian Privacy Protection Commission. This commission is founded in popular demand to protect the privacy of Belgian citizens and to be a service point were citizens can report privacy issues. There were many complains about this issue with Facebook and the commission tries to defend the rights of those people. They have been successful to stop privacy invading ideas of the Belgian or local governments in the past (like the removal of public camera's) and are not controlled by the government or political parties or companies (although we can never be sure of course). This time they ga after Facebook's tracking technology of non Facebook users.
The only thing it has to do with the EU is that if Facebook loses the case, privacy organisations in other EU member states can do the same and stop Facebook from creating shadow profiles.
The EU has no say in this, expect when maybe member states agree for one privacy law in the entire EU.
It's very nice to hear the system worked for you.
There is no external "system" system entity that works or does not work for us. We are all part of what I what would rather call "democratic society". It's true that there are entities with lots of money and influence, but "regular people" tend to severely underestimate their ability to achieve anything. We won for a large part because we were not cynical enough to "know" that we could not win anyway.
But you have to accept that the whole environment lined up for a favorable conclusion. At quick glance I identify: you were not alone, as you ganged up a scientific group with relevant background on the matter at hand (even if students);
You are never alone. Of course you have to find like-minded people. But as my simple email demonstrates, even an action by one person can achieve a lot (it doesn't mean that it always does), of course).
you admittedly wasted a lot of effort for a single measure in your professional area;
I did not waste anything, it was a very enlightening and educational experience, that went way beyond my professional area (both in terms of experience and in terms of effect).
you are also Belgium-based, which does have an influence, be it by language barriers, or the simple fact that if a member of EU counsel needed an in-person technical assertion, it would be much easier to just holler a local.
We were maybe 4 Belgians in a core group of about 50 people. We were from all over the EU, including from Portugal.
And in my defense, I didn't say there was nothing we could do to influence such decisions - I said it was difficult.
You said that your condition "simply does not allow me to have that influence in communitary law-making". That is what triggered my reaction, because I know from experience it's not true.
Again, your own argument assumes that difficulty. I'll give you my example: I'm a 26yo CS Researcher based in Portugal, and I vape. I have no background on vape research except articles I read for personal development, which tell me vaping is so much better than smoking. I did what I could, and what I knew was relevant for EU anti-vaping directives to not go ahead - I signed petitions that nobody cared about.
Petitions can help, but only if accompanied by "real action": starting actual discussions with MEPs by mailing them, setting up websites collecting information and presenting it in a clear form, analysing amendments etc. Those petitions can then be used to attract attention to the "meat" that you have to offer. Note that personally, I have no real opinion on vaping, since I'm a smoker nor a vaper (I do wonder what the long term effects are of inhaling liters of formaldehyde though).
I'm not saying we are not to act. I am stating there are people for that. Elected officials are supposed to be those people, or the ones who connect the relevant parties so they can provide appropriate input (your specific case).
And the people *those people* get their input from. Getting elected does not make you all-knowing. Being an advisor, or group of advisers, to a politician doesn't either. It is part of our democratic duty to help inform those that have been elected ("duty" in the sense that if you don't do it, democracy doesn't work). While in part this is done by unions, NGOs, lobbyists etc, individuals also have an import part to play here.
But I know, for a fact, there are things worth investing your time, and others you might as well live with them. The privacy rights I lose to a US based company called Facebook are not one of them.
Maybe you don't mind, but the erosion of privacy rights is definitely harmful to society as a whole. Even if only because if companies are allowed to get away with it, then the extremists in the "intelligence commun
Donate free food here
You don't have to be an ermit and you still have a choice. I leave my work phone off when I'm off work. I silence my family phone while I'm at work. I chose to do that. I opt-in and provide my contact information (work or family's) disregarding the consequences, because I'm aware the consequences aren't as bad as the EU wants to paint them. You don't need to have 2 numbers, you need to have full awareness of what your single number is subject to. Then again I don't do anything wrong so I'm not afraid of mass-collection of data, but nobody should. What they should be afraid of is two things: that this data is not used anonymously, for statistical purposes (and that is where the EU should step in, regulating such usage); and that my freedom, or an organization's freedom to use data in an anonymous fashion, for their statistical purposes, with the data's source having opted-in for (or not opted-out against) it is just as important as my freedom to do my things privately. The measures the EU always wants to undertake involve preventing companies from asking users that right - for god's sake it's not like they are soliciting for sex! You give your number to your electrical company, you water company, your cable provider, and yet I don't see you pointing out that they use that number for marketing purposes constantly, repeatedly, unceasingly against your will. They will cold call you to death, yet you are afraid facebook will somehow become this off-shore big brother you are just too attached to willingly drop, like some overpowered form of cocaine which is just as addictive but 10 times worse for your health and 100 times more illegal. I'll give you the perfect example of a state that is much more afraid of facebook than the EU: Brazil. Brazil is one of the most corrupt states in the world, and the "citizen privacy protection" argument they used to move facebook's servers to their geographical domain is the biggest scam any politician could pull off. There is no people protection, there is only systematic corruption protection on that measure, or even worse - they want to have access to that privacy infringing data so they just force it out of HTTPS through the (then) feasible physical MITM hacks, and the corruption machine spins faster. The all-in argument was meant at the market scope of things, and no, I'm not saying some social policies such as universal health care are morally wrong, but they are morally unfeasible in a perfect capitalist state, much like meritocracy is unfeasible in a perfect communist state. And that is why markets crash.
You have to love APK. Somehow he missed the point. Somewhere in 1980 or so? I could be wrong. Perhaps it was earlier.
Modifying the hosts file is useful but it is not a solution to all issues. Faster, Stronger, more secure! Well no, not really.
That is the APK we all know and love.