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Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban On Personally Identifiable Web Tracking (propublica.org)
Fudge Factor 3000 writes: Google has quietly changed its privacy policy to allow it to associate web tracking, which is supposed to remain anonymous, with personally identifiable user data. This completely reneges its promise to keep a wall between ad tracking and personally identifiable user data, further eroding one's anonymity on the internet. Google's priorities are clear. All they care about is monetizing user information to rake in the big dollars from ad revenue. Think twice before you purchase the premium priced Google Pixel. Google is getting added value from you as its product without giving you part of the revenue it is generating through tracking through lower prices. The crossed-out section in its privacy policy, which discusses the separation of information as mentioned above, has been followed with this statement: "Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google's services and the ads delivered by Google." ProPublica reports: "The change is enabled by default for new Google accounts. Existing users were prompted to opt-in to the change this summer. The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on your name and other information Google knows about you. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct. The move is a sea change for Google and a further blow to the online ad industry's longstanding contention that web tracking is mostly anonymous. In recent years, Facebook, offline data brokers and others have increasingly sought to combine their troves of web tracking data with people's real names. But until this summer, Google held the line." You can choose to opt in or out of the personalized ads here.
Still the Google engineers who volunteer to implement these things in exchange for good payment and conditions, and excuse themselves as only following their employer's orders.
Most mass anything is the result of willing engineers. We should never forget this, or we end up being the problem.
I knew this day would be coming a long time ago so there's a very elegant solution to this madness.
1) Use a separate IMAP/POP3 client (thunderbird is nice) to fetch your mail from Gmail
2) Make your Firefox clean your session data on exit (cookies, web cache, offline website data - that's enough)
3) Adbock+/Ublock Origin with anti tracking and anti social lists for good measure
This still leaves your IP address unprotected but if you're concerned enough, use a provide which generates random IP addresses or VPN.
It will be cussed and discussed on a few noble forums and everyone else will go on with their Facebook world, surrendering personal privacy for access to social media and the Google search engine.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Why people are so stupid to understand that selling the user's data is the only working business model for free Internet services. User's data is the only asset they hold.
It is so naive to assume that they would not sell anything for which there would be demand.
This is enough to break my complacency of using Google products. I already just finished uploading my files to a cloud server that I'm hosting as an alternative to Google Drive. Does anyone have any recommendations for Chromium-based browsers with optimized privacy and security such as SRWare Iron or Comodo Dragon? How about privacy-based secure e-mail services such as ProtonMail? My last steps will be to switch over to DuckDuckGo for default search and find a custom Android ROM that is frequently updated and allows lots of visual customization.
Well, it seems that Google is only going to become more and more evil from now on. It was a good ride while it lasted. We got more than most companies, a solid ten years of good service. But now, the new crop of executives is in place and to them, "don't be evil" sounds like the stupidest motto ever. The old internet culture of sharing and open source and being trustworthy...well it just has no place in today's Google. The new breed just doesn't get it, or understand why it's important. It can be enforced, for a while. I'm sure it will live on in certain Google divisions, but as a principle it's dead as Dillinger.
I've used Gmail.com as my primary "real name email" for doing hotel reservations and such, anything that requires my real name. Obviously this has to come to a halt. Where should I migrate my real name email to? Is there any trustworthy email provider? Or, a provider in some oddball country that doesn't give a crap about spying on me? As I think the days of free email are behind us, I don't mind paying say, $5/month or something.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Throw Google under the bus not the poor folks just trying to feed their families.
"Poor folks just trying to feed their families"? These are well paid engineers with options. Anyone talented enough to get a job at Google is talented enough to secure employment elsewhere. They are willing accomplices to this action and pretending otherwise is disingenuous. Evidently these engineers lack a moral compass and their word means nothing. If they had a problem with this action they could easily have spoken up and taken action but they took the easy path and did nothing.
Pretty sure you'd scream bloody murder if you employer's actions were layer at your feet - douche!
My employer's actions are routinely laid at my feet and rightfully so. I am responsible for my actions at my employer as well as those who work for me. Companies are comprised of people who commit these actions and when these actions injure others there should be some accountability. If I have an ethical problem with what management at my company is doing or if I was wrongly accused of something I was not responsible for you can be quite certain I would either leave or take appropriate action to defend myself. But if I'm quiet about something then effectively I am endorsing it.
Good thing they're not being evil about it. *cough*
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...