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DuckDuckGo CEO: 'Google and Facebook Are Watching Our Every Move Online. It's Time To Make Them Stop' (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report from CNBC, written by Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo: You may know that hidden trackers lurk on most websites you visit, soaking up your personal information. What you may not realize, though, is 76 percent of websites now contain hidden Google trackers, and 24 percent have hidden Facebook trackers, according to the Princeton Web Transparency & Accountability Project. The next highest is Twitter with 12 percent. It is likely that Google or Facebook are watching you on many sites you visit, in addition to tracking you when using their products. As a result, these two companies have amassed huge data profiles on each person, which can include your interests, purchases, search, browsing and location history, and much more. They then make your sensitive data profile available for invasive targeted advertising that can follow you around the Internet.
[...]
So how do we move forward from here? Don't be fooled by claims of self-regulation, as any useful long-term reforms of Google and Facebook's data privacy practices fundamentally oppose their core business models: hyper-targeted advertising based on more and more intrusive personal surveillance. Change must come from the outside. Unfortunately, we've seen relatively little from Washington. Congress and federal agencies need to take a fresh look at what can be done to curb these data monopolies. They first need to demand more algorithmic and privacy policy transparency, so people can truly understand the extent of how their personal information is being collected, processed and used by these companies. Only then can informed consent be possible. They also need to legislate that people own their own data, enabling real opt-outs. Finally, they need to restrict how data can be combined including being more aggressive at blocking acquisitions that further consolidate data power, which will pave the way for more competition in digital advertising. Until we see such meaningful changes, consumers should vote with their feet.
[...]
So how do we move forward from here? Don't be fooled by claims of self-regulation, as any useful long-term reforms of Google and Facebook's data privacy practices fundamentally oppose their core business models: hyper-targeted advertising based on more and more intrusive personal surveillance. Change must come from the outside. Unfortunately, we've seen relatively little from Washington. Congress and federal agencies need to take a fresh look at what can be done to curb these data monopolies. They first need to demand more algorithmic and privacy policy transparency, so people can truly understand the extent of how their personal information is being collected, processed and used by these companies. Only then can informed consent be possible. They also need to legislate that people own their own data, enabling real opt-outs. Finally, they need to restrict how data can be combined including being more aggressive at blocking acquisitions that further consolidate data power, which will pave the way for more competition in digital advertising. Until we see such meaningful changes, consumers should vote with their feet.
A great way to confound these trackers everywhere is to use an addon like AdNauseam. It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities.
The only way to make a difference is to hit these giants in the wallet, and once the companies paying for these these personal profiles conclude that they aren't helping their bottom line, the market will have to change in response or lose a lot of potential income.
How do you move forward? Install a blocker and stop them from seeing your movements in the first place.
Install something like HTTP Switchboard or uMatrix, and block the request in the first place. Throw in Ghostery and a script blocker. Make javascript and cookies whitelist only. In my opinion, this should be the default behaviour of web browsers, but since most of the companies who make them are getting ad revenue, that likely won't happen.
In my estimation the average web set will have 5-10 3rd party sites which are nothing but trackers, ads, and analytics. It's none of their fucking business what sites I visit, so my browsers simply don't make requests to them.
Your ad revenue isn't my problem. Your business of tracking people isn't my problem. I haven't consented to the privacy policy of a 3rd party I didn't invite to the party. Your cookie policy? Well, I have one too, and the answer is no.
This won't work for the average web user because it takes time and effort and a willingness to break a website and decide it's not worth using. But until lawmakers clamp down on this, the only solution is to block it yourself and prevent these companies from seeing every site you visit.
Ad companies can suck my balls, because I'm simply going to keep blocking them. And the odd site I find which can't be made to run without the 3rd party crap? Well, there's always the back button and another site.
Please somebody use DuckDuckGo!!! Please please please.
Everybody knows their data is being slurped in exchange for free services, that's the deal, people are mostly ok with it. You're going to get ads, does it really matter if they're targeted or not?
Was the single worst thing, after AOL, to ever happen to the WWW.
This is why you clear your data every day. Everything. No exceptions. They'll get fresh information each time and have to correlate it, but they won't be able to see where you've been those previous days. It will be like starting all over.
Granted, when you buy something that is another issue, but as far as being online, clearing your data is the first step. There are others, but this is the easiest.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
First, use browsers and plugins that avoid loading such trackers.
Second, use browsers and plugins that send bogus tracking info to poison the data pool that still gets collected.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Think of all the WiFi and Bluetooth IDs that are ubiquitous in our modern world. Wherever you go, your phone sees all these IDs.
Turn off your GPS location - it doesnt matter. Someone else's phone will detect your phone (by way of Bluetooth or WiFi IDs) and report it tagged with its own GPS location.
Buy a smart TV - it will note the presence of devices as well and (because of the giant data bucket all this is being fed into) know who's home it is in, what the GPS location is. And your phone will note the presence of your TV. It's a big web of device detection.
Correlate all this data, and you have a really, really detailed account of where you go, who you associate with, what you watch, and when. You can't really opt out unless you don't use any computerized gadgets because someone else's gadget will report your gadget for you.
Web browser tracking is just one piece of this giant data collecting puzzle but the rabbit hole goes a lot further...
... for the win.
Users don't care that much about privacy, if they did you would see Facebook and Google Chrome and Google search lose users to DuckDuckGo and Firefox and would dump their Facebook pages. Instead these services and sites are doing very well and while users may say privacy is a concern. Their actions say different. I'm sure DuckDuckGo is desperate to gain some users, but clearly like with Mozilla banging that same privacy drum nobody really cares.
Is DuckDuckGo a search engine per sei or would they just forward queries to Bing API and show results? The company is quite small -- their website mentions 40 employees (not all are programmers) -- so that would be quite impressive if they were able to built a search engine. Also, on job adverts they say that most of the codebase is written in the ancient language of Perl (which does not really sound like a language to write a search engine in).
The problem is that technology "created" this problem. Specifically the notion of "cookies" and embedded hyperlinks.
There must be a way to add a plugin to firefox that will strip information from hyperlinks, i.e. http://foo.bar.com/link.jpeg?ID=AABBCCDDEEFF112233, and render http://foo.bar.com/link.jpeg
There must be a way to have not only a "block list" but have a embedded link blacklist, i.e. embedded links get text that say "This link blocked," So, when you click on a link or take some positive action, you can do it. If the link is embedded in a page, and you don't even know its there, it will be blocked.
The question is, will anyone implement it? I certainly don't know the firefox code well enough to implement it and I don't have the time to learn it.
Consumers are both lazy and don't give a shit about security or privacy. This statement is validated by the fact that these mega-corps now have successfully amassed huge data stores on billions of humans. The only way change would ever happen is if security and privacy were the default setting in the default program. Anything else requires effort that only 0.01% of society will care to expend, and any change to the default will be fought by mega-corps who rake in hundreds of billions by preying on insecurity and a lack of privacy.
Oh, you stopped carrying a smartphone because you didn't want to be tracked? What the hell difference does that make when 99.99% of society around you is still carrying one? It only makes you stand out apart from the rest now, and even more observable as an anomaly. Being secure now creates insecurity.
Sorry, but the fight for privacy and security is done. The war is over, and privacy and security lost.
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The problem with DuckDuckGo is that it is not really that good when it comes to finding things in the net. At least it wasn't a few weeks ago, when I had to reluctantly stop using it as my default search engine after a month or so, during which its shortcomings became evident. I am all for ditching Google for DuckDuckGo - but only when the latter returns comparable returns. It's by no means there yet.
He's right. People have given up.
Yeah, I can tell from all the people on Slashdot saying we are better off being tracked. Not.
It ain't over till it's over.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I see all these posts talking about technological workarounds for what is really a social & corporate problem. The only real solution here is to stop using sites that track you. We've created this problem by allowing a monoculture to be established. Everybody uses Google & Chrome, then complains when they are being tracked. Maybe it's worth pulling up Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo sometimes, even if they aren't as good at searches. Privacy is a part of the overall product they are offering, so if that is important to you, then weigh it accordingly.
Unfortunately, whilst I do agree with the sentiment that the largest web monopolies such as Google and Facebook need to have their all-pervasive monitoring addressed, I do not believe that any change will come via meaningful government legislation.
The reason is simple. Today, governments around the world can turn up at the doorstep of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others with a National Security Letter (NSL) and demand information in a way that the companies concerned are prohibited from discussing. In other words, it is in the interests of governments all around the world to allow these companies to become private extensions of the surveillance state. It's also much cheaper for the governments concerned - they can demand access by law - and at zero cost to them...
Unfortunately, that "cost angle" adds another twist, another dimension to this picture. In the case of the very largest providers concerned, governments know that the costs incurred from answering NSLs can soon become very, very expensive. Now, governments are not going to want to upset these companies to the point where they start to resist such demands [witness the Microsoft defense against the servers located in the Irish Republic], so said governments need to find a way to "sweeten" the deal. I have no knowledge of what they might be willing to do in such scenarios, but I am inclined to look at, for example, the case of Microsoft's purchase of both Skype and Hotmail.
When Microsoft made the purchases, these two companies were still in early growth stages and (IIRC) neither were operating at a profit. In the case of both acquisition, Microsoft then had to spend a very considerable sum of money to make changes. In the case of Skype, for instance, they changed the infrastructure model so that all calls, instead of being point-to-point, were re-routed via Microsoft's own internal servers, so Microsoft then had the potential [if required] to intercept and/or record Skype calls. So the question becomes: how do you make such a deal attractive to Microsoft?
Perhaps - again, I don't have any evidence of this - as a government you might be willing to strike a deal with respect to Corporation Tax? Or to award contracts? Or both? The point being that, ultimately, the relationship between these internet giants and the governments who are supposed to regulate them is already far too cozy for us to consider the relationship as "formal and polite"...
Add to this the truly massive amount of money and resource these companies can afford to spend on lobbying and you start to get an understanding of how unlikely meaningful government regulation can be. In fact, ironically, only the EU, which isn't a single government and which doesn't have the power to tax these corporations directly, seems to have been remotely successful in trying to curb their powers. And even their successes have been extremely limited.
Bottom line: ain't going to happen.
76 percent of websites now contain hidden Google trackers, and 24 percent have hidden Facebook trackers
So what we need are plug-ins for the major browsers that independently visit a mass of other websites while we are busy doing whatever we do online.
So while you are getting your fix of politics, hard-core, cat videos or teen angst there is another "user" with the same browser footprint that is visiting recipe sites, finding out how to fix the brakes on a Mustang, searching gift ideas for octogenarians and checking the symptoms of gonorrhea in sheep
Once the advertisers realise that most of the "tracks" they are following are worthless, there will be little incentive for them to advertise online. Then the whole "free" (gratis) internet will collapse and we'll only have paywalled sites and government propaganda machines to visit.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
is where Americans should invest their hope.
Could you elaborate? You went oblique there and it just reads like concern trolling that maybe they're not 'the good guys' like it seems. Honestly if it wasn't for Slashdot posters I'd never have heard of DDG so I'm not sure what you're talking about with the adverts, either. I suppose I should try them out, I use different browsers for different things and so about half my searches are on Google and half on Bing, and we know those guys are slurping whatever they can.
about this kind of tracking. I've got bigger fish to fry. I'm in the US, so I'm not guaranteed access to health care. My jobs keep getting offshored and if they can't do that they try to bring in cheap labor to do them (e.g. H1-Bs or whatever your local equivalent is) and I'm staring down the barrel of a massive Automation push that, even if it doesn't take my job, is going to displace so many workers it's going to royally fsck the economy. Then there's climate change and water shortages coming, the absurd cost of college for my kids and not being able to retire when I can't work anymore. Oh yeah, and my country's involved in 8 wars and working on 9 and 10.
When I read stories like this I think about that XKCD comic about the guy with megabit encryption getting hit with a $2 wrench until he gives up his password. There's just much, much easier ways to oppress me than taking away a bit of my privacy so they can sell me crap.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The sad reality of this situation is that everyone wants "free" services. People love free E-mail, free cloud storage, free search engines but in the end no one is willing to pay for them. I've been long aware that they do track if anyone's even paid slight attention to banner ads because the sites you visit tend to follow you around in the ads. I mean seriously, do a search for something on newegg and bang suddenly that item follows you around on ad banners. Other hints such as google allowing you to use persistent login which basically attaches a tracking cookie in your browser but allows you to mostly login without having to type in username and password in Gmail is convenient. I however am not paranoid, sure Google probably knows a LOT about me but they do have the decency to mostly keep it anonymous to advertisers. Advertisers (companies) mostly want to know what you're interested in so they can pitch things that will sell. They're not after you personally. Maybe that will change someday with Google getting desperate or the government for some unknown reason is interested in your activities but for the most part most people over-react. I can't blame Google for this as they're simply doing what people in general want. Unless you can honestly tell me that you'd rather pay for all the Internet services that are "free".
WTF lol DDG tracker blocker found 11 here at /. and gave it a B grade lol Sorry but in my book more then 1 should be an F. 11 trackers a B ??comon DDG......
Jack of all trades,master of none
Pro tip: never search for "I need new underwear" on the web.
Could you elaborate?
Sure. Although I am not sure how to over-clarify what I consider crystal clear. I didn't like DDG when I used it but kept doing so because of thinking that they were a small, technically-oriented business (= bunch of programmers mostly caring about programming). I realised that I was wrong and stopped doing so. My overall impression has kept evolving towards (lots-of-)money-/marketing-/etc.-focused company and, as per my personal expectations, these companies tend to say what users want to hear (rather than actually doing so). In any case, as a user of a business claiming that they care about my privacy, I would expect them to provide the means allowing me to validate such claims rather than blindly trusting what they say.
reads like concern trolling
Please, keep that nonsensical expression away from me. I am sharing my opinion, you can think that it is right/wrong, try to change it or ignore me; but try to avoid arbitrarily insulting me because of not liking/understanding what I say.
they're not 'the good guys' like it seems
What are you 5 yo? No company is the good guys. Companies only care about one thing: getting richer. A different story is lying. You don't need to be good/bad to sell a distorted perception of your business/expectations; you might be a liar (or even a fraudster) though.
Honestly if it wasn't for Slashdot posters I'd never have heard of DDG not sure what you're talking about with the adverts
What has this to do with anything of what I wrote?! When have I mentioned Slashdot at all? Do you know that there are lots of people writing in this site which have nothing to do with each other? I can think/write whatever I consider without it having to agree with anyone else's opinion.
I use different browsers for different things and so about half my searches are on Google and half on Bing, and we know those guys are slurping whatever they can.
In what part of my post I said otherwise?
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I run Ghostery, and this slashdot page has 12 trackers on it.
The CNBC article linked in the summery has 21 trackers on it.
It's completely out of control. I've switched to Duck Duck Go as my search (try it, it's just as good as Google). I run Ghostery on all my devices. Still, there's no way to avoid it unless you disable cookies and Javascript, and at that point the web stops functioning.
I think a regulatory solution will ultimately be required.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's a hot one.
I will take advantage from this curious iteration to highlight that I usually refer to non-logged users (here called Anonymous Cowards, short-form AC) as "other AC" because my initials happen to also be AC (= Alvaro Carballo). I have nothing to do with the huge number of other people who post anonymously (or not) in this site. I never post anonymously myself and have always relied on this account, I am also the only person who has ever used it (like anything else called Custom Solvers 2.0 or varocarbas; that's why the signature of my posts). Logically, all what I write here are my own opinions, which I share when I feel like doing so for no other reason than feeling like doing so.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
With "from this curious iteration", I meant "from this curious interaction". Note that I eventually post this kind of correcting follow-ups because you cannot edit/delete posts in Slashdot. Also bear in mind that my work isn't writing English (which is my second language, BTW) neither caring a lot about something as irrelevant as writing a proper post here (I like Slashdot, but this is something for fun/to get distracted, not my work), but programming.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Yes - and we can set our technology to automate this for us.
Unfortunately, it is no longer enough. Our local ISPs - who are utterly corrupt - are not only selling details that connect us as individual households to our IP address leases, but also are using our billing records to join the dots to our postal location and home address...
If I try and access slashdot on my iPad, I notice that some of the served advertisements [those from Tamboola and others] are geographically specific to within 5 miles of my home address. I've discussed this with my ISP, who are presently trying to claim that they allocate IP blocks on a location-by-location basis. I'm presently trying to determine if this is the truth [which I doubt] and if not true this would go a long way to confirming my suspicions.
However, if your identity can be ascertained from the moment you connect, even a daily purge of your network access technology simply won't be enough.
Lastly, if you haven't already tried it, take a look at panopticlick, from the EFF, here:- https://panopticlick.eff.org/ It is a really effective way of determining whether or not your web browsing setup of choice can be used to track you based on nothing more than the configuration of the browser.
I'm really not seeing the threat concern here. I really don't care that google serves me up ads about products I shopped for 2 weeks ago. In fact, It's kinda preferable really being shown ads that I'm actually interested in rather than random stuff that I'm not. I mean, there probably aren't many other people reading this that want to get ads for gasoline fueling nozzles on Facebook, but I don't mind because I purchase and spec gasoline fueling nozzles fairly regularly for work. I actually appreciate being shown ads for products that I might not otherwise know about or have considered. Now, SOME regulation is appropriate. For example, I don't think Google and Facebook should be targeting people ads for pain killers or other prescription drugs. But the other 95% of ads are perfectly ok.
The fundamental baptists used to talk a lot about a one world government and "the Beast", an entity controlled by the anti-Christ that would track everyone at all times,much like the "internet" does. Everyone would be assigned a number. This was always advertised as being a social security number, a phone number or IP address would make more sense. One of the prophets had a vision of a dragon rising up from the masses with ten heads. One of the heads was damaged in some way, and the anti-Christ was the one that repaired it. This sounds very much like a cell tower.
We are living in the "End Times". Repent! For, the end is at hand.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Consumers are both lazy and don't give a shit about security or privacy.
The first is true, the second not quite. Technology goes out of its way to lie to users. Private browsing for example is a placebo at best, any ad network worth its salt keeps track of enough information that removing session information alone wont do anything good - your IP alone would be enough to connect it back to your normal profile. Then you have various other features that either do not mention their tracking at all or have a not quite off switch that just hides the information from the user or uses less obvious means to track them.
Sorry, but both are painfully true regardless of how technology actually behaves. 99% of consumers don't give a shit about privacy. That's rather obvious by the oversharing addiction on social media. "Secure" messaging app gets hacked? Oh well, keep using it. Private browsing? Walk down any street and ask 100 people about private browsing. I can assure you almost all of them won't have a damn clue as to what you're talking about. Read a EULA? No one does that. The give-a-shit level with security goes right along with most of this attitude towards privacy as well. The oversharing of who you are, where you are, what you're doing, when you're doing it, who you're doing it with, and why you do it is all over social media. You can create a digital profile on someone within minutes these days by doing nothing but looking at a few days of social media posts.
The war is over, and privacy and security lost.
Speak for yourself.
To you and the CEO ranting here, I bid you both good luck. Not a damn thing will change.
Consumers are both lazy and don't give a shit about security or privacy.
Very true. Also, 'bread and circuses'. So long as they're amused and your data collection/spying is not right in front of their face, they don't even think about it.
Oh, you stopped carrying a smartphone because you didn't want to be tracked? What the hell difference does that make when 99.99% of society around you is still carrying one?
It means that the lack of data available on me is lost in the noise of all the data from the mouth-breathing hordes they do have data on. Oh and by the way I've never owned a smartphone and never will, I have a $50 plastic LG dumbphone AT&T gave me for free, I physically disabled the GPS (shorted the antenna to ground), and it's off 95% of the time anyway.
Sorry, but the fight for privacy and security is done. The war is over, and privacy and security lost.
No, you've just stop caring and have given up. Enjoy accepting corporate and government penis into your body cavity, I guess, since that's what you're consenting to now. You can take back at least some of your privacy and data security, but the cost of that is giving up some dubious 'conveniences', and accepting some inconveniences. Just remember this: there was a time, not as long ago as you think it was, where we didn't have all the shiny toys we have now, and we got along in life just fine without them. You can live without them now, too. You just have to be willing to change the way you do things.
You get advertisements specific to where you live I get the opposite problem. I don't know what is my ISP doing (I guess it's the ISP's fault) but I often get geolocated to Russia but I'm actually in Spain. The result is that I get russian ads (not so bad) but also a streaming service I pay also locates me there and I can only get the Russian version of their channel and not the Spanish one.
Weird.
We can block some of the personally identifiable info (PII) from going out with long hosts files, ad blockers, JS white/blacklists, auto-deleting cookies, etc.. but this is beyond most users' capabilities. What we need is legislation to stop the attempts to collect PII in the first place. There's been a significant first move by the EU with their General Data Protection Regulation, which comes into force this year. Hopefully, other countries will follow suit. Perhaps, maybe, one day, the US might even consider similar protections for its citizens?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
This is the most insightful troll post I've ever read on Slashdot.
... stance.
While governments are forbidden to spy on its own citizens, nothing says they can't simply buy surveillance shit from private spying corporations.
Think of the children.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Opening only what I need. Can be tedious at times but well worth it IMHO.
I wonder if google sells to more than just advertisers. Imagine this scenario
A prospective employer is interested in candidate Juan Pingalarga. Wouldnâ(TM)t it be nice if big data could tell the employer âoemr Pinagalarga frequents hentai websites, searches for my little pony, watches firearms vids on YouTube and reads anti-government propaganda. It is our AIâ(TM)s evaluation that mr pingalarga would be a liability to your company. Do not hire. âoe
Far-fetched? Too cray cray to be plausible?
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I've read reports that the Russian Government has the ability to mess with backbone internet routers, done in such a way that traffic that would normally route around Russia is tweaked in such a way that the traffic flows through the Russian internet backbone - the inference being that this would allow the capture and inspection of that traffic. Obviously you have to consider the sources - something I'm just not in a position to validate or disprove.
If this is actually, technically possible, then I suppose that there is a narrow chance that you are observing the side effects of this sort of manipulation. It isn't entirely clear to me what consequences would occur if one were to reprogram backbone routers, hacking the OSPF tables to move traffic around the net. But it does introduce the possibility of an explanation for what you're seeing...
used elements of the Patriot Act to coordinate a response to occupy Wallstreet between the FBI and local law enforcement in order to shut the protests down. And it worked. The best part? They didn't even hide that they did it. Privacy isn't the problem. The problem is that nobody is calling them out on abuse of power, and lots of folks approve of it ('Gosh darn lazy Millennials, why don't they get a job', etc, etc).
Again, We've got way, way bigger fish to fry.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Anyone seen the mail order spam deals where the order form has prepaid postage? I used to make a point to send blank forms, so that they had to pay for the postage but did not get any order. Same deal with user tracking. It takes resources and cost real money to do on a large scale. So if enough people run some kind of ad blocking and make it a point to never click ads, then the cost of tracking is transferred to the company.
Search results from Bing and DuckDuckGo are often identical. Try it.
The question is, how much of DuckDuckGo does Microsoft already own? If great success comes, how long until Bing embraces / extends / extinguishes it?
Try it. Pick a search term. Any search term.
The War is already over. You lost.
That's not quite what happened. The internet undermined the populations ability to hold these organizations accountable. The free market dogma "you have a choice" is a capitalist myth. The game industry is a case in point, pre high speed internet you had control of the game software, they had to give you the entire game if they wanted to get paid because there was no internet to take part of the game files hostage on their servers. After high speed internet penetration became a thing. Game companies pushed mmo's as a trial balloon with massive propaganda to sell people on paying monthly for a game you don't control or own. The problem is there is a constant new stream of kids being born, those irrational kids and their parents, the unintelligent/irrational part of the population voted away the rights of the informed half of the consumer base (aka vote with your wallet). That is why there is such outrage amongst the intelligent, because the stupid voted away our right to control software and we would have stormed their offices if our society was setup to give us the resources to hold them accountable (aka you were paid by the state to be a citizen to go visit them and give them some angry physical proximity). The internet and tech has fundamentally broken and undermined the power of the individual against large organizations because it requires us to be physically located near them in any way have any kind of market power in the relationship.
The problem is the internet is worldwide, aka goes across the globe and across the country, that gave corporations instant access to kids and the dumb half of the population, that dumb half voted against the smart half to remove their rights. AKA many of us didn't pay a thing for these companies but new kids and idiot parents are legion at the bottom of the bell curve. So the internet allowed the unintelligent to vote away the rights of the intelligent. The intelligent half of the population could have prevented it but that would have required our institutions to be setup for us to be paid to be citizens and be mobile so we could storm their offices, that is why the corporations and business community can simply take over society, telecommunications infrastructure undermins the very basis of the free market because the customer has no ability to influence the business.
The internet undermined market power of the individual, that's the reality. There is no market not that it ever really existed, for those of us who are politically informed.
Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349
Consumers are both lazy and don't give a shit about security or privacy.
Very true. Also, 'bread and circuses'. So long as they're amused and your data collection/spying is not right in front of their face, they don't even think about it.
Oh, you stopped carrying a smartphone because you didn't want to be tracked? What the hell difference does that make when 99.99% of society around you is still carrying one?
It means that the lack of data available on me is lost in the noise of all the data from the mouth-breathing hordes they do have data on. Oh and by the way I've never owned a smartphone and never will, I have a $50 plastic LG dumbphone AT&T gave me for free, I physically disabled the GPS (shorted the antenna to ground), and it's off 95% of the time anyway.
Sorry, but the fight for privacy and security is done. The war is over, and privacy and security lost.
No, you've just stop caring and have given up. Enjoy accepting corporate and government penis into your body cavity, I guess, since that's what you're consenting to now. You can take back at least some of your privacy and data security, but the cost of that is giving up some dubious 'conveniences', and accepting some inconveniences. Just remember this: there was a time, not as long ago as you think it was, where we didn't have all the shiny toys we have now, and we got along in life just fine without them. You can live without them now, too. You just have to be willing to change the way you do things.
Accepting some inconveniences? What's the point of paying cash at the POS when your face is being filmed along with everything you buy by the dozen surveillance cameras around you? What, you think it takes a GPS to track your every move when you drive from stoplight to stoplight with a license plate on your car, and a camera on every street corner? Think facial recognition technology is just a myth? Forget the Netflix streaming accounts and DVRs that monitor every second of digital consumption, I'm talking about the "shiny toys" you have zero control over. Sequester yourself in your house to avoid the surveillance state that exists all around you everywhere? Find vendors who will take bitcoin for your purchases, and then hope the delivery company doesn't sell your entire purchase history associated with the address of your home, registered to the county where you pay taxes? I wonder what form of employment you'll take working from home, and what records your employer will share about you. Of course that's assuming you'll be able to find employment after becoming an internet hermit, only communicating with the outside world via a TOR onion wrapped in PGP bacon on a burner blackphone. How many people report being tracked by Social Media without an account?
These are the reasons security and privacy are dead. The only thing that is inconvenient here, is that truth. And it's only going to get worse. You speak of long ago. There was a time long ago when Capitalistic Greed didn't know a poppy or cocoa plant could be worth billions too. Now the drug being sold is you, which is why Social Media dealers are the ones now making billions.
You can try Startpage, which is based on google.