Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban On Personally Identifiable Web Tracking (propublica.org) 155
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.
Who to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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For what? For a news article on slashdot for something that happened "this summer"? I guess it is a slow new day. There you have it, the culprit remains abstract.
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They were only following orders.
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You forget that that rule only applies to people on the losing end of a war or uprising. Yeah. That's humanity for you, no double standards in sight at all.
Re: Who to blame? (Score:1)
I see no difference between a Google employee and a Nazi death camp guard.
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I see no difference between a Google employee and a Nazi death camp guard.
Well, then, you're an idiot.
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Re:Who to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not like google employees are desperate for a job. It isn't a choice between working for google or putting their family out on the street. Save your compassion for contract janitorial services people that clean the floors at google. The highly paid engineers are going to be fine.
Willing accomplices and quiet endorsement (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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"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.
Even worse, they may believe that their actions are "for the greater good" and are therefore exempt from the normal routine of morality checks. Based on what I have seen from Google it appears this is part of their culture, the "Google way." Their constant interaction with and ease of access to high level political officeholders is incredibly concerning.
C.S. Lewis said it best: ...a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under of robb
comply (Score:1)
I assume some people might actually want to share their information for assimilation purposes. The question is whether it defaults to opt-in or opt-out.
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The big issue here is that folks with gmail accounts that predate this were under the assumptions about how the data is being used and now they have to either accept the new terms or go through the incredible hassle of changing addresses.
This is a massive expansion of what they had been doing and there needs to be some sort of legal action taken against them as this isn't something that people have a reasonable option of opting out of. Between Google's products and the ones they bought when they were allowe
Thank but no thank you (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: Thank but no thank you (Score:2, Funny)
Just block all google IP addresses at you firewall. Oh, and hit any Google employee hard in the face if you meet one.
Re: Thank but no thank you (Score:5, Informative)
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Countless websites on the internet totally break if you block google IPs.
True, but only in good ways.
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Which totally defeats the intended ability to keep network traffic flowing no matter what.
So it's safe to say Google has effectively broken the internet.
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In the same way that a cowboy 'breaks' an untamed horse.
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doubleclick.net
google-analytics.com
googlesyndication.com
googleadservices.com
but have the following rules to permit Google stuff so pages work:
* accounts.google.com frame allow
* ajax.googleapis.com * allow
* apis.google.com * allow
* apis.google.com frame allow
* chart.googleapis.com * allow
* content.googleapis.com * allow
* content.googleapis.com frame allow
* fonts.googleapis.com * allow
* google.com * allow
* googlecommerce.com * allow
* googletagmanager.com * allow
*
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Countless websites on the internet totally break if you block google IPs.
I was evaluating game development platforms and couldn't install Unity because it required a connection to Google analytics, which is one of the many things I block at the hosts level.
That's right. I couldn't get passed the install without an active connection to Google analytics.
I concluded Unity wasn't as serious development platform.
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Could you please explain the advantages of using desktop mail client over webmail from a security point of view?
Re:Thank but no thank you (Score:5, Informative)
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You can also set your email client to delete the mail from the email server as soon as it's transferred to your local mail client. Your 'inbox' folder is on your own equipment and mail only sits on the public server long enough for your client to retrieve it.
Re: Thank but no thank you (Score:1)
No, I don't believe that auto-delete-after-transfer prevents Google from retaining the email. Slashdot has previously reported on a legal case in which the defendant was charged based on deleted emails recovered (years later?) by the provider. That may or may not have been Google, sorry I don't remember better details.
Also, even if the email really is permanently removed from existence, I would expect that any data (tracking, customization) was wrung from it before deletion. Why wouldn't they?
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You can also set your email client to delete the mail from the email server as soon as it's transferred to your local mail client. Your 'inbox' folder is on your own equipment and mail only sits on the public server long enough for your client to retrieve it.
But then you're trusting that "delete" actually removes the item rather than just sets a flag indicating the item should no longer be shown to you. My experience with Google calendars (which I've detailed on Slashdot before [slashdot.org]) lead me to believe that the latter is - or at a minimum was at one time - true.
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That reminds me - I sorta promised swillden I'd test that to see if it's still happening. I guess I should really go do that...
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Using a POP3 client doesn't change the fact that Google is scanning your emails and associating the content with you in their advertising system.
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Ghostery blocks sites from gathering personal information.
But it does have an opt-in feature GhostRank that can be checked to "support" them
so, don't check it ! (or uncheck it)
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Are you sure they're not using browser/device fingerprinting?
https://panopticlick.eff.org/ [eff.org]
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Isn't Google just going to scan through your mail before you download it? Even if your email ID isn't matching you name, I'd imagine most people are still easily identified by mail content.
Not enough people care (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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By and large, this opens up a larger revenue stream for Google with very little backlash from their users.
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.
Keep that in mind every time you log into Slashdot.
We live in an age where connecting points A1 - Z1,000,000 is easy to do. And with every business monetizing their users' data, privacy on the web is nonexistent. Why do you think just about every website out there wants you to create an account even though it's functionally unnecessary?
And I'd like to point out that just think what Google would have done if Google Glass took off.
This "Don't do Evil" lasts only long enough for their revenues to grow. When
Re:Not enough people care (Score:4, Insightful)
While I suppose this is an argument for submitting anonymous content, I only run the risk of being hung for my own posting foolishness, while you could easily be mistaken for another coward.
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The flex for the wealthy, of course, is like when Google generously flexes away their takedown rules every time Time Warner accidentally demands their own websites shitlisted.
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Keep that in mind every time you log into Slashdot. Et tu /.?
While I suppose this is an argument for submitting anonymous content, I only run the risk of being hung for my own posting foolishness, while you could easily be mistaken for another coward.
Fifteen domains, including Google, are asking to run javascript on this page of slashdot.
"Anonymous" is not a thing.
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I've been regularly getting the prompt from Google about their privacy settings that they show when you try to run a search. Every browser on a myriad of machines and VMs. This pop-up is really irritating because it takes some time to go through all the different options and install their opt-out plugin, etc. I'm sure they made this as onerous as possible to discourage people form opting out. My solution? I've stopped using Google for web searches. Really f****** annoying that I still have to go to th
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Onerous as possible.
On the other hand, the challenging nature of it certainly increased the resulting quality of the cull.
The best choice ? (Score:2)
It looks like the best choice is to get non-targeted ads that will be dropped by the various ad-blockers.
Just Admitting the Obvious (Score:1)
Anyone with even an ounce of cynicism has believed Google -- and everybody else -- was doing this same thing anyway. At least now they are officially on the record with it. Maybe it will finally catalyze some privacy legislation with teeth.
The data economy. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Google is number one ad selling platform on the Internet. They are also number one search engine with no competitors in sight (bing is pretty useless for anything peculiar/professional/serious, yandex' cache is very small, baidu is only meant for Chinese). They are raking in cash even without selling users' data.
It's the "greed" economy, not "data" economy.
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Yes, and how much are users paying for the top search engine?
Exactly. If you are not paying for it, chances are that you are the product.
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Well, there *is* a difference between selling targeted ads based on the users' data vs selling the data - which Google still does not do. But I'll grant you this, the imperative of a public company is to keep the stock price growing - profit is almost beside the point, except as reflected in the stock price. That means that Google needs to constantly find new sources of revenue. I wish they'd get serious about building up their cloud hosting business and their corporate hosted application business. I do
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I'll wait and see (Score:1)
I'll wait and see until the dust settles and the "I knew it" paranoiacs get out of the way.
However, I'm kind of sceptical about this kind of "the world is falling" article, since such an act would be particularly out of tune, considering google is already under intensifying scrutiny from all kinds of (not always reasonable) angles. Doing something like this, which would draw immense amounts of fire, particularly in the EU, doesn't just seem tone-deaf but outright stupid.
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I feel the same way. There are tons of these doom-and-gloom type articles, and 99.9% turn out to be bullshit.
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And then you land on a website which has AdSense/Google Analytics/Google something else. Oh, and then they have countless social embeds (facebook/twitter/youtube/etc) spying on you as well.
Yeah, this will totally work.
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My Noscript blocks Google Analytics. It's surprising how many sites have links to it for no known purpose.
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What do you mean, Google Analytics has no known purpose? Google wants to know which websites your are visiting, the website maintainer wants to know who visits the web page and how. It is a perfect win-win situation (or win-win-lose).
Complacency Broken (Score:4, Interesting)
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... 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?
For those of you interested in data privacy and security but wanting a mainstream browser engine:
https://iridiumbrowser.de/ [iridiumbrowser.de]
It is based on Chromium but maintained by a group of German companies mainly making a business out of services around Open Source.
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Don't create the plain text message on network facing computer and then encode.
Other than that flood the privacy breaking brands with all the disinformation, random news, fiction, fun and unrelated creativity possible.
Use their platforms to present any creative message or new product range
"Don't be evil" (Score:2)
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 enfo
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I would have thought someone with your username and low UID would know how to run your own fucking mail server by now...
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Attitudes like that are precisely the reason we are having this conversation now.
Let someone else deal with your data and just assume they're trustworthy.
Re: "Don't be evil" (Score:4, Informative)
I use fastmail, you pay money, they provide email. Nice simple relationship
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It's called the race to the bottom. The "don't be evil" motto was based on the idea that users would not just offer up their personal information without some proof that it would not be misused. It turns out this was not true. People will upload their most personal information (and that of their closest friends and even their children, which is even worse) for what amounts to services worth less than $100 a year. It's sickening.
For personal email might suggest hover.com. But I think there are many se
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Do no evil? (Score:2)
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Alternatives for email? (Score:2)
What are the good, secure alternatives to gmail and yahoo mail? And no, I'm not going to setup my own server.
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I have had great luck with email hosting by 1and1. They are huge and based outside the USA, which is a plus these days too.
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Outlook.com is fine. MS may intend to harvest your personal data in some way, but they're not competent at it, so no harm done.
It's time for an Android alternative (Score:1)
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I knew nothing about Android until I bought a tablet last week. I was hugely unimpressed with the level of blatant surveillance, and started looking for an alternative.
I don't know enough about it yet to tell you for sure, but I think Cyanogenmod might be just the fork you're looking for.
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You can use off-the-shelf Android hardware without ever logging into Google on it. There are alternative app stores out there, including the big one Amazon hosts.
I am sure there is still plenty of Google survellience you are subjected to, but significantly less if you never, ever, log onto Google from your Android device.
Good thing (Score:4, Funny)
Good thing they're not being evil about it. *cough*
Google Home & Google Now (Score:2)
Isn't associating non-Google app and web site activity with Google information sort of necessary in order for Google Now and Google Home to work properly?
all about moble (Score:2)
I doubt Google cares much about non-moble systems, why ? Because smartphones have GPS, are locked down and on all the time. Google can then determine were you are going, what stores, malls, events and sell that data for targeted adverts. It may even be possible to determine were you live. Also,I thought I read somewhere that some stores even track where you are walking and what shelves you linger at. This type of data is very valuable to Google.
All one gets from a desktop or laptop is approx where you
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This is only a problem ... (Score:2)
... because we - the FOSS experts - are sitting on our hands and asses.
It takes a dedicated small crew of developers just a few weeks to develop a full-stack replacement of the E-Mail protocol and service, daemons and end user clients included. Fully encrypted, signed and 100% anonymised by default, with a distributed meta DNS to handle routing.
Likewise replacing the web can't be that hard either. Sure there is rendering, but remove 2 decades worth of document markup and build a working alternative, removin
Privacy Badger (Score:2)
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Privacy Badger will not be working with Pale Moon 27 because its underlying SDK is being removed from the code.
Fantastic (Score:1)
Maybe google can finally serve me a relevant ad *before* I've bought the product...
Failing that; they could just email me and I'd tell them what I want to see ads about.
Quietly? (Score:2)
There was a big notice on my Google account, asking me permission to use my web browsing habits to server ads. I'm not sure how an Opt-In feature that interrupted my login to ask me specifically can, in any way, be described as 'quiet'.