Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Forget Chrome—Google Starts Tracking All Your Devices In 8 Weeks (www.forbes.com)

submitted 4 days ago by raqqed@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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cross-posted from: https://fed.dyne.org/post/343234

Google Starts Fingerprint-Tracking All Your Devices In 8 Weeks

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[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 179 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

TL;DR - Google makes (arguably insane) claim that it previously acted responsibly with regards to fingerprinting, and says they will begin acting irresponsibility with fingerprinting in February.

Practical take-aways you probably already knew:

Today's Google may do or say anything to make an extra nickel.
Today's Google, while it employs some excellent privacy minded engineers, has not demonstrated an organizational commitment to user privacy.
It is probably wise to assume that the next serious data breach at Google will end marriages, get politicians arrested, get famous people canceled, fuel successful scammers, and have every other privacy impact you can imagine. We know the Google data pool is massive, and we have reason to believe it is incredibly personal. I'm aware that Google has anonymozation solutions in play, and I do not believe those solutions will be effective in a breach scenario.
I believe that the average person will likely be better off ten years from now if they interact less with Google services.

[–] Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 103 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Like Google maps:

we anonymize your data before selling it. So it leaves your address every morning and goes to your office every morning but it's completely anonymous.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 33 points 4 days ago

Exactly. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that Google's clever privacy engineering isn't enough to keep any of us safe.

Google's expectation that we be okay with these practices feels like corporate gaslighting, to me.

[–] Jolteon@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago

Huh, it's a good thing there is no way to easily determine who someone is from that information.

[–] ryan213@lemmy.ca 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thanks! The article was a bit of a tough read for me. Lol

[–] LoganNineFingers@lemmy.ca 8 points 4 days ago

Ditto!

[–] DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It is probably wise to assume that the next serious data breach at Google will end marriages, get politicians arrested, get famous people canceled, fuel successful scammers, and have every other privacy impact you can imagine. We know the Google data pool is massive, and we have reason to believe it is incredibly personal. I'm aware that Google has anonymozation solutions in play, and I do not believe those solutions will be effective in a breach scenario.

That would be an interesting experiment. Maybe cancel culture and public shaming will cease whene everyone realizes no one is perfect and lost people do shitty things from time to time.

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

It won't only a few will be targeted in the media and the same cancerous culture will continue.