Waldschrat

joined 1 month ago
[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

LLM usage is a part of it, but it’s not the only thing. They are moving more and more in a direction that they use your usage data for marketing I feel.

For example search suggestions, where they started tracking in which location you are searching for what and tell that third party advertisers, so that they can show you ads depending on your information. Additionally they also state very clear that they will handle personal information and location data and give that to third parties if you use advanced search. 

Another example is the “new tab” in which they show ads and sponsored content and track how you interact with that for showing you better ads. 

There are a lot of other features which will track behavior or usage, but you have to actively use them.

Then there is the debate about the “you grant us non exclusive, worldwide” rights to use your uploaded and typed in data discussion. Yes, they need to have rights to handle my data I input, but together with the ads stuff this smells fishy. Maybe more so because this is the first ever Terms of Use and all of that has been working without that in the past. 

In the meantime they set usage reports and studies active per default. You can disable it, but you have to know about that option. 

All of that is far from other browsers like Chrome and Edge but they seem to slowly change in a more ads-driven way. Firefox was basically surviving on google money the last decade, and that may stop, so we have to be extra careful.

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 15 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

You could use regular Syncthing for any device other than iOS. And for iOS you could use Sushitrain/Synctrain: https://github.com/pixelspark/sushitrain

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Sushitrain/Synctrain might be what you looking for. It’s a libre and new app for putting syncthing to iOS: https://github.com/pixelspark/sushitrain

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I get that some things like screen resolution and basic stuff is needed, however most websites don’t need to know how many ram I have, or which CPU I use and so on. I would wish for an opt-in on this topics: So only make the bare minimum available and ask the user, when more is needed. For example playing games in the browser, for that case it could be useful to know how much ram is available, however for most other things it is not.

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I know that it has that in theory, but my Firefox just reached a lower score on https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ (which was posted in this threat, thanks!) than a Safari. Firefox has good tracking protection but has an absolute unique fingerprint, was 100% identifiable as the first on the site, as to Safari, which scored a bit less in tracking but had a not unique fingerprint.

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago (16 children)

It would be nice to hammer a manually created fingerprint into the browser and share that fingerprint around. When everyone has the same fingerprint, no one can be uniquely identified. Could we make such a thing possible?

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

But why would any browser accept access to those metadata so freely? I get that programming languages can find out about the environment they are operating in, but why would a browser agree to something like reading installed fonts or extensions without asking the user first? I understand why Chrome does this, but all of the mayor ones and even Firefox?

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago

Hmmmm, money

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

What happened 2023?

 

If you are living in a country that is not save and free from politically motivated prosecution or other dangerous pursuits, all activities, messages and so on, that are critical of that country could be seen as dangerous to said system and therefore illegal. So making them public puts you in great danger. By “public” I don’t mean publicly available, but readable for state actors.

If you are living in a currently safe system, the internet does not forget things. So when it flips to an unsafe country, all your previously save thoughts, messages and so on are now illegal and are already out in the net. That puts you in great danger if you ever in your past had interactions which are now seen as illegal. And you can never know which topics could be illegal or dangerous by then. 

Another example would be traveling to unsafe states that you were ever critical of. 

All of those (and possibly more) scenarios are dangerous for you as the actor, but for any family member of yours in the future (or past) as well. 

So would it not always be in your interest to hide as much as possible, not just depending on your current situation or the assumed threat level? I have a hard time wrapping my head around statements like securing oneself depending on one’s threat level.

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 25 points 4 weeks ago (8 children)

Return it. If you hold on to it (even if you block the ads and all) it will signal the manufacturer, that this practice is fine.

[–] Waldschrat@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Lemmy, the Fediverse, and open source in general too. Every time bullshit happens I find myself more and more replacing closed systems with community-developed and community-run systems. It’s not only the giving back/contributing/being part, and the openness, it’s also that this cannot be taken away so easily. Taken by buying the company, a software update, agreement change or the fact that someday you may not be able to pay your monthly fee and loose access to all your stuff.

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