this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago

”only on the web”, …yeah right.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Who made this meme forgot about android lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago

....and chromeOS

[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 day ago (1 children)

More like "you guys have users?"

(I use Linux btw)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

I was going to down vote you to oblivion but then saw you use Linux. You are allowed to diss on it then.

[–] [email protected] 143 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Google has no room to talk here with Android.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 day ago

or chromeos

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Ironically a Linux-derived OS.

It's always good practice to be careful who you trust with your data. Open =/= private. More choices helps, though.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

Ironically a Linux-derived OS.

Nothing ironic about it. There's nothing mystical about Linux, it's just a kernel. The guy who made it says he doesn't care about anything but code.

Personally, I only care about the code. When I say maybe there are people who worry about walled gardens and cloud providers who take ownership of your data, I am not one of those people. That's not what I actually care about. That's not what I do. What I do is code. What I care about is code.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Android is very far from linux desktop. And it is private, its is google services that are bad, therefore we can have things like calyx and graphene os still be private.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Depends on how one frames it. It's not the Stallman-defined "GNU+Linux" pureblood OS, but it nevertheless is built from a modified version of the Linux kernel.

And like any OS it can be made private and secure with the right components...or it can be cracked open like a data-farming egg without them.

I guess I can just take the low-hanging fruit and invoke Ubuntu as an alternative example, which was once something of a Linux entry point but has become more than fine collecting user data.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

"derived" doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

More like

Microsoft ... I make billions spying
Google .... I make billions spying
Apple .... I make billions spying

Linux .... you guys make money spying?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

Linux .... you guys make money ~~spying~~?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

apple doesnt make billions spying. facebook and amazon do of course too.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Apple made 4 billion in 2023 from selling advertisements on their devices. Sure, it's only ~1% of Google's ad business buts still technically billions

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

That’s not the same as spying. Apple famously doesn’t hand over user data to ad companies.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Yes, they do. They're just better at pretending they don't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Facebook doesn't need to spy, the users give it up willingly.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They also spy, because just a few billion isn't enough

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

This is the correct answer. Facebook has third-party scripts all over the internet. I wish people would understand this — just because you’re not a Facebook user doesn’t mean Facebook (or anyone else) doesn’t track you.

I’m not sure about Facebook but tons of trackers are in apps too so the typical “use an adblocker” grumble isn’t even accurate either.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I feel like MS and Google should be switched. Web probably has more harvestable info. Plus phones.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

The OS handles all the network requests, can take screenshots, and track your eyes

But yeah Google Linux is way more popular than Windows for personal use

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

google through only the web, what a fucking joke. if you have a google account check your activity history. it will list the times you have opened an app.

if you don't have a google account but your phone has google services, don't be afraid that you can't check it, they're still harvesting it.

want to avoid it?
Step 0: don't by samsung. xiaomi neither, they plan to make you unable to execute the next step.
Step 1: unlock your phone. take ownership into your hands. but back up your photos, the 2FA Authenticator app's data and whatever else is important, because it will get deleted.
Step 2: install a privacy oriented custom ROM.
Step 3: profit

keep bank services contained in the firefox browser. if they don't allow access there, switch banks, you'll be better off with a smaller one anyways.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

GrapheneOS for google pixel phones, otherwise CalyxOS, DivestOS, maybe even IodéOS. All of these are Android but with better defaults, without irremovable spying garbage, and with some features nowhere else available.

if your phone is not supported by these, check LineageOS. or plan your next phone purchase according to the compatibility list of the above. if you're going for longevity but you don't need a flagship, Fairphone is agood choice, if you can look away from the lack of a JACK.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If all else fails, you can try using whatever the lastest community supported fork of Universal Android Debloater is. It uses ADB to remove bloatware, which bypasses vendor locks on keeping certain apps installed.

Obviously no real replacement for custom ROMs, but it's better than nothing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

That's undoubtedly useful, but won't help with the google part, even if it uninstalls some google apps

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I’m a broken record: block Google (or whomever) with network-based blocking (IP and/or DNS), these guys have third-party tracking in virtually every website and app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Almost every B2C company I've worked at, I've written or had my devs write proxies for whatever trackers we use. The reality is that every company to whom this data matters to figure out their business model will proxy their trackers. If they don't they need to fire their lead engineers.

It's actually pretty easy to disguise this traffic even to the point where you can use the originating server/cdn to interleave the tracking with the content source.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Proxy? Is it that hard to figure out how to bundle and serve assets from the same domain? 😂

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not about serving assets it's about hiding telemetry from adblockers, dns filters, ip lists, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

businesses are truly developing malware

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

as an additional measure, sure. but these blocks are not hard to circumvent, so it's not enough in itself

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They’re not hard to circumvent, sure but then why am I so effectively blocking almost everything not tied to the “real” first-party domains?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

because they don't yet circumvent it. but also, are you completely sure everything is blocked? DoT, DoH traffic and such?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Well I MITM myself quite often to confirm it. I’m also smashing together hundreds of blocklists, and I always check the network tab of my browser’s developer tools and very rarely see anything coming from third-party domains.

Sure, sometimes assets are on the actual domain I’m visiting (or its CDN) but most of the time, even tracking scripts there are broken because they still call the blocked scripts.

By the way, it’s hilarious that everyone wants to fight so hard about this yet when someone says “use an adblocker” nobody says anything as if it’s the end-all solution.

I didn’t say “I have a bulletproof, surefire way to fix this.” I said “use network-based blocking.” However effective that is is up to the person implementing it; you have no idea how effective my setup is because you don’t have access to its configuration.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

spy

Spy ON.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago