I’ve kind of come full circle on all this to where I no longer care. The slippery slope arguments are largely hypothetical imo…Google knows some stuff about me and attempts to show me ads, the vast majority of which I block, so what?
I pay taxes, have a social security number, my bank and credit card companies know my purchase history, the credit bureaus know my mortgage payment and lender, etc…
The myth of an off the grid life is exactly that, a myth. And what does it achieve for you other than some vague sense of idealistic pride?
Google provides tremendous utility to the world essentially for free; its search engine, maps, mail client apps, browser, etc. are tools billions of people use every day. How do they maintain a global network of data centers and localize their products to hundreds of languages…none of that is free. If big companies want to give them money in an attempt at to get me to pay attention to them then so be it, let them finance it. Imagine if only those who could afford to pay could use these tools.
Google provides tremendous utility to the world essentially for free; its search engine, maps, mail client apps, browser, etc. are tools billions of people use every day. How do they maintain a global network of data centers and localize their products to hundreds of languages…none of that is free.
Pretty much this. I get the “you don’t know what the bad guys will criminalize next” argument, but I have a hard time seeing it, when it comes to my browsing patterns.
It doesn’t have to be black and white. As many comments have already mentioned, it all depends on your threat model. Sure, it’s literally impossible to be completely private or anonymous unless you never go online and live like a hermit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to minimize what personal information companies get from you. You can still care about your private data while at the same time not sacrificing convenience.
I’ve kind of come full circle on all this to where I no longer care.
I’m at a similar point. I saw how people who don’t think about privacy handle the world and realized its not so bad.
In the end its all datamining for targeted ads, which only works if I can see the ads they’re trying to target me with.
It also helped that I had a job directly working with the kind of data I worked so hard to block and saw both how unreliable the data was, and how much companies struggle to actually put that data to use
Haha yes! People assume data brokers “know” a lot about a person, but really it’s fuzzy signals. It is far from a crystal ball or a perfect record of every website you’ve ever visited, etc…
At some point it is not about individuals but big corporations that need their services, and they buy them.
They should have built their business model as per their financial requirements from the outset then, if that was the problem for them.
But that should not justify or excuse them for doing things that are immoral and unethical.
Sounds more like a greedy approach than anything.
If I was an ethical and moral CEO of Google, and sought it costly to maintain such a huge infrastructure for millions of people around the world that are using their services freely, I would have made measures to shut them down or close them, instead of maliciously inserting things and harvesting stuff from them.
Then if they have such data, then they should be held accountable and responsible in the future for any damages as a result of their work processes, and that happened many times historically speaking. And any crime that happens, they either offer evidence or be complicit to hiding fugitives. Which alone is a process that will cost them alot, just having to do it, and cooperate w them any governmental party.
If I get in trouble in the future, I sure would love to have Google assist me in proving that I was innocent, by providing evidence through data that it has. But would they be willing to do so?
This is very interesting in a way to think about, as it shows where their weakness lies in their business model, and where they are strong.
But it goes to show how monopolistic they are, and, if anything, neglectful to basic human rights. Where I’m from, privacy is a human right. So there are many dimensions to take into consideration here - but ultimately they are only a small aspect of this whole complex dimension to boot.
Ultimately, it is their fault for not setting up their business model to meet up with their own financial requirements. And not ours.
I imagine you could do this by creating a Faraday Cage of some sort around the antenna that would phone home.
In my old car, the BMW i3, I was part of the Reddit sub there and many of us were upset because we had 3G radios in the car that were getting disconnected which meant our smart features would no longer work. But someone was able to replace the 3G modem for a 4G modem somehow. So it may be possible if you can find that component and rip it out or find a way to replace it with a defective part instead, for example.
I’m not so sure about clients that are specifically focused on security and privacy, however my general FOSS mobile app suggestions would be Voyager for a polished UX, or Eternity for a more native Android experience.
They also haven’t released a version in over a year, or am I missing something? Also doesn’t seem to have a plan for smarter predictions beyond dictionary entries (what OP is looking for)
thanks for making me aware of this, it’s pretty great! the swiping is definitely iffy overall but certainly better than nothing! im mainly just sad that it’s missing my beloved proper black and gray holo theme… sad…
ahh, yeah swipe typing is really tough to inplement well without data collection. i used to use it a lot back before i completely degoogled and id be lying if i said i didnt miss it. i honestly just couldn’t find any foss keyboards at all that had swipe typing!
What Ads? I don’t have Ads in the interface nor in the app. Okay the reason could be my openwrt router is set up with Stubby DoT and blocklists from AdguardHome.
If you’re interested in that level of control, it’s time to look hard at GrapheneOS. “Internet” is a permission you can grant or deny for each app, under GrapheneOS.
But I’m not aware of a way to selectively direct phone traffic through Proton VPN, at the phone. Even on GrapheneOS.
Enough skill with an expensive router could do it, but only on your home network, or only while routing all of your phone traffic back to your home network via yet another VPN.
Edit: TIL, Proton VPN supports split tunneling. Sweet! Look under Settings - Advanced - Split Tunneling - then pick your apps to include/exclude.
Edit 2: TIL DivestOS also supports “Internet” as a per app Permission. Very cool.
You can route traffic through VPN on the phone, then just use split tunneling to exclude apps that should have regular network access without VPN. But you have to switch off “Block connections without VPN” in settings.
Oh hey, thanks! I never particularly wanted any of my apps to route around the VPN, but there the option it is under Advanced, when split tunneling is enabled. Could be handy. Thanks!
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