I usually just use a fake name generator to create a name and use it as a username this takes care of my inability to think of random usernames, birth date and other stuff that most websites these days ask. And it also makes me look like another dumb idiot and not a l33t haxor.
I don’t create anon accounts nearly as much as you say you do, but when I do I a correct-horse generator, and just pick the first two words and mash them together. It has never produced a conflict yet.
keepass2android’s password generator can generate these on mobile, and there are several for the command line.
I think the headline is missleading, if I understand it correctly.
ChatControl is already possible, and implemented for major communication service providers that most of the people use. It’s just not mantadory.
Currently a regulation is in place allowing providers to scan communications voluntarily (so-called “Chat Control 1.0”). So far only some unencrypted US communications services such as GMail, Facebook/Instagram Messenger, Skype, Snapchat, iCloud email and X-Box apply chat control voluntarily (more details here). source
The article states that they decided that they will not blanketly require it, but I don’t think it says anything about rolling back the first version of ChatControl that’s already in effect.
EDIT: I was wrong, the article actually does mention it, even though on pretty vague terms:
The current voluntary chat control of private messages (not social networks) by US internet companies is being phased out. Targeted telecommunication surveillance and searches will only be permitted with a judicial warrant and only limited to persons or groups of persons suspected of being linked to child sexual abuse material."
The new law would have required breaking end-to-end encryption (E2EE) as the companies would be required to scan messages. CSAM is just the pretext they use to compromise all communication. Same as “think of the children” is used to steal other rights.
That is true, but can’t they (a company that wants to, not the goverment) do that already if they want to, under ChatControl 1.0? And I wouldn’t say that whether a service is E2EE or not makes any difference here - scanning private user messages shouldn’t be allowed, whether they are encrypted or not. IMO if ChatControl 2.0 passed and was made mantadory for everyone, the fact that it is mostly noticable on E2EE apps is only a side-effect of blanket surveilance, and not the main issue with the proposition.
What’s the point of them agreeing that they will let the 1% of users of E2EE services keep their privacy, while they already scan 90% of communication (I mean, just GMail + FB/IG + iCloud, that is already being scanned, makes for most of the worlds communication) for the past year or so?
Now I’m curious whether Facebook/Instagram, who does offer encrypted chats and also scans all your content under ChatControl 1.0 voluntarily, also scans the encrypted chats or not. I’d vager they do, but that’s just a speculation.
But they did briefly mention that they will begin “phasing out” chatcontrol 1.0. I wonder what does that means, and how long will it take.
That’s the goal of end-to-end encryption. To make it impossible to scan. With E2EE company doesn’t have the decryption key, so there is no legible content to scan.
P.S. It’s still possible to collect metadata like when or who the message was sent, which is why services like WhatsApp which have E2EE are not recommended, but the content is safe.
the fact that it is mostly noticable on E2EE apps is only a side-effect of blanket surveilance, and not the main issue with the proposition.
Isn’t it though? We moved past the non encryption communication being safe a long time ago. And just because they will phase the old law, it doesn’t remove the ability of companies to still scan the messages or cops to request that data from those companies. Those companies still have access to the server and your encryption key where your messages are stored. E2EE on the other hand makes it technically impossible even if they want to do that or court orders them to do that.
Quick politics primer. The EU Parliament is not all-powerful. It cannot even propose legislation (yet). The EU is still mostly a confederation so it’s the governments that hold the reins. But the EP has to say yes for anything to pass. And since it is essentially a consultative body, the EP also tends to contain at least a handful of earnest idealists and specialists (usually Germans) who know when to say no, and how to amend legislation. They are often from the Greens-EFA parliamentary group and sometimes from the liberal Renew group. That is likely what happened here, yet again. It is very important for EU citizens to vote for these parties and candidates in EU elections. The next election is coming up in 6 months.
I'm so skeptical of companies, that I almost instinctively distrust any company which directly advertises to me. I would be doubly so if that ad came soon after discussing a need.
It DOES still need to send data somewhere to check
Your privacy is important to us: By default, this extension will check your text by sending it to languagetool.org over a securely encrypted connection. No account is needed to use this extension. We don’t store your IP address. See languagetool.org/privacy/ for our privacy policy.
I don’t want to confirm details I don’t know, so someone else should probably explain more on if this is good/bad
You can run LanguageTool locally. While it isn’t as great as the paid version, I use this to check nearly everything I write for work in my native language, and in the other languages I speak
caderek.github.io/gramma/ is a cli spellchecker that has the option of installing a LT server locally. Not ideal if you are writing things with Pages/Word/etc., but a possible backup.
It’s on my to-do list, but you can also spin up your own language tool instance so that your data never leaves your house, since it is open source: github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool
If you have a homeserver it can go there, otherwise you can also run it on your computer although I am not sure how much RAM it will use.
Grammarly has a terrible privacy policy, so you are right to be cautious. Unfortunately I don’t have any good alternatives to offer as I only use spellcheck myself.
Sure, but I vote for the party and people that aligns itself with my interests, so indirectly I do. I have also thought about attending some local meetings to talk with those representing me about some issues.
I recognise that you may not feel represented well within your system. That does not imply a failure of representation as a system of government, but could speak to the implementation of yours.
I used to be a lot more pro direct Democracy until I went through the whole Brexit thing whilst living in Britain.
One look at the polls over there right now on the question “Is Britain better outside the EU” compared to what it was back at the time of the vote, should answer just how well informed the voting decision of a large percentage of people was back when they did cast their vote.
Looking around after that, I started noticing how most people will not abstain when they fell they’re not well informed enough to make a decision but instead tend to feel they have to make a choice even though they’re ill-informed (or worse, have no clue they’re ill-informed), plus if there is one thing the Leave Vote in Britain showed me is that ill-informed voters are way easier to push to make a certain choice purelly with appeal-to-emotion and other manipulative non-rational “arguments” than the well informed.
Representative Democracy has massive problems, but at least those people do it as their work (so do have the time to dive into issues and have easier access to experts), and I suspect that most of the problems of it can be solved or ameliorated by improving the process of selecting representatives and maximizing the independence of the Judiciary Pillar of Democracy (you see the worse kind of stuff in places with Justice Systems which aren’t independent or are weak, and/or voting systems mathematically rigged to promote a Power Duopoly by giving more representatives to larger parties).
Even better, the EU Parliament is elected by Proportional Vote, so it’s one of the most democratic institutions in the World, even beating most national parliaments in Europe (most of which have some kind of electoral circles system that gives more representatives per-vote to large parties than smaller parties).
Okay… And if you stand by your morals, more power to you. For me, it’s a worthwhile trade forfeiting my data (usually anonymised anyways) for the convenience of their free services.
I’m not ignorant. Any one who isn’t aware of where G’s revenue comes from has been living under a rock. The choice is clear, and if Google is making that even more obvious, I think that’s a good thing.
Keep fighting the good fight, but the majority of us will keep using google because these *exclusive scoops shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone.
What services do they even provide these days that you can’t get better elsewhere? Worst browser these days, the search has gone completely to shit and all their web apps are dated and stale compared to alternatives.
This is BS. It’s a 3rd rate marketing group trying to game SEO for lead gen.
Go ahead and contact them, claiming to be a prospective client with a few hundred (insert niche retail or service here) stores and that you’re interested in their product.
At best they’ll end up revealing they have a SDK or some crap to do the active listening in your own app if you have one.
If this were real, more than this company would be doing it, and you’d see actual case studies around it.
Also, it’s 1000% not legal in half the US states given two party consent wiretapping laws unless the users are agreeing to it in some way, which again brings us back to that at best this is some shoddy SDK (and unlikely even that).
Edit: Looking at it closer and given the way it isn’t linked at all from elsewhere and is a one off mention of the services, I’m actually wondering if this was an April Fool’s page that they just never took down. It’s pretty funny if that, especially given the ridiculousness of a lot of the buzz word heavy language in the bullet points. Like the idea that they are actively listening to the voice data and then having AI analyze the purchase history of the users to then cross attribute ROI using your “tracking pixel” is hilarious.
Even just one of those steps is such a pie in the sky claim even for most billion dollar agencies.
Also, it’s 1000% not legal in half the US states given two party consent wiretapping laws unless the users are agreeing to it in some way, which again brings us back to that at best this is some shoddy SDK
You are talking about advertising business, you know? They do business as long and as far as it isn’t yet illegal.
At least tracking via ultrasonic is a thing. calculator/game just needs to have the respective library.
Btw, store chains use Wifi/Bt for tracking, just so you know.
Those guys r dicks. I posted a comment in there Lemmy community to share my honest opinion and it was removed. But I don’t know why, who did that or even how find out.
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