DuckDuckGo apps and extensions are now blocking Google Sign-in pop-ups on all its apps and browser extensions, removing what it perceives as an annoyance and a privacy risk for its users.
DuckDuckGo offers a privacy-focused search engine, an email service, mobile apps, and data-protecting browser extensions. A standalone web browser is also in the works, currently in beta and only available for macOS.
The company announced today that all its Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Microsoft Edge apps and browser extensions will now actively block Google sign-in prompts displayed on sites.
Google offers this single sign-on option on websites to enable users to quickly sign in to new platforms using their Google account for convenience and unified control.
Simply put, instead of having to create new accounts and manage multiple passwords on various sites, users can just sign in with Google when the option is available and skip the hassle.
The downside of this practice for users is that the websites and apps users sign into can be tracked by Google.
While Google states explicitly, "Data from Sign In With Google is not used for ads or other non-security purposes," DuckDuckGo says their tests show that Google still collects data.
"See our testing in the attached image which shows Google is collecting data on sites when signed in with Google. For example, on investing.com, many requests are made to https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ads?.," DuckDuckGo told BleepingComputer.
"This includes the full page url in the request parameters. In testing, if we're not signed into the website with Google, the DSID cookie sent with these requests has a value of NO_DATA. If we are signed into the website with Google, the DSID cookie sent with these requests has a long hexadecimal value."
"You can see this in the attached image - on the left we're signed in with Google, on the right we're not signed in with Google."
As DuckDuckGo believes these are privacy risks, it has resorted to taking the rather aggressive approach of blocking Google sign-in prompts, never giving users the option to take up the tech giant's offer.
BleepingComputer has found that the option is baked into the general protection feature of the browser extension, so when the extension is active, all Google prompts are blocked automatically.
The same applies to the DuckDuckGo browser for macOS, where the Google blocking feature is built into "Protection," and there's no option to disable it unless you disable all privacy protections.
DuckDuckGo's new feature will not cause any issues to those who use Google to sign-in on websites as that method is still available on the affiliated platforms' login pages. However, the annoying pop-up window will not show up.
Comments
Wim-Katje - 1 year ago
And this now makes DuckDuckGo completely useless for me. As a software developer, I depend a lot on Google and many of it's services. My own company even has a Workspace account and I use various Google API's in the projects I develop. I depend heavily on this functionality. So if DuckDuckGo blocks it then I just block DuckDuckGo...
Thing is, if people want to have privacy then they should stop sharing private information online. And become more aware of all the trackers that exist.
And don't trust DDG that much either, as it has been proven before that even DDG is using trackers themselves, collecting data and who knows what they do with it? They can't disclose that, as that would be bad marketing. ("We promise that no one else will share your private data" is not a good marketing slogan...)
While Google is collecting private information, they are also open about it. That's a big difference...
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
I understand your problem. For a software developer this is not good.
But on the other hand....
It was and is people like yourself that have allowed to get corporations like Google, M$ and the like, to amass all that data = power, that they are now using against their customers.
All you people are interested in, is your income... Software developers are the major problem when it comes to the horrifying state of powerabuse against users, which means everybody!
The surveillance ability of states all governments all over the world would not be possible without your ignorance. And what will be the endresult of this development is still unpredictable, but it will be a desaster...
I understand your problem, but duckduckgo understands the REAL problem!
The excuses you make are a joke, are simply in it for the money!
Wim-Katje - 1 year ago
Well, unfortunately DuckDuckGo used trackers from Microsoft to track user data. Read a previous article at https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/duckduckgo-browser-allows-microsoft-trackers-due-to-search-agreement/ to learn more. They claim to be privacy-focused but they're not honest about that. Now you might like DDG because they claim to respect your privacy, but they lied about that!
Thing is, people have started to use computers for entertainment and sharing their privacy everywhere. Social media are Gold for companies, as it provides so much information for them. And for DDG, their goal doesn't seem to be concern about privacy, but a concern that others can collect this information. By trying to control the browser market and search engines, DDG is basically able to collect all this data themselves and use this data without disclosing this to the end users.
Keep in mind that DDG might even have violated the GDPR laws in Europe. Claiming they don't track anyone yet secretly allowing Microsoft to use trackers? That seems a serious accusation to me. And yes, that too is all about money!
Thing is, I'm not ignorant. I'm just not sharing any personal details that I want to keep private. And if more people would just stop sharing private information online then that would solve about 80% of the whole problem. Instead, people just continue what they have always done and fall for the marketing trick of DDG. Because even DDG uses data to gain more power.
Don't forget, DDG makes most of it's money from online advertising and to do a better job at that, they will need to collect data from their users, to provide better ads.
Thing is, I don't trust Google but they are at least honest about collecting data. They also provide insights in what they know about me. DDG lied to me about not tracking me, and they probably know things about me that they are unwilling to disclose. So I don't trust DDG either. But they also lied to me, and to the public in general, which is why DDG is just as Evil as Google and the rest...
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
Thank you, that sounds a bit different than the first comment. I myself hve no illusions about DDG, digital security is nothing but wishful thinking. I completly agree with your "I'm just not sharing any personal details that I want to keep private. And if more people would just stop sharing private information online then that would solve about 80% of the whole problem."
The advantage that DDG (and "Startpage") has, unless you have different info there too, is that they do not manipulate ranking of search results...
Wim-Katje - 1 year ago
"Thank you, that sounds a bit different than the first comment. I myself hve no illusions about DDG, digital security is nothing but wishful thinking. I completly agree with your "I'm just not sharing any personal details that I want to keep private. And if more people would just stop sharing private information online then that would solve about 80% of the whole problem."
The advantage that DDG (and "Startpage") has, unless you have different info there too, is that they do not manipulate ranking of search results..."
You're welcome. And yes, to me it's a matter of trust. As a developer, I work on projects that handle millions of euros in financial transactions and needs to be very aware of privacy. One of the conditions I have to deal with is that I cannot use any Cloud services or remote APIs. As a developer in Europe, I also have to be very aware of the GDPR and need to be clear and transparent about we deal with the privacy of users. So I know the amount of data that we can collect with our services and sites in minute details. I know the personal details that you can find in the HTTP headers of each request. SSL should encrypt them all, though. But the URL and IP address can still be collected. And a man-in-the-middle approach can defeat the purpose of SSL if the client does not check the SSL certificates. This makes DDG challenging as they operate as a middle-man with their privacy tools.
So, DDG desires a lot of trust from us, users. All out private data will go through their servers for anything we do through their apps. And DDG blocks all this data to anyone else who is interested in it. This basically provides DDG a monopoly on this data...
Now, when DDG gets caught supporting trackers, I know something fishy is happening. This should be a warning signal for many, showing that even DDG might not be trusted with our data. Because as a developer, I know all sites can and will collect private data for various purposes, but most are open about it.
DDG lied... And that means they're not worth my trust. Keep in mind that this is more than just a search engine, as they have their own browser app and extension.
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
Thank you, for your answer. Interesting, as I live in a different world. A world in which the idea of security while using the internet is a silly idea. People like myself want to know when all attempts security will be completely useless, maybe with computers in the "wrong" hands... Security breaches seem to me to be at best, a question of time. I watched a "documentary" last night about the beginning of germany's Chaos Computer Club in the 80s, which shows that government secret services from the very beginning of the net, where after those people who threatend to establish a communication platform, that will NOT be under government control.
People even were murdered by CIA &Co. Those efforts have of course increased and will NEVER stop.
When it comes to browsers, have you heard of one that is usable and will not be able to be broken, if someone finds it necessary in the future? I took a careful look, which of my correspondence through the net I want NOT to be accessable for others. I use a VPN and Tor for that. For the rest I still use Ff.... which lied a lot more than DGG, but at least it makes life very much easier for things that do not matter.
Very understandably you write "DDG lied... And that means they're not worth my trust."
Agreed, but do you have any idea at many things you simply just have not yet looked thoroughly enough to see, that they also lied?
Wim-Katje - 1 year ago
"Thank you, for your answer. Interesting, as I live in a different world. A world in which the idea of security while using the internet is a silly idea. People like myself want to know when all attempts security will be completely useless, maybe with computers in the "wrong" hands... Security breaches seem to me to be at best, a question of time. I watched a "documentary" last night about the beginning of germany's Chaos Computer Club in the 80s, which shows that government secret services from the very beginning of the net, where after those people who threatend to establish a communication platform, that will NOT be under government control.
People even were murdered by CIA &Co. Those efforts have of course increased and will NEVER stop.
When it comes to browsers, have you heard of one that is usable and will not be able to be broken, if someone finds it necessary in the future? I took a careful look, which of my correspondence through the net I want NOT to be accessable for others. I use a VPN and Tor for that. For the rest I still use Ff.... which lied a lot more than DGG, but at least it makes life very much easier for things that do not matter.
Very understandably you write "DDG lied... And that means they're not worth my trust."
Agreed, but do you have any idea at many things you simply just have not yet looked thoroughly enough to see, that they also lied?"
I'm old as I was born in 1966 and my father was a Software Engineer. I came in contact with computers in the early days, since I was 8, and was already programming when I was 12. I've seen the early days of the CCC and I know a bit about the history of computers and their origin, from the early looms with punched cards to the German dominion of computer technologies before they decided WWII was a good idea. After Germany lost WWII, the Allied forces basically plundered the German computer technologies to use them for themselves. Because Germany was far ahead on everyone else. After all, the first higher programming language, Plankalkül, was originally created by a German developer and used on German mainframes.
As for the Internet... Well, this actually started as a military project (DARPA) and to get more people working on it, the technology was also shared with many universities in the USA to get more developers working on it. At one point, it also became a major part of NASA and then more and more companies and industries started to join the project until it developed into the World Wide Web as we know it since the 1990's. But it's primary use has always had a military aspect, and later State Control. Well, mostly the USA.
As for security... Well, it doesn't matter which browser you use. Your security is in danger as soon as you start sending signals to your provider. If you want a bit more security then you should install this in your router or get a local VPN server that will block certain domains and IP addresses. But this should be in your home and you need to get it from some source that you absolutely trust. DuckDuckGo would have been an option, if they had not lied to the public. But as I said, one small lie about such a sensitive topic is enough to distrust them forever.
But more importantly, if you want your communications to be secure then you would need a peer-to-peer connection with others and use an encryption method with asynchronous keys. You would send the public key to your friend and your friend sends his public key to you. You then use his public key to send messages to him while he uses your public keys to send messages to you. Because these messages can only be read by someone with a private key, you know that only one person can actually read these messages. You just have to make sure that you have the real public key from your friend as a man-in-the-middle attack works quite well if you don't.
Suck communication tool is not difficult to make but the challenge is just validating these keys. With the Web and SSL certificates, this is done through a layer of trustees who digitally sign the key. If the key is valid then the key should be from the proper source mentioned in it. And with SSL, certificates are validated with the domain name through various means, where the person who owns the domain has to prove he's the owner to the trustee. A complex process, yet generally reliable. If you check if the certificate is from the trustee...
But the problem is that if you really want something secure, then you might have to write something yourself. It's not too difficult to write peer-to-peer encrypted communications but the question is always whom to trust. And my philosophy is simple: trust no one! But always evaluate the risks you might have and consider if it's worth taking these risks...
For me posting here, for example, is also such a risk evaluation. I'm sharing my opinion here, knowing that it can be used against me. I use my name, knowing people might start to look more information about me. I have a profile picture that shows what I look like. And I think this is enough information for others to find my Facebook account, Twitter, Google and my personal website. Probably my LinkedIn account too. Maybe even my Fiverr account and other data. So, how easy would it be for people to find all of this? Well, not too easy, but possible...
But then my thoughts are about large schools of fish. You have these schools with thousands of fish swimming close together and a hungry predator swimming in the area. But a fish in such a large group is not easy to notice as an individual so a predator going after one is likely to get one of the thousands of others. If you would swim alone, you would be their sole target and you'd need to hide. But in the school, you can swim in the open, knowing others might alert you of any dangers.
The Internet is like this school of fish. There's dangers out there, but the chance of getting picked as target is slim. You need to attract the would-be attacker in some way. So, would anyone be really interested in you and what you do? Well, maybe if you're a celebrity or important politician. Or if you're high up in some military command or are in control over a large organization. But the average person living a normal life with his wife, two kids, a dog and a house with a tree in the garden? Boring. :)
Well, unless you're selling meth and have a secret meth lab in your cellar where you make that stuff Walter White made in "Breaking Bad" with it's blue color. Then you'd be a target for the FBI and the Drug cartels... :)
Anyways, TL;DR... What I'm saying is that you need to understand security in details to know how to be secure. So if you feel you need better security then you have to learn, not trust any marketing campaigns from companies like DuckDuckGo. Those companies are trying to sell products to you, and are likely to collect any data about you...
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
Thank you for your thoughts, but I must admit none of them changed my opinion about security while using the internet... My thinking about security is more concerned with the future, when the speeds will reach completely different dimensions with quantum computing. Then someone's image on the net of being a family man with two kids and a house will not make you any safer, cause they will simply survey EVERYBODY! And the algorithms will sort out those that are of interest.
As I happily have better things to do, I neither use facebook, nor twitter nor any other of those toys. I do not even own a phone! But, in the end exactly that will make me a suspicious suspect in the thinking of the controllers.
Unlike the ideas of the founders, digitalisation will NOT bring about a secure privacy. It will bring a about the exact opposite: total control of the individual by the authorities in power, governmental or others. Corona and the digital health pass on your phone, which in turn is advanced to a "safe traveller" concept, were the test run. Facial recognition opens up possibilities that we are told are already abused by the "evil chinese", when in reality western "civilisations" do exactly the same thing, or at least are learning how to use them more and more.
And there is nothing that will stop them. I f.e. have made sure that no actual picture of myself has ever or will ever exist in the net, my name is unknown at google.
It is not that I have much to hide, I really do nothing considered illegal at present, or a danger to any state. I simply find it "distasteful" to have the primitive half-monkeys that run "our" "free" societies even know about my existence. As I mentioned , the problem is not the present, the problem are the possibilities that the future will bring. When having kept your anonymity may turn out to be useful...
"You would send the public key to your friend and your friend sends his public key to you."
There you have the problem. If you already came to the attention of the algorithms, then there is NO way to get that code to anyone safely, not even via snail-mail through the post-office...
"With the Web and SSL certificates, this is done through a layer of trustees who digitally sign the key."
Everyday I check on exactly this website what is possible by those who want to circumvent stuff like that. The difference between us is, that I do not play a game called security, I am only interested in what actually is, which is NO security. As Ross Ulbricht and others said, p2p is a possibility. I occasionally started using it about 15 years ago... but I still cannot see any progress on that front. And... once it becomes a widely used too (if ever), then how do we know that authorities will not find a way breach that too?
"I have a profile picture that shows what I look like."
For your sake I hope that is a lie....
"But a fish in such a large group is not easy to notice as an individual so a predator going after one is likely to get one of the thousands of others. If you would swim alone, you would be their sole target and you'd need to hide. But in the school, you can swim in the open, knowing others might alert you of any dangers."
Just because that example is repeated everywhere, does not make it any more logical. When a big fish eats, he simply opens his mouth and grabs what ever is there in the swarm he has found. Your chances of being part of those that are not swallowed are smaller than your chances are at swimming alone. Why would a big fish be bothered to make the effort to get one small fish....?
The real problem are the attempts of abolishing cash... If you depend on digital money and can only pay with your phone... And only as long as the government does not interfere with the money in your account...... as the chinese are already doing. And not only the chinese.
Sadly enough that already works. The financial world, big data, media, politicians and of course the WEF are working on it. And as I mentioned the "Safe Traveller Program" has already started to grow...
You know this one?
https://wauland.de/en/projects/informational-self-determination/
Wim-Katje - 1 year ago
Well, what will be the future of security? Well, computers are becoming more powerful and can process large amounts of data and find information inside all of this data. If this is done through quantum computing and artificial intelligence isn't that interesting. The fact is that we all send Data about ourselves and others to the Internet, where it could be processed by anyone who gets access to it. And using this data, they can collect all kinds of information about us all.
For example, there's facial recognition software that has been trained using millions of selfies posted by people online. As a result, the AI can recognize faces in pictures. But connected with the data, it could also identify a lot of people by tracing the origin of this data and following the connected data.
This basically means that anything you post online can be used against you. If you want to keep something secret then keep it offline. But then there's the additional problem that people use software that will send data to servers on the Internet for various reasons. Microsoft OneDrive, for example, will synchronize your local data folder (and more!) with servers owned by Microsoft. Other software might use various Web API's to help process data, like AI tools that e.g. identify objects in pictures. But even built-in error reporting in various applications and automatic updates will send data to servers online. So even a Linux system could be compromised because you installed an application that has automatic updates.
My problem is that I depend on the Internet for most of my work, even though my work is mostly about privacy protection. I need to make sure that the projects I work on won't leak any sensitive data online. This also means that I need to be familiar with various social media, including Facebook and Twitter, just to know how dangerous these media really are. I even use several different accounts with made-up names and completely fake histories to see how much search engines pick up about these accounts.
Very interesting to see how most of these fake names ended up at CrunchBase, as that site is well-known for collecting lots of personal data. And while this is probably someone else, they do have a profile of someone named "Thomas Mann" at https://www.crunchbase.com/person/thomas-mann :O
Important to remember is that others might share information about you online, or share information about someone with the same name online! So when you apply for a job somewhere and your employer Googles your name, then they might end up there and see this specific profile...
Which is good, as it has a picture that doesn't look like you, right? :)
I also know that there are many other websites that will sell all kinds of information online. I found a website called webtechsurvey' that has information about one of my fake accounts because I used the name of this account in the header of websites I've been developing. As a result, they knew which websites are related because they share headers. Interesting! :) Also shows how a simple header could already hurt your privacy...
That wauland.de site does have a good article as it points out that people need to be protected against data misuse. But as anyone on the Internet can collect all this data, this would not be easy. Especially when you realize how all this data goes through various channels online, through various providers and servers. We all fear governments and large corporations will steal and misuse our information, but it's more likely to be individuals and small companies, plus various hacker groups, who will misuse this data as no one keeps an eye on them.
As I said, CrunchBase seems to collect a lot of sensitive data about people, without their permission. So does WebTechSurvey. And many other smaller companies. Yet everyone looks at Google and Facebook, while those companies are closely watched over by the public and many governments.
Then again, I use various social media to actually research how easily data gets leaked online. And one of the things I've noticed is how people tend to steal identities from others. Or how sites try to connect various data together to build profiles of people and companies. A site called "closelyhq" managed to connect some of my fake accounts together, with some other people and several companies, They did this by scraping data from LinkedIn and Facebook. Including data that others shared about my accounts! So even if you don't use social media, your friends, colleagues, employer and family still might and thus expose your privacy...
Which is why I do use social media, yet don't really use it. These social media accounts will alert me about funny things regarding my privacy...
Which is another funny thing, as my fake accounts also have email addresses related to them. And I receive spam on those mail accounts from people who want to offer services. And yes, that includes Nigerian princes and people claiming they put malware on all my devices and collected all kinds of dirty things they've seen these fake people do... Yeah, right... :D
And that's another thing... I have multiple domain names and for every site where I have to register, including this site, I will use an alias and keep tract of this alias and the site that it's linked to. So every site I register has a different, unique email address for me. This is also very useful to detect sites that leaked my email address to others. These include LinkedIn, Twitter, Amazon and Adobe among the bigger names. But also a lot of smaller websites, who did not have the proper security set up!
So, overall, I'm pretty experienced with the issues of privacy and the Internet. Simply put, online there's no privacy as all you put online gets shared with the whole World. The only protection you have is to be as boring as possible so you won't get noticed between the billions of other people online. But if you are online then using misdirection and misinformation about yourself is very useful. Instead of just one Facebook account, you could create five of them. Each different from the others but with your real name and some real data, plus a lot of rubbish. Create a few more accounts with fake names and connect with those. This allows you to hide between it all.
Because the only other option to protect yourself is to stay away from the Internet. And that would include not having an account at BleepingComputer, which is still a security risk no matter how well they protect their data. One hack and someone might get your personal data including the email address you used to register, plus the IP addresses from where you connected to this site. (Plus timestamps, so they can connect that IP address with other sites visited from there!)
So, concerning my privacy, what would be my biggest fears? Not my government, as I can vote and thus control my government. (And protest against them when voting did not work.) Not the big companies like Google and Facebook, as they have way too much data to sift through. I'm not interesting enough for them. Being boring is also very useful to protect yourself!
As you said, a big fish opens his mouth and chomps a lot of little fish in one gulp from a large school. But none of those little fish were a specific target as the big fish just can't focus on a specific individual. It just bites and hopes to get a few. If you're unlucky, you get eaten, yet most will just escape so the risks in the school are not that big.
Anyways, it works both ways. The Internet can also be used AGAINST the government. While China tries to control the finances of it's citizens, the same citizens can use the Internet to share all the dirt they know about their government and encourage protests and even revolts against their current leaders. The same is true about banks and other companies. People can share reviews and opinions about them online and thus have a severe impact on them...
Which brings me back to DuckDuckGo, actually. A company that claims to value privacy so many people started using it. Then the truth got exposed about them using trackers and sharing data with Microsoft and they get exposed for this after several researchers discovered this. And they might violate privacy in other, hidden ways that have not been exposed yet. DDG is trying it's best to hide those secrets, if they have any. And we want to believe that they protect our privacy, so we allow them to hide secrets. Which is a bad thing, actually. Is DDG allowed to hide secrets? To have privacy, as a company? Or should they be completely open about how they work?
So, there's a trade-off here. The Internet is for us all to share information with one another and each of us has some influence about the data we share. And we all have to learn how to control it. We should not rely on others to keep our privacy as that requires us to trust them. It's weird to trust DuckDuckGo and not the Government or Google, because they all collect data about us. So you need to know how to stay secure online. For example, by using a proxy server to hide your origin. (Which requires you to trust the proxy!) And by using multiple accounts that are hard to connect to one another. I use my fake accounts for this purpose so one day I use Google as Wim, then as Marcus, Bianca, Janine, Berthus, Alicia or some other account. And important: know the risks you take with everything you do online!
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
I do feel a little sorry about people like yourself, whose livelihood depends on working with the internet. When you started, there was no way you could have known what this would like in 2020s... I was offered a job with c-language in New York in then eighties, and I am glad I believed that I was not enough of a fan of computers to accept it...
Point is, there is NO security and there never will be, yet you still have to deal with the behaviour of morons, who without exception cause their own problems. I have no compassion for idiots uploading selfies. For me, the 90% of retards out there no longer matter. If you ask around how many "normal" users are aware that using a "cloud" does not mean your data is floating around in the sky, it means it is stored on actual servers belonging to data corporations, you will find a huge majority.
What I find very suspicious is the fact that computer magazines NEVER publish pictures of the giant airconditioned halls with their thousands of servers where data is private stored.
Nowadays my thinking about digital security concerns itself only with power abuses which the internet offers to governments, and the WEF people in Davos...
Thank you crunchbase, I never heard of it, and as you assumed, the Thomas Mann there has as much to do with myself as the identity of the Thomas Mann that writes this.... I have been using several different names since the nineties, and even drop them regularly. I NEVER fill in any information at profile, or add a picture. Occasionally I check all those names f.e. on Google, even using separate VPN servers for each one, and it is amazing what they find... and what they do not find.
"Important to remember is that others might share information about you online..." I do not exist on facebook or similar garbage, I have others check that. And I am happy to say, no one uses my real name... I also would never apply for a job online as I cannot be found on facebook&co, which of course makes me suspicious. I wonder when I will be sorted out at an airport arrival, because of this. Twenty years ago that would have been funny, nowadays, one can just hope that everything will remain civilised.
"That wauland.de site does have a good article as it points out that people need to be protected against data misuse."
The intrinsic problem is, that by the time a "new" user of the internet realizes any of such problems, per definition he has already uploaded too much stuff about himself..... That is an evil circle that cannot be broken per definition. I am still amazed when I remember that I was already suspicious enough to use a pseudonym, when I for the time used a Mac and Netscape in the mid nineties...
"The Internet can also be used AGAINST the government." While that is true, if you do the math you will realize it is a real bum deal. Look at Assange, Snowden, Manning, or Wau and the people around him, who were "suicided", or get a lifeterm with no parole in jail, at the age of 24....
Seems you are not aware of the doings of the WEF, and their close connection to people like Bill Gates. They just love the chinese system, where you can use all kinds of control on any citizen.... You want to board a train or a plane, you have to show your phone. If any of necessary government apps have been changed to red, you can no longer travel. Your bank account can be blocked, and so on.....
Corona was a great teacher. They introduce some unacceptable measure, and after a first storm, things quieted down, and so the measure remained accepted, and the next step is forced on people. It is like the frog in the water, that is brought to the boil... (I know that frogs are not that stupid, but it worked perfectly well during Corona with the idiots)
Here is were we disagree totally: "The Internet is for us all to share information with one another and each of us has some influence about the data we share. And we all have to learn how to control it."
That is nothing but wishful thinking.... Every government, and any company into Big Data, like MS or Google, will laugh about your believe. Looking at it realistically, there is no chance for the people, the powers that be, they will succeed.
As it happened with climate change, the net-control train too has left the station long ago...
Wim-Katje - 1 year ago
Well, the thing is that the Internet created a lot more jobs and has made the World a much smaller place. Where we used to be limited to local news sources and people, we can now communicate with people all over this planet. And the Internet has made a lot of people smarter and wiser and resulted in revolutions in many places that improved people's lives. For example, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre happened shortly before the WWW was created so news reports about this events are limited. The 2011 Wukan protests were more visible to the World, even though China tries to contain information on the Internet. But people far outside China learned about it and sympathized with these protests. But the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China showed the strength of the Internet as everyone with a smart phone now started making videos of these protests to share with the World. And the Chinese Government could not keep it all quiet any more. And the biggest problem for China is that the local population can see a lot of it too, even with the tight restrictions they have.
There's a lot of power in information and the Internet is a valuable source of information when you can collect the right information.
But privacy? People never had privacy. The only difference is that personal information used to be more localized in the past. We called it gossip back before the Internet. In medieval times, it was tricky to cheat on your spouse as people would tell about that. Become pregnant out of wedlock? That too led to a lot of gossip. People always collected information about others and we never had privacy. Not even before electricity was used to power the first light bulb. The only difference is that all this private information gets shared on a much wider scale and a much larger community. Although you can wonder if people are still interested in it because people get overloaded with information.
But privacy was never real, and never will be. But the Internet made us more aware of this, because in the past people could just get away with gossip. Now, they cannot!
But thing is, people have become negligent about their own privacy. People would secretly take naked pictures of each other 50 years ago, and those pictures needed to be developed. You could do that yourself and keep the pictures secret, or hire some company and risk that the employee there will keep copies of some of those pictures. Digital camera's would reduce that risk as it gave people digital pictures that they could hide better, but the Internet allowed them to share those pictures with their lovers and others. And those pictures tend to get leaked too. Even if you only keep those pictures on your own computer, there's still a risk that they get leaked, as Dutch TV presenter Manon Thomas discovered.
Manon Thomas is well-known in the Netherlands as a TV personality. And she appeared to be a decent, almost boring house wife until her neighbor managed to hack her WiFi network and managed to see the files on her computer. These included several nude pictures of her. Not very extreme nudes, but still enough to confirm her real hair color. The guy who hacked her network was caught and convicted (but not severely) and had to pay €5,000 in damages. And Mrs. Thomas has done her best to get these pictures removed from the Internet, with pretty good results, actually. (Plus, many hackers now use her name to attract people to their sites with misleading results in search engines.)
Which is interesting, as apparently, the Internet can seemingly "forget" things too. But the fact that she just had pictures on her own device and yet they still got stolen shows that you can't expect any privacy on these devices. But had she taken those pictures with an old-fashioned camera and had she developed those pictures herself then there would still be a chance that a thief would find them and take them. Possibly even publish them everywhere.
But talking about nudes... Paparazzi's have been violating privacy since the first camera got invented. I still remember the nudes of Jackie Kennedy Onassis when she enjoyed some nudity on the Greek island Skorpios back in 1975. Pictures that ended up in Hustler magazine. Something that should not be impossible in several countries because now we have laws protecting people's privacy...
Thing is, the Internet made us more aware of privacy and now we started protecting it better.
Now, was Jacky Kennedy Onassis an idiot for walking nude outside on a private resort? Could she have expected a photographer a long, long distance away who could make some grainy pictures of her? Well, it's when you have to make risk assessments. She went nude, expecting it would be safe. It turned out she was wrong.
Same with people online. Many don't know the risks so they do stupid things online. And they generally learn the hard way when something bad happens. Or they never learn at all as no one cared about what they had to share...
So, in a way I am glad with all those "idiots" online who actually help me keep my information hidden in plain sight. I know the risks and I know I depend on taking risks to have an income. And I'm very privacy-aware but I know we can't stop the Internet from collecting data about us. Because even if I don't share anything, friends, family and colleagues might share things about me! Get involved in a minor accident that gets reported in a local newspaper and your information might already be leaked! Walk on the street and see someone in front of you take a selfie and post it online. If you are in that picture too, then your face will be online including the time and location of where you were. Then again, there's a lot of video surveillance out there already, meant to keep people safe, yet also capable of collecting data about you. And if you use a credit/debet card of bank card to pay for stuff or even use any bank at all then more data gets collected about you. Your local authorities probably have some data about you also, digitally stored.
Thing is, the World becomes more digital, yet any privacy invasions happened long before that. During WWII, the Germans had an easy job finding Jewish people in the Netherlands as the Dutch government had well-developed registers with information about the local population, including religious affiliations. And this was all on paper, yet someone forgot to burn it... That's why a large part of the Jewish population in the Netherlands had to flee or die in the Death camps...
Privacy has always been an illusion, even before the Internet. But what is changing is our perception of privacy. People already collected data about others long before the Internet. Yet back then no one was aware that this information could be leaked. Nowadays, this data is stored digitally, but logs are kept to keep track of any access to it. So in the past, a police officer might go through a filing cabinet to see if there's more information about you and no one would notice it. Nowaday, that officer can do this from his computer, but it would get logged and he would later have to explain why he accessed it. (Or lose his job!)
One example of that is in this article: https://www.hrreporter.com/focus-areas/labour-relations/hospital-employee-fired-after-wrongly-accessing-patient-records/337565
A hospital worker in Ontario got fired because she accessed patient records of her coworkers. She had been working there for decades and was trusted with access to sensitive data. Yet the systems would still log any access. And ruling by arbitration found the termination to be appropriate...
So while there was sensitive data stored on those systems, there's also additional security protecting this information and to hold people accountable if they misuse this information...
For example, the Internet has various honeypot traps all over. The fake accounts I use are part of those. Whenever information about these accounts gets leaked then I have the option to trace back who misused the information. But I'm not law enforcement so for me it's not very useful. Except, I would now know not to trust a certain party any more. Like DDG and that tracker they allowed to track me.
Now, I still remember the search engines from the early Internet. AltaVista was popular. So was Yahoo. Yet both search engines ended up getting hacked regularly. So, your data there would not be very safe. And if you check https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites then you'll still see Yahoo listed there with a hack from 2012 where nearly half a million accounts got hacked. And yes, that included passwords, as Yahoo apparently did not keep those safe.
Facebook is listed there too, with two events in 2019 and 2021. Plenty of private information here, but no passwords, fortunately. Yet with 500 million accounts being exposed, that hack was huge. And a good reason to distrust Facebook.
Google isn't listed, but Twitter has. In 2022 there were about 6.6 million accounts stolen. Still no passwords, yet plenty of sensitive data including phone numbers. LinkedIn is there too, with nearly 165 million accounts back in 2012. Those included passwords, btw. And Adobe back in 2013 with 152 million accounts with passwords. And Cafepress back in 2019 with 23 million accounts and passwords.
Also noticeable is the hack of Comcast in 2015 where people get their Internet from. And 618,882 accounts with passwords were stolen there. And Gravatar in 2020 with nearly 114 million usernames. No passwords, fortunately.
Also interesting is the hack of Linux Mint, where the ISO of this Linux distribution came with free malware, back in 2016. Almost 145,000 accounts got compromised, including passwords.
Going through this list of hacked sites and what type of data was stolen is very interesting for me, as it teaches me which information I need to protect. So, I'm not storing usernames and passwords any more in web applications I develop. Instead, I calculate a hash over the username and password and just store this hash in my system. So if this data gets in the wrong hands then there's still not much what can be done with it.
I also encrypt sensitive data in my database from my code, to keep sensitive data more secure. But I do need access to this data so I have to store it. But I'm focused on storing just a minimum amount of data, just to be secure. What I don't need won't get stored...
Keep in mind that the Internet is still new and has changed how we looked at privacy. But we all have to become more aware of what is going on and why people want to collect data about us. And as I said, I distrust DuckDuckGo as I fear they want a monopoly on private data...
Because people forget that when you use DuckDuckGo, then all your data will go through their systems. What happens inside these systems is unknown and requires our trust. They market privacy as something we should protect at all costs and DDG will protect it for us. Our "Knights in Shining Armor", basically. Keep in mind that DDG is just another large company. They too do this all just for profits.
-----
As for Assange, Snowden, Manning and others... Assange was accused of rape and doesn't appear to be mentally stable. There is serious doubts about his mental health. And while he leaked a lot of sensitive data with WikiLeaks, he still did so with specific political motives. Yet https://wikileaks.org/ still exists and keeps publishing sensitive information about governments and organisations. Yet WikiLeaks has been accused of having it's own political agenda with some racist views and associations with the Russian Government.
This brings me to Snowden, who is now a Russian Citizen after he leaked sensitive information. And Manning, of course. Both of them provided sensitive information to WikiLeaks, where it was used for some political agenda in my opinion. Well, it did make the American government look bad and caused a bigger divide between political groups inside the USA and Europe. But there's a link between WikiLeaks and Russia that no one seems to be aware of. And with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I started to think if these leaks did not serve some purpose for the Russian government to weaken Europe and the USA. If it did, then it did not work as well as you would expect.
Still, it is suspicious to see how much information WikiLeaks has about the USA, yet almost none about Russia or China. And as always, I don't trust everything and everyone so this is very suspicious for me.
I generally apply Occam's Razor to these situations, considering the motives of people for publishing this kind of sensitive data. The question is always how reliable the information is that they share and their reasons for sharing it all.
Yet WikiLeaks would never have existed without the Internet. And Snowden, Manning and Assange would never have been able to share all this sensitive data without the Internet. And I call it data as it's just raw data that still needs processing to become information. And most people just can't do that. I can, but I want to know why it got shared, and why it seems to be pro-Russia and seems to favor the Republican Party in the USA.
In other words, I don't trust them...
-------
Still, we can all use all the data on the Internet, if we spend some time to collect it. And there are many tools that already provide valuable datasets, although they might now always be trustworthy. Now, if we all learn how to analyze data and stop trusting some sources blindly then we can gain a lot of control over all of this data. But it means distrusting everyone and applying Occam's Razor to determine which data is the most reliable.
Simple example. There are 20 people claiming my car is red. And 15 people claim my car is green. But I claim my car is blue. So, which color is my car? :D This is a tricky question to answer. But those 35 people need to have seen my car to know it's color. I would know it's color, but would I have reasons to lie about it's color? Could those 35 people have seen an older car of mine? Or maybe seen me riding in a rental car? And while 20 people claiming my car is red, how would they know this? So you must make all kinds of assumptions about 36 different people. Still, the best guess would be that my car is blue, unless you can find a reason why I would lie about that. If you assume I lied then it's most likely red, as most people claim that. And if they are wrong then it's likely green. Or, least likely, another color...
This is the problem with data online, which makes it hard to use.
---------
Which brings me to the point of climate change. We all know it is happening. We also know that our Planet has a history of climate changes as our Planet was a bit warmer when dinosaurs still walked on this planet. But in recent years, the change in climate is going dater than we would normally expect. But then I have to ask, is that a bad thing? This Planet has seen many of these changes in all of it's existence. Climate change is dangerous for us humans as it could lead to a near-extinction event of this planet. We might lose 80% of the human population because of those changes as flooding and droughts will cause huge problems. And people consider that a bad thing, even though no one can explain why it would be bad if the human population gets culled to more reasonable numbers. When the number of people gets reduced to a number that this Planet can better handle. Because right now, there are 8 billion people living almost everywhere. And our presence on this World is felt by all other species. So climate change would be bad for us, end a lot of human lives, yet it is like a fever killing an infection in the hope the body will recover.
So, the climate changes. Why would that be bad?
So, we have no privacy. Why would that be bad?
Those are two simple questions and both a debatable. But whatever side you choose in that discussion, it's always an opinion, never a fact.
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
"Well, the thing is that the Internet created a lot more jobs and has made the World a much smaller place.
So did Hitlers Konzentration Camps.... killing 6 Million Jews. But, Digitalisation will turn almost all humanity into retarded zombies.
You seem to believe that freedom loving people will succeed against the power and the money of governments and data corporations. I see only wishful thinking... You mention Tiannamen... what exactly has the sacrifice of those who died there on that day really achieved? NOTHING!!!
And I disagree: MY privacy is very real. My public persona, what can be found on the net about "me", has nothing to do with my private self! And so far there is no way to connect any of it to my private person.
One day, when digitalisation powers will really take over the net, maybe with quantum computers, then I will simply no longer use even that part of the net, where we right now have a conversation. I already live far away from the "dangerous" states, and I will never hesitate should another change be necessary.
"But thing is, people have become negligent about their own privacy."
That is true, but I have never, since I first used a computer, forgotten my privacy. Even at AOL or Netscape. The powers that be have my fingerprint and my photo, because I need a passport. But there is NO connection to the Thomas Mann persona, and several other names I use. I will keep changing my aliases and one day simply stop using the net....
And once again, you write:
"Thing is, the Internet made us more aware of privacy and now we started protecting it better."
You seem to have never noticed that better is actually the opposite of good?
"Many don't know the risks so they do stupid things online."
By "many" You seem to believe in 50 or even less %?
I believe in 95% minimum.
Again, this is NOT the problem: "Or they never learn at all as no one cared about what they had to share..."
The problem is that huge, powerful and rich organisations change our daily life. Right now the "Safe Traveler Program" is only used voluntarily by people who already are on some government's side, but sooner or later EVERYBODY who wants to fly will have to have their green signal on his smartphone!
I have mentioned it a few times, but you seem to have never heard of the WEF? These are the people that make the decisions, and they are powerful enough to force, what is called "the great reset" on everybody.... This is people like Bill Gates or Georg Soros, you really should check those yearly WEF Meetings in Davos out....
But then you started writing about politics, and those comments clearly show that, like almost all programmers, you actually have no understanding of the real world out there at all. So lets stop our conversation right there.
It was interesting having this conversation with you, thank you.
But all the holes, that I cannot help but notice in your thinking are the result of your lack of political understanding. You are repeating all the half-truth clichees which are used to manipulate people.
Wim-Katje - 1 year ago
""Well, the thing is that the Internet created a lot more jobs and has made the World a much smaller place.
So did Hitlers Konzentration Camps.... killing 6 Million Jews. But, Digitalisation will turn almost all humanity into retarded zombies.
You seem to believe that freedom loving people will succeed against the power and the money of governments and data corporations. I see only wishful thinking... You mention Tiannamen... what exactly has the sacrifice of those who died there on that day really achieved? NOTHING!!!
And I disagree: MY privacy is very real. My public persona, what can be found on the net about "me", has nothing to do with my private self! And so far there is no way to connect any of it to my private person.
One day, when digitalisation powers will really take over the net, maybe with quantum computers, then I will simply no longer use even that part of the net, where we right now have a conversation. I already live far away from the "dangerous" states, and I will never hesitate should another change be necessary.
"But thing is, people have become negligent about their own privacy."
That is true, but I have never, since I first used a computer, forgotten my privacy. Even at AOL or Netscape. The powers that be have my fingerprint and my photo, because I need a passport. But there is NO connection to the Thomas Mann persona, and several other names I use. I will keep changing my aliases and one day simply stop using the net....
And once again, you write:
"Thing is, the Internet made us more aware of privacy and now we started protecting it better."
You seem to have never noticed that better is actually the opposite of good?
"Many don't know the risks so they do stupid things online."
By "many" You seem to believe in 50 or even less %?
I believe in 95% minimum.
Again, this is NOT the problem: "Or they never learn at all as no one cared about what they had to share..."
The problem is that huge, powerful and rich organisations change our daily life. Right now the "Safe Traveler Program" is only used voluntarily by people who already are on some government's side, but sooner or later EVERYBODY who wants to fly will have to have their green signal on his smartphone!
I have mentioned it a few times, but you seem to have never heard of the WEF? These are the people that make the decisions, and they are powerful enough to force, what is called "the great reset" on everybody.... This is people like Bill Gates or Georg Soros, you really should check those yearly WEF Meetings in Davos out....
But then you started writing about politics, and those comments clearly show that, like almost all programmers, you actually have no understanding of the real world out there at all. So lets stop our conversation right there.
It was interesting having this conversation with you, thank you.
But all the holes, that I cannot help but notice in your thinking are the result of your lack of political understanding. You are repeating all the half-truth clichees which are used to manipulate people. "
Quote: "So did Hitlers Konzentration Camps" A Gotspe? That's a bit low. All I see is a new technology that's changing our lives similar to the creation of fire, the invention of the wheel and especially the many communication methods that we Humans have invented. From smoke signals to the telegraph to phones and now the Internet.
Quote: "You seem to believe that freedom loving people will succeed against the power and the money of governments and data corporations." Oh, I'm not that naive. But the problem with "freedom" as a concept is that it doesn't really exists. This World has rules that we all have to abide to. I can't just go to a store and take stuff without paying. I can't go into secured areas like government buildings. I can't have sex with a pretty girl in public. There are rules because we have to live together as a community.
But the thing is, you can't tell how governments and companies attack your freedom! Sure, your privacy is under attack, but it was never about freedom! Why do you bring that into this discussion? You are still free even without privacy. It's just that everyone knows what you're doing, so you're not free to do forbidden things. Then again, you aren't free to do forbidden things to begin with...
But just claiming things doesn't make things true either. You claim it impacts your freedom, but you don't explain how it reduces your freedom. Thing is, talking about freedom on the Internet with a large group of people can actually force the World to become more free...The massacre at Tiananmen was possible because the Internet did not exist in those days. The Chinese Government controlled the news media and a lot of things that happened during those times were never revealed. And there had been another incident back in 1976 with 2 million people visiting the square on April. 4. And we assume that no one died during those protests of 1976 as no one could report anything about it.
The 1989 were reported as deadly as the protestors, many students, had the tools available to record the events and bring these to the public. We still don't know how many people died, though. It is still a heavily censored topic in China, A censorship that would not be possible in a more open Internet.
And that's because the tools that can be used to protect your privacy online are also tools that can actually restrict your freedom. You could e.g. post some negative opinions about the President and censorship would immediately remove it and block you from the Internet as you "violated the privacy of the President". And keep in mind that Governments hate it that we can communicate so fast over the Internet, as news will spread in hours, even minutes after it happened. But go back in time during the Watergate Scandal with President Nixon, which was almost covered up by the government. Such cover-ups are much harder when news can be shared with the speed of the Internet. And more importantly, such news would go around the World real fast!
Your desire for privacy reminds me of Richard Stallman, who also stays away a lot from mobile devices and the Internet. And keycards. Which is his personal choice, but also restricts him considerably. For example, if something happens then he's one of the last to hear about it. Which should be okay as most news is boring. But bad when a major disaster happens in his area that could endanger him. For example, a toxic cloud of ammonia like the 1976 ammonia truck disaster in Houston. 178 people were injured. But modern phones can broadcast an alert to people in the area, telling them what to do. Flee? Stay? Windows open or windows closed? What symptoms should they be aware of to know if they're in danger or not?
The War between Russia and Ukraine is also a showcase for why the Internet is so important. Russia is trying to silence the Ukrainian people by attacking their infrastructure and especially those structures that are needed to communicate with the rest of the World. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people are sending out massive amounts of information about what is happening and all kinds of War crimes that are committed by the Russian forces. Plus, daily reports of recent events on several different YouTube channels. But the Russian population feels the effects of censorship by their own government, although some bad images do escape. Like how they forcefully recruit new soldiers and how corruption has caused massive shortages for the Russian troops in even basic materials like bulletproof vests, medicines and even food.
But back to Stallman, as the Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies mentions a few controversies about him. Apparently, he seems to be okay with adults being attracted towards adolescents. Add to that the fact that Stallman is accused of creating a "hostile environment" at MIT, which seems to have resulted in Stallman leaving MIT over past controverses. Now, Stallman has the right to be this private, but it can't be helped that some people suspect he's actually hiding something. When you also consider the fact that nothing is known about his dating habits, oplus the fact that he has no wife and children, people start to wonder even more. And to put a stop to that, Stallman would have to give up some of his privacy so people won't consider him suspicious.
Why? Because people gossip! And then they don't know any facts, then they'll just make up a few based on guesses...
I'm a bit like Stallman as I like my privacy too. I'm not married, don't have kids and I'm not even dating. So I understand that position that Stallman is in. Unlike Stallman, I do have Asperger's. And am open about that, as it explains a lot for other people. It allows me to keep living in private.But the price for this privacy is that I had to give up a minor detail about my private life...
A choice that I made after evaluating the consequences of going public about it.
as for, quote: "You seem to have never noticed that better is actually the opposite of good?" Why do you assume that privacy was good before the Internet? In reality, it was more the opposite as people will gossip! If you would get a girl pregnant in the 70's then everyone in town would hear about that. And everyone would want to hear it and tell it further. Nowadays, it could be exposed to the whole World but 99.99999% won't even care. But if someone would put it on the Internet then now you have laws that could force the publication to be taken down and you could actually sue for damages as your reputation got hurt. You could not do this back in the 70's as you could not even trace the people who kept telling it to others. Well, hearsay, perhaps. But that won't hold in court.
Oh, and quote: "This is people like Bill Gates or Georg Soros"? Seriously? The "World Economic Forum"? You do know that it was created back in 1971, long before the WWW was created and even before Bill Gates had his mugshot taken because he drove without a license? The only link between Gates and WEF is the fact that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a large donation towards one of the WEF initiatives. So did Germany, Norway and Japan. Bill Gates is no participant here. But George Soros is. And so are Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump and Deepika Padukone. So yeah, those yearly meetings at Devos... What about them?
I think I have a pretty good understanding about politics, considering that I'm also active in politics. My views are quite interesting because I question everything. And I do mean everything. I don't believe in anything and I always wonder about motives that people have. And I apply Occam's Razor in most situations where I hear conflicting stories.
But then you say this: "You are repeating all the half-truth clichees which are used to manipulate people."
Well, so far you haven't shown any verifiable facts that show you're right. Sure, you made various statements and you seem to expect me to believe those statements because you made them. Again, I don't believe anything. Only proven facts count. Everything else are just theories. But let's go back to one of your first remarks, quote: "I understand your problem, but duckduckgo understands the REAL problem!"
And I agree. DDG understands that there's a lot of money to be made by trading private information. Money that mostly goes to their competitors who openly admit that they collect data. DDG did the same, yet didn't tell anyone, until someone discovered it. And DDG might still be collecting private data in ways that have not been exposed yet. DDG is also profiting from your privacy, but in a slightly different way.
This was literally one line from your first post, yet you seem to ignore this part of the whole topic. I did not want to mention him, but Gabriel Weinberg is the CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo and he's quite a controversial person when it involves privacy. Why? Because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database was also founded by this guy. And that Social Media website was quite dangerous for your privacy. Names DB would ask you to invite your friends and use all kinds of tricks to make sure you did not provide any false data. More importantly, that site actually encouraged people to disclose information about their friends and family! And there are a few more bad things that I know about DDG, but I refuse to disclose them. After all, privacy matters. Even for a company as bad as DDG. And you do realize that DDG has strong relations with Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon?
So, what if I tell you that DuckDuckGo is trying to get a monopoly in privacy? That they want to be the ones having all this information while denying it to any other company? Maybe you should start considering that possibility...