
Never-Googlers: Web users take the ultimate step to guard their data - sverige
https://www.thehour.com/news/article/Never-Googlers-Web-users-take-the-ultimate-step-14116157.php
======
Animats
Well, of course. Just don't sign up for a Google account.

When you get an Android phone new, there's a moment when it asks you to sign
up or sign in with a Google account. There's a "later" option". Click that,
and then remove the Google one-time startup program. Install F-Droid, and get
your apps from there.

The mail program on Android will talk to an IMAP server. Find one to use, and
you don't need Gmail. No ads.

On desktop, use Firefox, LibraOffice, and Thunderbird. Install Privacy Badger
from the EFF. Videos are uploaded to Vimeo. I have a cheap web site on
HostGator if I need to upload anything for someone else to look at, and a
Github account for code storage.

I've been doing this for years, and don't seem to be missing out on anything
except ads.

~~~
babypuncher
Google tracking is baked into Android pretty deep. Simply not having an
account doesn't stop Google from tracking what you do on your phone.

~~~
vetinari
It requires being signed in.

If you are not signed in, for extra safety you can also disable google play
framework and all google apps. You won't get things like fused location, but
hey, that one requires connecting to google services too.

~~~
panpanna
You may or may not be right about this.

The only way to verify this is to install some system level firewall and
carefully inspect all logs.

Until you do that, we simple don't know.

~~~
vetinari
Or you can inspect AOSP itself and bring your device to AOSP-like state.

Sure, you won't know whether the vendor of your device didn't modify the
firmware itself, but what motivation is there for Samsung, Sony or Huawei to
help Google to get user data?

~~~
southerntofu
> what motivation is there for Samsung, Sony or Huawei to help Google to get
> user data?

I'm not sure about their motivation, but several vendors are famously known
for bundling spyware with their phones. Usually within the keyboard app or
some telemetry system.

> bring your device to AOSP-like state

That's a solution but is impossible without having a clean ROM at your
disposal. Google's spyware is contained within Google Play Services, which you
can't get rid of that easily.

~~~
madez
When one wants an AOSP-like state, they can install LineageOS. That doesn't
include Google Play Services, so it isn't difficult to get rid of it.

~~~
vetinari
Jumping to LineageOS is order of magnitude bigger change, than `adb pm
disable` packages. LineageOS has to support your device in the first place,
and then you have root your device (and lose some capabilities in the process,
like camera processing on Xperias).

Yes, you will get better control over software that runs on your device. You
will pay for it by going through more demanding process and the risk of having
instabilities, that nobody except you cares about.

------
SamWhited
I did this a few years ago and the blog post (to my suprise) got covered on
Ars Technica and others. It always amazes me how people respond with disbelief
or with wonder and awe as if it's some difficult or hard to do thing. At the
time there were good, if not better, alternatives for almost everything. The
only thing I stuck with was Gmail and Google calendar, but since then I've
discovered Fastmail which I think is far better at both (I highly recommend
them, they're fairly inexpensive and that means you're not the product, you're
the customer). Although for me it was less about privacy (at the time) and
more about the fact that I had become dependent on the inter-connections
between Google services so when they killed one (ie. Reader) it has a much
bigger impact on my personal life than it should have. Now any time a product
dies it's easy to move my data over to something else and I never get reliant
on interoperability between branded services.

I've also got Google Analytics black holed in Firefox, and run an ad blocker
of course which (I hope) catches most of their trackers; this just seems good
for anyone to do though, even if they're not giving up Google's other
services.

------
phmagic
(disclaimer: I work at a big tech firm, but I've had this opinion before
working here)

I'm confused by the lengths people have gone through to "protect" themselves
from internet giants while freely giving away their info to credit card
companies, traditional retailers, small businesses. Credit card transaction
data have been sold for years without most of us knowing about it. Small
startups, boutique stores rarely have the security or data governance
resources to ensure your data is stored and used properly. Data breaches are
common even at large brick-and-mortar retailers.

Given the state of data security outside of big tech, my best option is to
trust only big tech.

~~~
madez
> I'm confused by the lengths people have gone through to "protect" themselves
> from internet giants while freely giving away their info to credit card
> companies, traditional retailers, small businesses.

You are invalidly generalizing. I try to eliminate all contact I have with the
tech giants, and I do not have a credit card, I am at a privacy respecting
bank (GLS Gemeinschaftsbank), and I use cash.

Additionally, by sharing your data with a company, you give that company power
over yourself and others by enabling them with the knowledge they have over
you. Considering this, it is less problematic to give access to data to a
small company compared to a tech giant.

~~~
airstrike
> You are invalidly generalizing. I try to eliminate all contact I have with
> the tech giants, and I do not have a credit card, I am at a privacy
> respecting bank (GLS Gemeinschaftsbank), and I use cash.

You do you, but I'm happy to get free airline tickets and other perks from
using my credit card at the expense of....... having someone else know I
bought a mechanical keyboard last month?

I respect your choice but I honestly do not understand why people go to such
great lengths to hide mundane data. I'll tell you the color of my underwear
for free, I don't care.

~~~
darkwater
Maybe at the expense of buying that mechanical keyboard you thought you really
wanted but actually you ended up purchasing because of continued, subtle
advertising?

~~~
skybrian
Assuming you have the income to support your spending habits, I don't see this
as much of a risk? Occasionally buying the wrong thing for whatever mistaken
reason is a fact of life. Live and learn.

I would be more worried about scams, bad investments, bigger purchases, or a
pattern of impulse buying.

------
eejjjj82
" In the small South Carolina town of Newberry, Bob's Red Mill muesli cereal
is hard to come by.

That presents a challenge for resident Gregory Kelly, who can't get enough of
the stuff. He'd rather not truck the 40 miles or so to Columbia to stock up on
it, but he's also loath to buy it from the company's website, which he says is
riddled with tracking software from Google"

Somebody get this man a Firefox Privacy Tab

~~~
bhauer
I feel the author was struggling to find a suitable anecdote to open the
story. And this one seems a bit far-fetched, perhaps even exaggerated by Mr.
Kelly as a means of illustrating the hassle of curtailing the surveillance
apparatus of Google. But someone who has gone to the lengths described
probably knows how to block requests to google-analytics.com.

~~~
sdan
He should probably install this:
[https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/) It's
so good.

------
maximente
wow, i had no idea someone in what i assume is rural South Carolina is willing
to undertake a pretty substantial convenience/time cost - drive 40 miles (and
back?) to purchase directly - in order to better guard their privacy.

wonder if he also prefers cash? although this article is google-focused, not
more generally on privacy which would presumably involve defeating credit card
companies with cash.

i'm wondering what order of magnitude of people would do the same across the
country. tens of thousands?

~~~
chiefalchemist
There's a new bridge near me. No cash tolls. It's either EasyPass or they
photograph your plates and mail you the bill.

I presume the lack of cash tolls is semi intentional. I mean all cars are
being photographed, as you can borrow and EasyPass.

~~~
nvrspyx
Cash tolls cost more. You either need people stationed to collect the toll or
send people every so often to collect the tolls from the machines. The
machines would also need more maintenance than the camera or EasyPass system
because they're mechanical. You also need the camera system regardless in case
someone drives through without paying or simply doesn't have cash on hand.
Plus, people will need exact change or have the machine (or employees) return
the correct change if it's not a coinage machine. This also means cash tolls
are slower and cause more congestion. Finally, fewer and fewer people have
cash on hand.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Maybe. But the lack of cash tolls also enables the Surveillance State. So once
again, we're trading privacy and liberty for what amounts to pocket lint.

I think we have closure on the American experiment. Laziness/convenience
trumps anything else.

~~~
joshuamorton
Why do they need toll booths to add cameras?

What prevents the surveillance state from just putting some cameras on the
highway?

~~~
chiefalchemist
They might not. But I'm guessing the ACLU would likely have something to say
about it. Just because it feels normalized doesn't mean we should be so
accepting.

------
saltminer
>"I am giving up more than I am getting" from Google, said the 61-year tech
consultant who started scaling back his Google usage a couple years ago when
advertisements began appearing in his Gmail account.

Ads have been in Gmail for many years, they just became more obvious with
their recent design changes.

>Joshua Greenbaum, of Berkeley, Calif., said he pays about $100 per year to
use Microsoft Office 365 software that he says has better privacy protections
than Google's.

At least he's willing to put his money where his mouth is, though he's
probably still using Windows. If I had a dollar for everyone who complained
about Google but refused to self-host or pay for someone else to host their
email... (Also, people who use free VPNs to avoid tracking. It's free for a
reason.)

------
Zhenya
>Such never-Googlers are pushing friends and family to give up the search and
advertising titan, while others are taking to social media to get word out.

That'll show em, post on facebook about it...

~~~
johnchristopher
Yeah, everyone knows Facebook isn't a platform to influence people. /s

------
chiefalchemist
Not to get off topic but there are still plenty of ecomm/mail order companies
that'll take a phone order. I understand this guy's concern. I don't
understand why he's driving (and likely being tracked along the way).

------
tantalor
You can opt out of analytics:

[https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/181881?hl=en](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/181881?hl=en)

~~~
giancarlostoro
This is not the only analytics company though. There are many others. Others
that even buy your credit transaction history, how do you opt out of that? I
bet those no annual fee cards would bring back fees if they were forced to
keep your data private.

~~~
tantalor
Incognito mode?

~~~
rjf72
Incognito mode is mostly useless as an actual privacy tool. You're still
exposing a substantial amount of information. The most basic would be your IP.
Most IPs are of course dynamic, but there are two factors here:

1) The IP only changes when your lease expires or you manually renew it. This
is not a normal part of starting an incognito session. Google has a confirmed
identity (such as by being logged into a Google service) of tantalor at IP x.
A few seconds later IP x shows up at SteamyHotPornSite.com that's running
Google analytics or otherwise providing tracking for Google - a recent study
of 22,484 porn sites found Google trackers present on 74% [1]). That's 100%
tantalor.

2) Even in cases where the IP does change, it's constrained to within a group.
As most dynamic IPs are also geomapped, it's often a _relatively_ small group.
Now what information is exposed during incognito can be cross-referenced
against a very small group of potentials. You can likely hit near 100% on this
as well.

And that's just one datum, though granted it's quite a useful one! Incognito
should be seen as a tool that does little more than disable any cookies you
have and automatically [kind of - depends on your OS] deletes your local
browsing history.

[1] - [https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-quietly-
trac...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-quietly-tracking-
porn-you-watch-2019-7)

~~~
singron
Re dynamic IPs: you may often get the same IP again on renewal. You might have
more luck if you randomize MAC addresses, but it's certainly possible that
they will keep giving the same IP to a given subscriber until they have their
own reason to reallocate addresses (e.g. maybe so that a crashlooping router
doesn't exhaust available leases for other subscribers).

E.g. from this ad tech company[0] specializing in IP tracking (take it with a
grain of salt):

> In fact our research has discovered many homes that have theoretically
> dynamic IP’s, but have held the same IP for multiple years. Because of this
> recursive reassignment the typical location targeted by El Toro has held the
> same IP address for 7 months.

0: [https://www.eltoro.com/how-long-does-an-ip-address-stay-
atta...](https://www.eltoro.com/how-long-does-an-ip-address-stay-attached-to-
a-home-or-business/)

------
aphextron
Web search has become a commoditized service over the last few years. I've
used DuckDuckGo exclusively for over a year now and it's actually _really_
good, and I've switched over to iCloud for email. Even Apple maps is pretty
decent nowadays. There's really nothing I need from Google anymore. Their moat
is shrinking rapidly.

------
dredmorbius
Nearly a decade ago, then Google CEO Eric Schmidt said "The Google policy on a
lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."

[https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-
policy-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-is-to-
get-right-up-to-the-creepy-line-and-not-cross-it-2010-10)

The problem with such a policy is in thinking that cultural and legal
boundaries are fixed and inviolate. The very process of repeatedly pressing up
to a border may trigger the backlash which moves it, and can leave the fate-
tempting party in deep water -- with its own culture, processes, amd
institutions unable to adapt, or with goodwill so badly burnt it never
recovers.

Google should have seen this coming long ago. It's a colossal failure of
leadership that they've not.

------
SomeOldThrow
Taking the ultimate step to guard your data would surely involve writing laws
or dismantling data centers (I prefer the former). Ultimately what you opt
into has little relation to what people actually know about you: you can't
_really_ opt out of credit, or out of things like Comcast requiring your
social security number as identification and authorization, or out of the fact
that it's become the cultural norm to accept ad-supported services as the sole
access to communities.

------
pmoriarty
One way that Google can track your web usage habits is through third-party
websites using re-captchas and other Google services and resources, about
which the end-user can do nothing except refuse to use web sites that require
them.

Unfortunately, Google is far from the only company that tracks users and
collects data on them, so even if you were to somehow completely avoid Google
tracking and data collection, you'd still be subject to tracking and data
collection from others.

------
fortran77
"There are dozens of us!"

------
yters
At this point with the proliferation of cameras and listening devices, the
only way to stay off Google's servers is to live in the backwoods, or in an
undeveloped country, or live on a boat.

Kinda creepy, actually, when I say it like that. If Google is just a front for
NSA then I'd say Big Brother is complete.

------
proc0
> In the small South Carolina town of Newberry, Bob's Red Mill muesli cereal
> is hard to come by.

dammit grandpa get to the point!

