Right, but not all have fixed that. I still see lots of cases where I have to turn off several options individually. Though these could be sites outside of the EU jurisdiction, so they just don’t care, or sites that make enough money off of the tracking data, that the fines would be insignificant even if the EU were to get around to fining them.
And again the comment stands that it’s not the law, but the implementations that are bad. The law requires it to be simple, but that’s not what was implemented.
Problem is not the law, but that the companies implemented it in as annoying of a way as possible to get people pissed off about the law and force it to be dropped, or for what actually happened which is that it’s too much work to not opt-in to the cookies which essentially makes it opt-out not in.
And the idea to remove the requirements for “simple statistics” or whatever terminology they use will just get abused by using other illicit tracking tech to link the cookies to uniquely identify a person anyway. So it will effectively make the popups unnecessary in any circumstances and still allow tracking for marketing and surveillance.
It’s become a pretty standard practice on Apple, Samsung, and Google devices as well as many other Android manufacturers to enable data sharing by default in the US. Especially the last few administrations want as much data as possible about the people, and in the US pretty much all of the companies share this kind of data pretty freely without requiring any judicial oversight since the supreme court has been corrupted. And the current administration HSS basically cut all investigation into any corporations that are friendly to them, so there’s no essentially no risk in collecting, leaking, or selling this data, so why bother making it opt-in. And recently, it’s explicitly risky to not collect and share as much data as possible with the government.
It definitely depends on the application. But when you’re installing it, it should yell you if it’s installing other things. Otherwise you’ll have to look at the actual files it installed. There should ne documentation you can read on the site or st least it should have given you a readme to look at when you install it that has the info or links to a website with the info. There also should be a privacy policy in the application or on its site that describes what info it collects and tracks assuming this is from a reputable company. I’m just not familiar with it.
Anti-cheat software in either testing or gaming as well as employee productivity monitoring software (which is similar) generally has wide ranging permissions to do its job. So without doing research to confirm, I’d assume it has full access to everything you do across all applications, including when it’s not running in the foreground if it has background services running.
Personally, I never install that stuff on my primary operating system. I either use a dedicated device, dual boot, or if it is less sophisticated, use a virtual machine with only Windows and the necessary software. Of course I don’t use Windows for any personal computers anyway, too inefficient, and these days, too unstable and too much spyware built-in. I only use Windows on my work laptop these days which spys on me constantly to the point of crashing a lot as it collects all of its info when I use development software at the same time as WebEx or other necessary software.
If you want to know details, you need to look at the software they had you install as well as the dependencies it might install.
Still pretty limited set of supported devices, but it’s not really mean to be a defensive tool. Would be nice if this results in a way to detect and prevent your device from connecting to them, someday.
Because you trade privacy for convenience. You could have a totally private communication platform, but you’d need to trade current IP addresses of your devices if there’s no users and no centralized routing server or at least a list of what device is associated what person.
It’s secure because people can’t read the content of your message. It’s not private because people can find you with your phone number or username and associate encrypted message packages with the sender and receiver so they know who you called and when, but not what you said.
So if your contacts are tech savvy enough to call you to get your current unique IPv6 address, something that Android doesn’t really support out of the box, and IPv4 often won’t work due to layers of routing caused by the world running out of addresses, or some other unique network identifier, and there are no firewalls between you or they’ve all been configured appropriately to allow the particular message protocol then you could send simple IP Messages to each other.
But as long as you want to use a system that routes messages and has a user database, that central location will always be a privacy hole.
Problem is many Android apps require Google Services and none of these will have it. So things like banking apps, parking payment apps, RCS text messaging apps, and even dating apps these days are going to refuse to run. Grapheneos has the advantage of the Google services sandboxed to reduce the impact of having it if you understand the implications, as well as features keeping other apps from talking to each other like how Facebook was caught using their apps to identify you to your web browser to allow every site you visit to identify you that has Meta provided services, even in incognito mode or when you opt out of or block their or third-party cookies.
Local backup already exists, just sync it somewhere yourself. This new feature basically is just syncing the backup to their servers and limiting the amount for free because it costs money to store a lot if data.
Edit: not sure if iOS is the same since that’s more locked down of a platform than Android, but at least on Android this holds true.
Generally, the issue is that services want to blend the data into a single stream, otherwise you end up with having to make a separate connection to and from each client, each at full bandwidth called full mesh. It becomes easier to just have the encryption to the server, then decrypt all the streams from all the participating clients, and merge them into a single stream outbound. Adjust and re-encrypt that single stream and send it. That also allows for more control to make low bandwidth or dynamically changing bandwidth clients work better as you can adjust one stream rather than hundreds of outbound to each client. But that means the server has access to unencrypted streams to analyze and record. This is called server mixing.
Previous software generally only supported one or the other of those options. Signal is one of the few that have developed the technology to allow for selective forwarding which is the third option. Their website details how this works and it’s open source so some others have adopted it or have come up with similar approaches.
It’s more that shipping cost is baked in. When shipping isn’t shown until the last step, it allows for displaying a lower price.
So if you’re shopping on Amazon and it’s $20 and on another site without free shipping it’s $15, and the you get to the checkout and there’s $5 handling fee in addition to the $5 shipping fee, it wastes a lot of time. Sure most put that in fine print somewhere, but it’s just easier if it’s baked in. Just like many foreigners don’t hate how the sales tax is tacked on in most of the US and can vary by city as well as by state.
Sure you know it’s coming, but it’s easier to have a single price that is going to be what you pay, so you can shop around easier.
I see return policies as essential for certain items.
For example clothing sizing is extremely inconsistent and many sizing charts just are plain wrong, especially for women’s clothes, and for me anyway, shoes, since I have a high arch, so if I have to pay a restocking fee and/or shipping fees every time I get something that doesn’t fit just right, it is a significant cost. For example with shoes, I often have to try on 20-30 pairs at both local and online stores for every one that fits.
Just an example, but this also extends to shipping damaged products especially if a seller is not willing to deal with shipping companies for damaged products and shipping companies won’t honor insurance if you weren’t the one who paid for it directly. So you have to catch the delivery person before they leave the damaged package and ask them to return it to the sender and hope the sender will give you a refund without needing to reverse charges.
And then there’s defective products. Often manufacturers don’t exist anymore, so you end up stuck with paying for a defective product. Amazon often covers this whereas many sellers who sell overstock and outdated products without telling the buyer, do not.
These are just a few reasons that a good return policy is necessary. Now Amazon has a huge issue where they often send open box items that someone else probably returned (not usually an issue with clothing as long as it wasn’t damaged, but can be an issue with warrantee or licenses for some items or , and you have to then get a new one, but at least that’s free. Many others will just blame you for it if the outer packaging wasn’t damaged, so they can’t get shipping companies to cover it assuming they’ll even go that far.
If you have sellers with electronic components and sensitive skin products that sell direct, charge less than amazon, have free exchange and return policies, and don’t ship direct from Asia meaning possibly several months to receive as well as fluctuating tariffs, please share. These are just two examples I’ve not been able to find.
I hate Amazon as much as anyone. But you can’t live in a post capitalist wasteland without those kinds of things. There is no ethical consumption in such a world and avoiding using one toxic company just required using another.
I use tracking sites for things I can wait for and I shop around, but they almost inevitably have the best prices especially after considering shipping costs, exchange policies for defective or damaged goods, and especially for clothes and shoes, return policies.
Tell me the other choice and I’ll happily change. I could do without the fast shipping. That’s just a bonus. But how do I get products for sensitive skin that the drug stores and Walmart don’t carry, or electronics parts, or reasonably priced clothes in my styles. And local specialty shops are going to require an entire day of travel and shopping for a single product or two.
To get everything I use out of necessity or projects, I’d end up using up all of my weekends to find and travel to places that carry them and likely have to spend a lot more money on them. A few I could order direct from the manufacturer or from specialty shops online, but the manufacturer sites are likely to cost more, plus shipping costs for one off items. The specialty shops online are often just owned by another corporate blob and if I end up with a defective product I often have to pay to ship it back assuming they accept returns at all, which with cosmetic products they often don’t, even if it’s defective or opened. And if it’s damaged in shipping or stolen, the recipient can’t file a claim with the shipping company and getting many online shops to do it for you often requires hours on the phone to get through layers of escalations.
So, yes, it’s a choice. But the alternatives require a significant investment of time and money. Given my job requires around 10 hrs per day and being neurodivergent, I often don’t have time or energy, and then wouldn’t be able to do anything fun. Not to mention, I definitely don’t get paid enough. So, no not technically 100% necessary, but unfeasible not to, at least for many of us.
Amazon is pretty necessary in much of the US. Between big corporate stores like Walmart and Dollar General and online shopping it’s really difficult for smaller stores to exist anymore. If there’s any market, the big stores will come in, undercut whatever they sell, push the small stores out and then probably just go bankrupt and leave the area without anything. And the fact that much of the US is rural and our infrastructure, especially in rural areas, is old and/or underdeveloped means it could take hours to get to a store and back. And because the big stores only really carry the basics, it’s really difficult to get your hands on stuff that’s less common. That’s where online shopping fills the gap.
I live in a medium sized major city that doesn’t allow Walmart to get subsidies their business model relies on to buy up land and buildings on the cheap to help take over markets, and does at least try to keep space for small businesses, and I even have a hard time finding stuff. But doesn’t help that even in most of the major cities, transportation is crap because politicians are owned by the fossil fuel companies and so public transit can’t get much tax money and traffic is insane not to mention the gas prices are quite high here compared to much of the US even. And the property is super expensive primarily because so much prime real-estate is unoccupied by investors to keep the prices high. So its difficult to set up a specialty shop. I’m sure many other cities have similar issues, but I’m most familiar with this one.
As for Amazon in particular, I used them primarily because their return policy is the best and these days all of the online shops are as likely to send you a used or broken item as a new one and secondarily because at least in my city, the shipping is pretty quick. No other online stores can match it. But that said, they have started to move away from carrying quality brands and primarily sell cheap junk since that’s where the profit is especially with their ability to price based on data they’ve mined from data brokers about you. That’s why sites like Keepa and camelcamelcamel are essential to check and track actual prices they offer in addition to doing comparison shopping.
I don’t really get how that’s helpful for ICE. They don’t investigate crime really. Shouldn’t they know a person’s immigration status based on their public records? What do they need private communications for to prove a person is in the country illegally?
This is a rhetorical question. I know why they want it, just it doesn’t make sense for them to spend our money on for the things they’re supposed to be tasked with doing.
Not sure why it’s required for your job since it is a convenience thing rather than a requirement to fly anywhere in particular. It’s a very specific kind of background check and the agency doesn’t share information with employers in general. So that makes little sense to me. Perhaps you can ask them why and suggest a more appropriate background check system if that’s what they use it for.
But either way, a background check is required for PreCheck and background check means giving up private information to allow the TSA to get all of your data that the government has on you. Privacy would defeat the entire purpose.
Just use a VPN outside the country or lease a low end VPS outside the country with decent bandwidth and host your own VPN endpoint. They can’t force ISPs to block all of the VPN protocols in general or they’ll lose a ton of businesses that rely on it for basic security of remote/traveling employees.
It’s very time consuming to detect and correct the small mistakes that LLMs make. Beyond one or two lines of code, it becomes much more time consuming to correct the multitude of subtle mistakes vs coding it myself. I use code completion that comes with my IDE, but that is programmatic completion, not LLM, and is much, much more accurate and in smaller chunks that are easy to verify at a glance. I’ve never known any experienced developers who have had a different experience. LLMs can be good for getting a general idea of how to code something in a new language or framework I’ve never touched before and more to help find actual examples rather than use the code directly in the IDE, but if I were to use LLM code directly that would be in a test project, never, ever in production code. I would never write production code in a language I’ve never used before with or without an LLM’s “help”.
Curious if the account is a legitimate Rus Education account that got hacked. I’ve been seeing that a lot lately where random legitimate businesses are contacting people about totally unrelated subjects. Seems scammers are probably using hacked business accounts to allow them to send messages to anyone without restrictions.
I’m not sure how “suspicious behavior” could be relevant to a seller issuing you a refund. Nor do I understand why a government ID would help with that kind of situation. If they are saying it’s because the credit card might be stolen, that doesn’t really make sense for a refund. If they’re saying the account might be hacked, then again, I can see limiting purchases, but not refunds. Are you sure this was a real email from Amazon and not a phishing email? I’d contact them again to verify, first. Then if you can’t resolve it, go to your bank and ask for a reversal of the charge.
Unfortunately, it has become the norm in the UK and much of the EU as well. I don’t know Austria well, but ive heard it has a strong right-wing leaning in the police force, like most. Police will always prefer control due to the nature of the job and humans will always prefer easy solutions to their goals.
I’m going with how police work currently in the US as a baseline. In the US, many jurisdictions require that you surrender your phone as a blanket policy, and if you refuse to unlock it, many have software to hack it. This has been determined generally to be legal as simply being detained or entering restricted areas is considered probable cause for a search, just like a physical search of your person or purse or whatever is legal.
Assuming Austria does something similar and now they additionally can install illicit malware, I think they absolutely will as a blanket policy.
And just like that Austrian citizens will be the target of every hacker group on the world as the state malware will be a weak link in every device’s security layers and once they crack it, they’ll have deep access to thousands or maybe even millions of people’s devices depending on ho w broadly police decide to deploy it (likely on every device of every person who is arrested, detained, or has any contact with police for any reason like perhaps just visiting prisoners or entering government buildings to renew a passport.)
The only thing you gain from VPN is that the target server does not know your IP.
Not necessarily true. A VPN also prevents the ISP from collecting data on all of your connections. Currently ISPs (in the US at least) collect and sell what sites you visit even if they can’t see the data due to HTTPS. Additionally, some have implemented, but then removed due to backlash but may implement again some day, MitM attacks on HTTPS connections in order to insert ads. Using a trusted DNS server that they don’t also intercept can help avoid this, though. With a VPN the ISP won’t see any of this, only the connection to the VPN server and have no way to insert themselves as long as they don’t intercept the VPN connection itself before it’s established.
The laws aren’t about protecting children, though. Only legitimate sites will implement it, and legitimate sites generally aren’t the most problematics sites.
The laws are actually designed to allow for the tracking of adults’ activity and link them to that activity in a way that is provable in court. Anyone who wants to use the sites for nefarious purposes can just impersonate others and frame them for the use. So, there’s no real value in any of it, just a way to get campaign funding. The real solutions would be too expensive to implement and require experts to design who are much more likely to be highly educated and thus unwilling to help a fascist state, so they’ll never happen.
One of the main reasons I moved to GrapheneOS was to avoid the impending push for Gemini to be everywhere and I don’t trust Google not to use some subset of my data by not making a setting for it and not making it clear that it’s being used. They started doing that in way too many places the last several years.
There are many places that have those rules as I mentioned. For private property, it’s not uncommon, but mostly only in secure locations that you buy tickets or otherwise pay or that have other restrictions to enter. Especially artistic venues where artists don’t want their works recorded. This is mostly for protecting financial interests over privacy, though. It’s not common for stores, gyms, and other locations that are open to the public, even if on private property, where taking photos isn’t a financial concern of the location. That’s pretty rare because it was too difficult to convince people to leave behind their phones or trust a worker to keep track of who’s phone is whose, so it kept people from coming to those places. Instead people often voluntarily keep their phones secure in lockers or keep them in their pockets or otherwise don’t take them out in plain view due to social pressure for privacy, especially in public showers, bathrooms, and changing rooms which were the places some politicians insisted it would end up being a major issue without laws.
No. At least not in the way most people expect.
It does block some tracking and ads that Chrome alone allows or explicitly adds. But it simply shifts that tracking to Brave. The idea was that you’d still get the benefits of that tracking by giving all of your data to Brave instead. I honestly never was convinced by this considering your data is still being sold, just by a different company so it doesn’t sound much better to me. Supposedly, according to them, Brave is more trustworthy and gives you more control over what they track and sell, but I don’t trust that business model. There’s no real incentive for them to do what they said they would.