lmost one decade ago I shifted all of my E-mail to a domain that I control. Well, to be accurate, my host and I control it, and that host is based in Ireland/UK. But over time it became apparent that this was usually useless for privacy. If the recipient uses an E-mail address in one of the big providers of ‘free’ E-mail services (e.g. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft), then my messages (incoming, outgoing) will be visible to corporations and governments whose business should not be other people’s personal lives. So among those who were close to me I was pushing to move to a private domain as well, often the same as mine. This goes back to around 2004. Alas, this wasn’t enough. People routinely use SMTP servers provided by their ISP (‘free’ traffic, free to engage in surveillance), and some use Web-based clients that spying-happy browsers are accessing. Those browsers got worse in that regard over time. Ubuntu now uses search to turn users into products. Besides all of this, the ISP has access to packets, and here in the UK we have Phorm, which helps ISPs do DPI (deep packet inspection) under the guise of “marketing” surveillance.
The bottom line is, encryption for E-mail is needed, but the problem is that few mail clients actually support PGP. Some make it cumbersome to use. Perhaps it’s fair to say that privacy in E-mail is almost an impossibility in practice (even among two willing parries). I no longer use E-mail all that much. face-to-face conversations remain one of the most private options for those who value privacy.
OOGLE is sometimes said to have rescued us from Microsoft Office monopoly. But what has it really brought about? Now we are distracted enough to forget about Free software alternatives such as OpenOffice.org and instead we push some enterprises into using spyware — an office suite which tracks everything and keeps one’s data online for government to access upon will. Moreover, Google Apps (including Docs) does not properly support ODF, causing all sorts of issues, including on Android devices.
Google should not be treated as a solution to office suites lock-in. Google has become part of the problem.
oogle knows precisely what you search for and keeps a record of it indefinitely. If you have a Google account, it also knows all YouTube videos you watch (how long, how many times) and many Web pages you visit (with AdSense, YouTube embed, etc.). Never mind PageRank, Feedburner, etc. It knows your real identity now. The PATRIOT ACT (and the likes of it) lets governments access this data, too, so it’s not a purely corporate issue anymore. Lawyers and thugs turn up at the scene. There is nothing for Web users to gain from it, no matter the propaganda about “terrorists” and “pedophiles”. It’s sickening to see how lightly privacy is taken by those whom we supposedly elect.
When Google started requiring that people sign up to access a lot of its stuff (with a verified E-mail address) it was no longer just playing dice with IP addresses. Google Plus was a step further, which drove me to other search engines. Sometimes people have a common name, such as John Wilcox. By offering Google Profiles/Plus Google is able to discern one from another, plus pair it with an E-mail address. They even know how you navigate through Google StreetView and Maps. Google may also have copies of all your mails which you sent to people in GMail (certainly all of it if you use GMail). People tend to forget all of this. And this data is not being destroyed. Some is used for marketing and Google openly admits many government requests for people’s data all around the world (Google complies without a fight and without informing those affected). Transparency through statistics hardly makes the practice benign.
Do you still use Google? You probably oughtn’t, except when there is no other choice. Consider accessing YouTube from other devices without a cookie. Wherever Google is going, I don’t like it. And a lot of people forget that it’s dominantly proprietary, so I hardly care it it’s “not Microsoft” or “not Apple”. Even Android is becoming a little too creepy on the privacy side (e.g. its browser which phones home with location and usage data). Canonical takes a lesson from this business model of Google and now turns Ubuntu into spyware. I spoke to Richard Stallman in recent days. He will soon write about this topic. As always, Stallman had good foresight when it comes to privacy on the Net.
“Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.”
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lmost one decade ago I shifted all of my E-mail to a domain that I control. Well, to be accurate, my host and I control it, and that host is based in Ireland/UK. But over time it became apparent that this was usually useless for privacy. If the recipient uses an E-mail address in one of the big providers of ‘free’ E-mail services (e.g. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft), then my messages (incoming, outgoing) will be visible to corporations and governments whose business should not be other people’s personal lives. So among those who were close to me I was pushing to move to a private domain as well, often the same as mine. This goes back to around 2004. Alas, this wasn’t enough. People routinely use SMTP servers provided by their ISP (‘free’ traffic, free to engage in surveillance), and some use Web-based clients that spying-happy browsers are accessing. Those browsers got worse in that regard over time. Ubuntu now uses search to turn users into products. Besides all of this, the ISP has access to packets, and here in the UK we have Phorm, which helps ISPs do DPI (deep packet inspection) under the guise of “marketing” surveillance.
OOGLE is sometimes said to have rescued us from Microsoft Office monopoly. But what has it really brought about? Now we are distracted enough to forget about Free software alternatives such as OpenOffice.org and instead we push some enterprises into using spyware — an office suite which tracks everything and keeps one’s data online for government to access upon will. Moreover, Google Apps (including Docs) does not properly support ODF, causing all sorts of issues, including on Android devices.
arlier this year the Mr. Fitness 2011 contest had ended and it was only a couple of days ago that I published