Multiple machines, multiple OSs, narrowing apps?

Posted by jaslar
Jun 17, 2019 at 04:59 AM

Sorry for spraying chronological comments on this fascinating thread.

Dr Andus wrote:
>There have been a couple of references to the intrusiveness of Google by
>a couple of posters in this thread, and I’m just wondering if there have
>been some new revelations about Google and privacy that I missed.

It happened in February (see https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/02/05/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking/). Google is also revising software to block Chrome ad-blocking extensions. (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome-ad-blocker-features).

The questions that worry me: (1) through the adoption of our cheap subscriptions and devices, do we hand over every click, driven ever more precisely to our deepest preferences (by a scattershot of images) ((linked to sales)). (((linked to us, specifically)))? Yes. We do. (2) who has access to that information? Answer to this one: anyone with a warrant. Any third party commercial partners, unknown to us. Hackers. (3) Who can get a warrant? Local practice varies. But an officer of the court does not necessarily mean judicial review. (4) Has this personally identifiable information been misused by law enforcement, or by those unnamed third parties? Oy. Maybe this is a new thread.

But those two news items seem to be driving the heightened concern about privacy in the Googleverse.