What's the worst privacy compromise that you are willing to admit you make?
I've got to make a decision and want to take a room temperature check on what sacrifices people find acceptable for their own comfort. Use any services you know you shouldn't? Any tools that you're just waiting for a chance to replace but can't yet?
Google maps for navigation in unfamiliar places.
i really want to switch to OSM apps (and I have comaps) but (1) it's not nearly as good at understanding addresses (e.g. "123 first avenue" when it has my gps coords instead of "cityname, First avenue 123 zipcode") and (2) doesn't have nearly as many businesses mapped (e.g. i want to type in "Joe's Restaurant" instead of the address bc i haven't memorized it)
+1, maps is incredible and I wish a proper alternative existed. it's the only thing keeping play services on my phone rn since I don't have time to tinker with sandboxing it
Try Here We Go. It isn't FOSS, but it isn't google
I occasionally need to use Google Maps but I've helped map my area on OSM which improved my experience. Most businesses in my town are now mapped.
I use Waze, I've no idea how much "not Google" is it, since it's owned by Google. I'm trying comaps more and it's quite good.
I wanted offline maps and ended up with Sygic, which does well for the most part. It has some confusion over labeling state roads that trips me up occasionally.
Same. Although organic maps has worked for me for the most part. Haven't needed gmaps for a hot minute. Although it would've made life easier on a few occasions
Having a phone is a pretty big one.
This is my biggest compromise. The fucker listens to everything I say and do and reports it to thousands of different companies. I wish there was a good privacy focused phone that you could sandbox apps in.
Well as you didn't specify which kind of privacy then.... well if I'm in a high up hotel room with a balcony I like to run out onto it naked and then have a wiggle and quickly run back inside. I call it 'willying the world'
I accept your terms. This will be taken into account as well
Grocery store rewards programs. I know they are designed to link purchases to me, but the financial savings is worth the loss of privacy for me.
Same here. Trouble is, those aren't "savings", the price with the card is now just the price. If you don't have a card, you have to pay an inflated price. A privacy tax, if you will.
Reward programs can link purchases to you through 2 different means:
You cannot technically avoid the second one but I know that most stores don't do that because their systems are separated: one system for the inventory, one system for sending transactions to the banks. I'm telling this because, while they can link your debit/credit card to your purchase, it never happens because it's a major PITA for them and it's a manual process. But it can happen...
In many stores, they will swipe "a store card" for you at the register if you ask them. I believe I've even seen the option on some self-checkout stations. I've only had trouble with this once or twice. But it may be worth risking for the privacy (and monetary) savings.
This works for cases where just being a member gets a lower price, but at least some stores have digital coupons that need to be added to my account. This would not work with a generic card. It is definitely a good tip for stores where it does work though.
I use an old phone number my sister used to have 20 years ago. We have no idea how many people are using that number currently but I get 60 cents off per gallon every month.
the secret is, like Netflix, you’re not supposed to use your own card / number / account – someone in your family / apartment / friends has not only already signed up but also doesn’t care how many take advantage of the savings
If you buy groceries with a credit card instead of cash they will track that too, I've received coupons in the mail for specific items I've purchased in the past without any rewards program.
I need to take a closer look at this. We don't do it but in these troubled times, young family et cetera... is it worth it?
They can just link purchases to the card I use to pay anyway right?
Having a quick look at my nearest grocery store, it looks like they give me 10% off one shop each month, amongst a plethora of other bullshit perks like points towards fancy cookware or something.
If I shop once a week and spend $200 then that's $20 a month or $240 a year. Essentially one free shop a year.
Not much of a saving really. There's other simpler things I can do to save more money I think.
I just make up phone numbers.
8675309 in your local area code almost always works.
Go to number when I don't want it linked to me. Somehow my current area code doesn't have someone signed up, but my old area code does.
Using Bitwarden’s cloud service. I don’t trust myself enough to maintain and secure a self-hosted online password vault. Also like others said, google maps. The sheer volume of crowsourced data they have is very useful for real-time navigation especially if you live in a city with heavy traffic.
I can't deny it. The way that thing tells on speed traps is basically indispensable now.
I've had a Google account since I was old enough to have one. I've been using my email to make so many accounts for years. How does one just move to something else when what yiu already have is so deep into your other stuff?
Gotta do it one by one. It's taken years, but now most of my stuff is off of Gmail. It's to the point where if my Google account got closed, I wouldn't miss much. I wouldn't even lose my emails that I care about since I've done multiple Takeouts.
One step at a time.
Same. I made a new email, and every time i had to log in or something, i looked into changing the email of said account one by one. It wasn't really all that bad
it's a process. by now you're probably using at least one for doing 2 factor authorization with the other. to migrate you have to create a 3rd and go through all your accounts authorizing a login then changing the 2fa account.
I'd say it's probably easier if you have a password manager app, then you can at least let it autofill login info and use it like a checklist to work your way through. Those are obviously their own kind of baggage though
I would say that LinkedIn is a big one.
I upload to YouTube. I know it gives up a lot of my privacy and I’m sure it’s being fed Into AI… ugh. 😩
I also upload the same videos to other video sites even if they don’t get many views.
Messaging apps generally. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, you name it. I'd love to move to something like Signal or I'd even do Telegram, or in a perfect world, host my own server storing the messages/media. But the broader population just wants the path of least resistance, so now I have like 5 apps on my phone and all of them are varying degrees of compromised.
Using WhatsApp because in Germany there's no way around it for public contacts.
Edit: I'd love some response on downvote (as always). I use other messengers myself as an avid foss fan and techie and even had it uninstalled a while. That was until I went back to participating in social life and I sure as hell can't get institutions off of WhatsApp as totally frustrating and idiotic as it is for them to use it in the first place.
I'm from Germany and don't have WhatsApp :D But I totally understand what you mean, it's terrible.
Yeah from car mechanics to doctors, schools to associations/clubs it's mandatory.
Probably my reliance on Google Maps.
OSMand is what got me off Maps. It's one of the few apps I pay monthly to support. It does a ton of stuff Maps cannot and never will do, like local trip recording, customizable everything and displaying OBDII data.
Most of the time, I don't mind a compromise as long as I can keep the data to myself and encrypted, or if the smartphone application can run without any permission.
The biggest threats for me in the above list are PayPal (they know what I buy), and Kagi (they know what I'm looking for). I could find a way to remove Kagi though...
Kagi has no way of knowing what you’re looking for if you use their privacy tokens.
Wait what's wrong with Waze and Tuta? The PayPal tie?
Waze is owned by Google.
That.... is unexpected. Why would they make a competitor to their own product?
They didn't. As far as I'm aware they bought the competition.
Waze serves a slightly different purpose to Maps, being a friendlier face that's more of a driving GPS than Maps is. And while they don't really market it as a Google product, people will use it thinking it's a good alternative to using Google or Apple.
Noooooo. Nothing is wrong with Tuta, they are awesome. The compromise is that PayPal knows that I subscribe to Tuta and BitWarden.
As for Waze, it has been bought by Google a long time ago. If you have Android, you can restrict the location to "when the application is running," but it's still Google behind.
ohhhhh. I see. I guess that's still better than maps. Do you think it had use of all the same geography as Google maps then?
The geographical data was always good, and you can use it without an account. The algorithm itself has improved a lot. It used to be very bad in the past though, it would switch the route every five minute to gain a few seconds towards the destination, but they stopped doing that.
CoMaps looks great, but it's still buggy and I don't know how to have some traffic data.
I have not yet but may soon be required to give biometrics (fingerprints, possibly eye scan) to my employer.
I haven't decided yet what to do if it comes to that... know I'm giving random tech conglomerates far more in exchange for far less, but this one feels more invasive and personal.
But I'll probably do it if needed. I like this job, and I trust them more than I trust these tech giants I sell my data to, just for a glimpse of the online hellscape.
Why? What’s going on? Isn’t it a breach of some sort?
It's a security clearance thing. But there's also talks of instead easing up on the requirements for different levels of security clearance, so we'll see where it ends up.
oof, THAT'S a fucking leap. gotta be a job you must really want to be considering that
Best job I've ever had, both regarding benefits+salary, assignments, and work culture/colleagues/management.
I get it. Had to make a choice like that too once. Not my fingerprints or anything that invasive but having to compromise for a job. Whatever you do I hope it brings you success
I'm a data engineer so I love being able to download data to be able to play with. My biggest one is leaving location tracking on on Google Maps so I can download it and create heatmaps
A car built after 2010 so it's full of cameras and lte connections and gps etc so car companies and the advertisers they sell data to and the governments they backdoor always know what trips I make, how far, how long I stay, etc.
ooh, yeah that's one people overlook a lot.
Dang, I got a 2015 car kitted out (tint, roof racks, sub, rims, a million speakers, leather everything, glass roof with limo lighting under retractable electronic cover) that I found for a steal accidentally at like 50k miles and it has ONE camera—backup camera! (Dashcam too, but no WiFi or Bluetooth and i installed that myself) Of course, she’s got a GPS and all that; if I had the knowhow, I’d disconnect it.
I hope I keep her forever. I love her.
Carrying a connected cell phone/tracking device
After switching to GrapheneOS on my Pixel and Cachy as my main OS for my PC, the Windows installation I keep for some stuff might be the worst offender, even though I already made it as hardened as possible.
Can you tell me what can't run on cachy? I'm dropping windows in the future and want to know what all I'll lose
Depends what you use, we used to use Sai2 and while it runs in Linux perfectly fine with Wine or WinBoat, its file system is so complicated getting around it’s not worth the hassle. And our cracked Premiere Pro didn’t work on Linux either for obvious Adobe don’t work on Linux reasons, but honestly we switched to Krita for drawing and Kdenlive for video editing and both alternatives were if not the same, better than what we were using before. So realistically it’s just looking at what you use daily, searching if it’s Linux native, if not works with proton/wine/winboat and if all else find an alternative- there’s so many resources it’s pretty easy ti switch now esp if your a gamer (minus any typical kernel anti cheat BS they pull, shouldn’t play those games anywho) if you’d like feel free to reply software you use a lot and we can suggest alts from what we know.
Ps. Don't stress about the distro, there’s no wrong answer (as long as it’s not unbuntu lmao)
Gotcha, it's a ways off so I have some time to decide
Good luck!! :D
Some Windows exclusive programs can run in Winboat, a special VM which make it look like a normal program running native in Linux. I saw a video a while ago where someone used it for Adobe software and it worked well.
Some games, especially competitive multiplayer, can't run on Linux because the developers restricted it (basically everything with modern kernel level anti cheat).
I personally haven't managed to get Rocksmith (a guitar hero type game where you play with your actual electric guitar) to work, though others have so it's possible. For most other software I found alternatives, but even on Windows I used FOSS software where possible so most of them exist for Linux as well.
If you have an Nvidia card, like me, and use a Wayland based desktop environment you can experience issues. For me sleep / hypernation does not work at all, my pc does not recover from it and I have to cut power through the psu switch.
Overall it went pretty smooth and Cachy's configurations don't need to much tinkering.
I have Microsoft Teams and Outlook apps installed on my phone because I need them to do my job. I use gmail, google calendar, and google maps because they work and are accessible anywhere I need them. I am certainly aware of the tradeoffs and use more privacy friendly alternatives on my own PC for things I need to do privately. The VPN DNS block lists running on my phone make it so the Microsoft apps barely function as it is.
I purposely still use Google on one of my PCs. I'm of the opinion that having a limited presence on their algorithms is better than trying to be invisible. So, Google knows I like Magic the Gathering & DnD.
I really think you're right. there's a specific breadcrumb trail I'm trying to give them too. Just kind of don't want my keystrokes to be part of it
Microsoft SwiftKey on my phone. I've been using it since before it was acquired by Microsoft. It is an incredible keyboard and after using it for years, I am very fast on it. I ditched it for about 6 months last year for the FOSS alternative HeliBoard, but it negatively impacted my typing speed so much that I recently gave up and reverted to SwiftKey.
Google Maps also on my phone, because it works really well compared to the alternatives I've tried. I've used (and contributed to) OSM, but it's just not a drop-in replacement for Google Maps yet.
I "verified my identity" on LinkedIn a while back because I'm job hunting.
I can't validate our use of them, but I can at least commiserate. Heliboard was so much slower it wasn't even funny. SwiftKey just knows what I'm trying to say and I can type as lazily as I want. Heliboard had to be nearly perfect to even have a chance of autocorrecting correctly.
Google Maps too, I'm not ready to give it up.
Is LinkedIn even useful to you? Every time I've gone job searching, I've found a bunch on indeed and barely anything on LinkedIn.
Not particularly, but job hunting is rough atm and being verified seemed like it might help with some prospects.
Nice try, NSA
To be honest, I got banned off Reddit a few weeks ago and was surprised when I signed up here that i'd have to give my email. I thought from what i'd read on Reddit that Lemmy was decentralised?? Hate giving up any of my personal information for these online forums. I came here to try it after also trying Mirage and their sign up process required no personal information input which was good but I thought f*ck it i'll give it a look on here as well. Is there any way around it? Has anyone else tried Mirage?
what's that? is that possible?
Mirage feels to me like the very OG Reddit. Even from a UI standpoint. They’ve built their own blockchain. So when I signed up there, I was given my own seed phrase to access the account vs having to give any of my own personal credentials. Seems a lot more privacy-focused. Didn't ask me for my personal email, nothing at all as a matter of fact. Definitely feel a lot more comfortable that way.
Décentralisation is just how it's structured, it has nothing to do with privacy. Email itself is decentralised.
I would recommend using a service like duckduckgo which lets you generate @duck.com email addresses for anonymous signups
It's the network effect. I need an integrated solution that replaces all of these functions that I can use, my more tech-casual spouse can use, and that my frustration-intolerant preteen child can use. Also, we use Family Link for youth device management since we use Android devices. No alternative exists that does all of these things, and I refuse to spend my precious free time providing constant tech support.
I still use my old google account for youtube. It isnt flagged as underage so i can watch every video even though i never gave them proof.
I still use YouTube due to not figuring out how to export my playlists in a way where I can just have a plaintext list of all the videos I want to keep track of. I'm planning on coming up with some kind of Python script to take what I get from their "takeout" method and from there, just find a programmatic way to get what I want. So basically, I allow Google to keep cookies on my system but I use a different Google account on my phone to avoid having them track me on different devices.
You can probably yt-dlp the playlist.
Yes you can. If I understand it correctly it's about keeping it updated automatically, i.e. as soon as a new video appears, it should yt-dlp itself. I'm actually looking for something similar. But I have been downloading whole channels by using yt-dlp on playlists.
Tubearchivist maybe? I haven't used it so I don't know if it's automated like that.
Personally I just have yt-dlp in a script run periodically by cron.
I use:
• Stock Android • WhatsApp app on my phone ( I have to sadly keep it installed and use it since all people I want to talk with are on it...) • Instagram (For the same reason as I use WhatsApp. Using only web version though and I use it pretty less) • Discord (For the same reason I use WhatsApp and Instagram. Although, I use Aliucord which has NoTrack enabled so basically Discord without the trackers, and I use it pretty less)
Gmail and android phone.
Heres a little list of things that matter to me personally. I'm sure others would have similar takes.
Medical Practitioners:
Privacy I'd part with: Everything, begrudgingly
Reason: it's better than dying
Job Sites:
Privacy I'd part with: gov docs, job history, financial history, identity
Reason: Having a stable income is worth giving up a little more privacy than usual. I would never give them computer usage info or biometrics, but having income to eat, have shelter, and help others is important.
Youtube:
Privacy I'd part with: usage data, contact info.
Reason: I do use frontends like invidious and grayjay to get around using the site itself, but I fear one day there won't be any working alternatives seeing how Google is cracking down so hard. Peertube is great too, but most of my favorite content creators don't use it. It's also one of my main sources of entertainment and also knowledge like cooking tutorials, building, woodworking etc.
Google Maps:
Privacy I'd part with: usage data, contact info, maybe even location if I'm traveling.
Reason: I use Organic Maps for navigation, but google maps has far superior information on local business, reviews, pictures, etc. Nothing else like it and probably never will be realistically. I use it via sandboxed browser, and to find cool places to travel to and eat.
Discord:
Privacy I'd part with: contact info (and that's it). They can pry my ID from my cold dead hands.
Reason: My friends litteraly refuse to use anything else 🤷♀️
Windows 10/Easy AntiCheat:
Privacy I'd part with: kernel level access for non-important device
Reason: Certain games are allergic to linux so I still keep windows around and begrudgingly allow kernel level anticheat. These specific games make me happy and are good for my mental health, which offers more than having one out of my many devices secured. I can just use other locked down devices if I need to do more important stuff. I would also never install Windows 11, that's a hard line for me.
Aside from these, I've essentially FOSSified all of my other apps/devices successfully.
TLDR: I would sacrifice elements of my privacy for:
Happiness/Mental Health
Friends/Family
Medical /not dying
A job
Knowledge/Entertainment
Yeah you have pretty much all the same hard lines I have, minus some unusual shit I revoked about my employment history. How do you personally feel about phone keyboards? Is being able to type coherently worth using a product that is collecting keystroke data? Like assume that you are unable to speak respectably at all without it
I kinda have a niche/weird view on keyboards; I use the default aosp keyboard firewalled for no internet access and with spell check turned off. I find it annoying when it changes what I say, and if Idk how to spell something I look it up and try to remember it for next time. I have typos here and there but mostly I don't mind and I feel it makes me more deliberate in my use of language.
There are also plenty of open source and generally privacy-respecting keyboards on FDroid like Urik keyboard, so no compromise is needed imo
Fair enough. I've been on the goosechase through different privacy focused boards for a couple years. All of them have issues with substituting words in ways that don't make sense because they're not hooked up to the privacy-nightmare that is datasets that most common products use for predictive text.
Your take still helps me gauge what privacy minded folk consider is or isn't acceptable risk though so thank you for sharing
Doorbell camera. Stock Android and Google services.
@sad_detective_man my family still uses Amazon. With smaller children and lots of needs the quick shipping is easy. If it wasn't them it would be someone else and it would be the same thing...