I know you pals know much more than me about privacy. I have these questions to you all:

- can google still know trends about me if I only use google docs and google drive to store files I share with other people and rarely update it? Let’s say I don’t use google search or any other google service ON REGULAR BASIS
- does chromium actually works as the measure to get rid of google tracking if I don’t want to use Firefox?
- how safe is apple (miss me with that Apple hate)? How bad is the fact that I let apple store my regularly updated health information and I use iPhone?

I’m not talking about triple letters here (FBI, CIA, etc), I’m only talking about collecting and selling data across companies

Tbh I'm not a master on there privacy policy now i do know allot about PRISM but that is from one of those 3 letter words i also know chromium software project from Google (and i have an extreme distrust of google because of PRISM) if you seek online security i would recommend brave browser (tho I'm pretty sure its based off of Firefox) but it removes all trackers from websites i would also recommend the browser extension https everywhere and no script if your looking for hardcore privacy TOR or i2p would be your best bet but its mostly about how much do you reveal about yourself when you use these services do you use your real name, phone number address do you use location services etc do you use a vpn (tho vpn providers can still track you) stuff like that can make a difference in online anonymity i hope this helps you :)

@Root
Reminder to respond

I have so much to do this morning, and got distracted by theidiot. theabbie*.

google can track you even if you dont use google products. google will put a cookie in your web browser to uniquely identify you, so they know every website you go to that has google ads, google analytics, google maps, fire base and any other google product you can think of. they can also scan your google docs and drive files to determine info about you.

chromium can help get rid of google's tracking when configured properly. however, chromium is arguably insecure. about 73% of the bugs reported and fixed by the chromium team as of a few weeks ago. firefox is basically immune to these types of bugs because it's written in rust.

apple is very closed, so it's hard to know. they offer the option to opt out of targeted mobile ads from their service. it's likely they don't collect too much data, as they don't really profit off it too much, and if it becomes public they do collect data it can only hurt them. each year, google pays $3b to make it the default search on iphone.

@calmyourtities Well jeez, now I don’t need to respond at all.

@Root hey, you saved me a lot of time from responding to theabbie's rant

- Yes, Tracking cookies + fingerprinting.
- If you use addons which prevent tracking, sure, to the extend you want to go. It doesn't have built-in proprietary Google libraries like Chrome does.
- It's impossible to say since the software is proprietary as duck which is already a huge red flag for me. We know that its integrated within the PRISM mass surveillance network so just assume the US knows everything about your health! I don't think they'd sell it but who knows..

@calmyourtities Brave is based on Chromium as well. I solely wouldn't use it since the founder is known to be an extreme homophobe but also other stuff happened like the referral scandal (urls being automatically redirected to the referral versions with Brave's own referral codes). But also, why'd I use another Chromium based browser if I just could use Chromium...?

(@uyouthe surprised you didn't mention me 😅)

@linuxxx sorry, this was all inspired by what Root answered to theidiot.

How exactly google can know trends about me though if I use Firefox and block all ads and trackers? Let’s say I abandon google products.

There are companies like Soverin and Bitearden and they claim they don’t sell data. I know there is no way to know for sure, but do you personally trust them? If you don’t, what email service can you recommend? (I know that keepass is better than bitwarden)

@uyouthe For a big extend you can actually verify. That's the beauty with open source software (Bitwarden has an entirely open source app for example).

And as for the Google tracking, I think they also do this through the JavaScript stuff which runs their web based word editors etc

@linuxxx bitwarden is open source but if I don’t host them and use their servers instead, how do I know they never sell my data? What about soverin mail?

Google word processor is a google product. How can they track me if I don’t use google docs?

Thank for your answers!

@uyouthe Yeah but you could verify how the applications work and that way, if you can see that everything is encrypted (what should be encrypted) the way they claim, they could technically sell your data but without your key, which they don't have, it's completely worthless for any other party (if you use a strong enough password/passphrase)

And I'm not exactly sure as I don't know entirely how googles products work but fingerprinting and content scanning would be a good way!

No problem, feel free to ask!

@linuxxx 😅 yes that's true, i kinda of just started going into why chromiums bad and i forgot to mention the browser in question is based on it