Google couldn't sign me in, so I signed out, indefinitely

I saw the above warning using Vivaldi: a successful and powerful Chromium based browser. There's nothing insecure about it. I tried to fix the problem by disabling all extensions, clearing all browser data, and enabling “less secure app access” in the Google account settings. Alas. The only solution I found was reinstalling the browser. But after having done so—five times—each time when clearing the cookies, or enabling a VPN, it wouldn't let me sign in again. Then the following email found my inbox.

“Someone knows the password to your linked Google Account”… Me. It was me! Obviously I know the password to my linked Google account. Forced to change my password I was duly annoyed. I realized how dependent I was. If Google unpredictably revokes access to your account, you can't log into anything else of their services: YouTube, Gmail, Play Store, Docs, Drive, Calendar, etc. Fortunately I already did a partial Google and social media exodus. Nevertheless, even when only using YouTube and Google Play, losing access startled me. Therefore, because I don't want to be put in this position again, I completed the exodus: discarding the need for a Google account.

A quick aside, I have nothing against monopolies as a general rule. Usually they grow so big because of a significantly superior service (1). But as convenient as they may be—even though their products aren't superior anymore—if their power goes to their head and they start pulling insidious shenanigans, like using false claims to deter people from browsers other than Chrome, then I'm out.

So that's exactly what I did and I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Believe it or not but my phone is more responsive and the battery lasts longer. Although the former might be due to the factory reset, I assume the latter has to do with the decrease in background processes due to 1. removing my Google account 2. subsequently disabling Google Play Store 3. disabling everything in the settings tab called Google services & preferences. Digital minimalism, it's so incredibly satisfying. You should try it. Your life was perfectly fine before you had all that extra stuff to worry about (or pay for); I learnt that from my teacher, Diogenes of Sinope, 404 – 323 BC.

https://www.quitfacebook.org/file/google.html

#google #DeleteGoogle #quitgoogle #alternatives #thinkabout
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📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag

Google wants to connect everything you own to the internet

Surveilling older adults, connected helmets, wearables talking to doctors and other patents from Big Tech.

Hello and welcome back to the world of zany patents from Big Tech! While 2020 is still dragging on (I know it's 2021, but you can't tell me 2020 is over until I can go anywhere other than the grocery store), at least there are still great new patents to uncover. And there's some fascinating ones this week, including Facebook wanting to make clothes like real in games, Microsoft trying to make sports more inclusive and Google wanting to make it easier to spy on your parents. If that's something you want to do.

And remember: The big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future.

⚠️ Alphabet - Surveilling older adults

⚠️ Making analog products digital

⚠️ Keeping your doctor in the loop

⚠️ Amazon - Autonomous avoiding

⚠️ Apple - Detecting traffic wardens

⚠️ Facebook - Simulating clothing

⚠️ Microsoft - An automatic travel diary

⚠️ Bringing sports to visually-impaired people

⚠️ Icebreakers on social media

https://www.protocol.com/google-patents-internet-everything

#google #DeleteGoogle #microsoft #amazon #DeleteAmazon #patents #bigtech #surveillance #thinkabout

Never Google (your symptoms) 😂

#google #DeleteGoogle #video

This browser extension shows what the Internet would look like without Big Tech

A web without Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or Amazon

The Economic Security Project is trying to make a point about big tech monopolies by releasing a browser plugin that will block any sites that reach out to IP addresses owned by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or Amazon. The extension is called Big Tech Detective, and after using the internet with it for a day (or, more accurately, trying and failing to use), I’d say it drives home the point that it’s almost impossible to avoid these companies on the modern web, even if you try.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/24/22297686/browser-extension-blocks-sites-using-google-facebook-microsoft-amazon

💡 https://bigtechdetective.net/

#DeleteGoogle #delete #microsoft #amazon #browser #plugin #extension #tool
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_FR
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Google says once third-party cookies are toast, Chrome won't help ad networks track individuals around the web

Notes an 'erosion of trust' – gee, wonder who could be responsible for that...

Google says it will not come up with new ways to track individual netizens as they browse the web once Chrome phases out third-party cookies, commonly used for loosely observing people's online activities.

In effect, the browser will not provide ad networks – and Google runs a very large one – alternative identifiers that can be used to follow individuals around the web, though it's not clear exactly how this will impact Google, which already has a variety of ways to shadow internet users.

Early last year, Google announced a plan to kill off third-party cookies, often used to associate you with the websites you visit so that adverts tailored to your interests can be shown on pages. Google made the move after other major browser makers decided to block third-party cookies by default because the little scraps of data can be abused to subvert privacy, and after regulators made it clear they had concerns about ad tech giants Google and Facebook.

Google aims to replace third-party cookies with its Privacy Sandbox, an umbrella term for a set of proposals from Google and other ad tech firms, to allow behavioral ad targeting to continue without individualized tracking identifiers.

Instead, the ad goliath intends to target broad groups of netizens defined by a common interest – eg, jazz fans – through a system called FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), and at narrower groups defined by past interest-based interaction, through a scheme called FLEDGE (First "Locally-Executed Decision over Groups.")

Google plans to start testing FLoC-based cohorts publicly via origin trials in next month's release of Chrome and to make testing available for advertisers in Q2.

The idea has alarmed the ad industry, which isn't keen to give up the ability to track people and has proposed alternatives like a new identifier based on data like email addresses, normally classified as personal information.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/google_internet_tracking_pledge/

#google #DeleteGoogle #internet #tracking #advertising #cookies #chrome #browser #thinkabout #why
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Google advised mental health care when workers complained about racism and sexism

"I can think of 10 people that I know of in the last year that have gone on mental health leave because of the way they were treated," said one employee.

Benjamin Cruz, a former instructional designer in Google’s Cloud division, was caught off guard when a colleague told them that their skin was much darker than she expected.

Cruz, who is Mexican American and prefers to be identified by the pronouns they/them, reported the incident to human resources in 2019 where personnel told them they should “assume good intent,” Cruz recalled in an interview. Unsatisfied, Cruz asked human resources to look deeper into the incident, and an HR official said an investigation into the matter had been closed, Cruz said.

So, Cruz sought help from human resources again. The solution? Urge Cruz to take medical leave and tend to their mental health before moving to a new role in the company. Cruz went on medical leave, and hoped to take the company up on its offer for a new position, they said. But Cruz was turned down from every role they applied for, so they were forced to quit.

“After I made that complaint, my work started getting pushed out from under me, but my team acted like everything was fine. I wanted to find help,” Cruz said. “When the medical leave was recommended to me, it was like an automatic process.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-advised-mental-health-care-when-workers-complained-about-racism-n1259728

#google #DeleteGoogle #thinkabout #why

Google and Facebook Killed Free

Is the mania for subscriptions a choice, or the only path in an ad system dominated by giants?

We’re constantly being nudged to pay to subscribe.

There are all those paid streaming video and music services. News organizations, including The New York Times, want subscribers. Your favorite dating site, email service or messaging app might also ask you to pay for stuff you once got free. Paid subscriptions are nothing new, but increasingly they seem to be the future of everything.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/technology/google-and-facebook-killed-free.html

#subscriptions #google #facebook #DeleteFacebook #DeleteGoogle #thinkabout #why
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_FR
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After months of stalling, Google finally revealed how much personal data they collect in Chrome and the Google app. No wonder they wanted to hide it.

Spying on users has nothing to do with building a great web browser or search engine. We would know (our app is both in one).

https://nitter.nixnet.services/DuckDuckGo/status/1371509053613084679

#duckduckgo #google #DeleteGoogle #personal #data #yourdata
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This is what happens when ICE asks Google for your user information

You’re scrolling through your Gmail inbox and see an email with a strange subject line: A string of numbers followed by “Notification from Google.”

It may seem like a phishing scam or an update to Gmail’s terms of service. But it could be the only chance you’ll have to stop Google from sharing your personal information with authorities.

Tech companies, which have treasure troves of personal information, have become natural targets for law enforcement and government requests. The industry’s biggest names, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, receive data requests — from subpoenas to National Security Letters — to assist in, among other efforts, criminal and non-criminal investigations as well as lawsuits.

An email like this one is a rare chance for users to discover when government agencies are seeking their data.

In Google’s case, the company typically lets users know which agency is seeking their information.

In one email The Times reviewed, Google notified the recipient that the company received a request from the Department of Homeland Security to turn over information related to their Google account. (The recipient shared the email on the condition of anonymity due to concern about immigration enforcement). That account may be attached to Gmail, YouTube, Google Photos, Google Pay, Google Calendar and other services and apps.

The email, sent from Google’s Legal Investigations Support team, notified the recipient that Google may hand over personal information to DHS unless it receives within seven days a copy of a court-stamped motion to quash the request.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-03-24/federal-agencies-subpoena-google-personal-information

#ice #federal #agencies #google #DeleteGoogle #personal #data #information #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_FR
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DNS over TLS Lets Google Serve You More Ads

Like a lot of people, I hate advertisements. In my quest to remove ads as much as possible, I've installed an ad blocker in my browser. To go further, I've installed Pi-Hole to block ads for all devices on my home network. I've even setup firewall rules to re-route all DNS traffic through Pi-Hole. This setup seemed to work pretty well until I noticed I was still seeing ads in an app on my Android phone.

Sometime in the last couple of years Google added a Private DNS feature to Android and enabled it by default. Private DNS is really DNS over TLS (DoT), which is supposed to be a privacy feature that encrypts your DNS so your network operators can't snoop on what sites you're browsing. It sounds nice in theory, but when I'm at home, I am the network operator, and DoT has a side-effect of making my apps and devices ignore my carefully planned DNS settings, and bypass my (actually privacy enhancing) Pi-Hole ad blocker. The (surely coincidental) outcome is that Google can freely serve ads to my Android device.

You can disable the Private DNS feature in Android (for now). The bad news is that Firefox is enabling DNS over HTTPS (DoH), which is a similar system, with similar drawbacks. Now, you have to change settings not only on each device's operating system, but you might have to individually configure every app to disable DoT/DoH. The next thing I'm going to try is blocking all traffic to public DoT/DoH servers at my firewall.

💡 Update 2021-03-22:
I learned that Firefox supports a temporary workaround for disabling DoH. You can setup Pi-Hole to point the "canary domain" use-application-dns.net to any IP address to cause Firefox to use normal DNS.

https://ericlathrop.com/2021/03/dns-over-tls-lets-google-serve-you-more-ads/

#private #dns #tls #google #DeleteGoogle #advertising #smartphones #workaround
📡 @nogoolag @blackbox_archiv

Use the DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

Google has created a new tracking method called FLoC, put it in Chrome, and automatically turned it on for millions of users.

💡 FLoC is bad for privacy: It puts you in a group based on your browsing history, and any website can get that group FLoC ID to target and fingerprint you.

You can use the DuckDuckGo Chrome extension (pending Chrome Web Store's approval of our update) to block FLoC's tracking, which is an enhancement to its tracker blocking and directly in line with the extension's single purpose of protecting your privacy holistically as you use Chrome.

DuckDuckGo Search (via our website duckduckgo.com) is now also configured to opt-out of FLoC, regardless if you use our extension or app.

https://spreadprivacy.com/block-floc-with-duckduckgo/

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22376110/duckduckgo-privacy-floc-block-chrome-extension-advertising-tech

#ddg #DuckDuckGo #google #FLoC #chrome #browser #ad #targeting #tracking #cookies #DeleteGoogle
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Alphabet, Stop Protecting Harassers

Alphabet workers deserve the right to work in an environment free from their abusers.

Alphabet does not provide a safe environment for those who face harassment in the workplace. Even when HR confirms harassment, no action is taken to make the reporter safe. For example, Emi Nietfeld shared in the New York Times, “My harasser still sat next to me. My manager told me H.R. wouldn’t even make him change his desk, let alone work from home or go on leave.”
This is a long pattern where Alphabet protects the harasser instead of protecting the person harmed by the harassment. The person who reports harassment is forced to bear the burden, usually leaving Alphabet while their harasser stays or is rewarded for their behavior.

This is not news to many people at Alphabet:

https://stopprotectingharassers.medium.com/alphabet-stop-protecting-harassers-d32a17aa5762

#google #DeleteGoogle #alphabet #harassers #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/8468

#brave #browser #floc #chromium #chrome #google #DeleteGoogle
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Google's short-lived data-advantage

There's a lot of ways to think about the movement to tame Big Tech, but one of the more useful divisions to explore is the "Night of the Comet" people versus the "Don't Believe the Criti-Hype" people.

This is a division over the value of the data that Google, Facebook and other large tech firms have amassed over the years – data on their users, sure, but also data on the advertisers and publishers they serve with their ad-tech platforms.

Big Tech companies and their investors are really bullish on the value of this commercial data-advantage: they say that spying on us – the users – lets them manipulate our opinions and activities so that we buy or believe the things their advertisers pay them to push.

More quietly, their investors believe that the data-advantage extends to publishers and advertisers, a deep storehouse of data that makes it effectively impossible for anyone else to do the precision targeted that Big Tech manages, which is why they have such fat margins.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/11/halflife/#minatory-legend

#google #DeleteGoogle #facebook #DeleteFacebook #BigData #BigTech #AdTech #thinkabout #comment
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Google gamed its ad auction system to favor its own ads, generated $213 million

Google used a secret program called "Bernanke" that used historical bidding data to give its ad-buying system a major advantage over its rivals, an antitrust lawsuit filing claims, a program that earned the company hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Google is in the process of dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from a group of state attorneys general, about its advertising technology and ad industry dominance. In a response to the lawsuit filed by Google in early April, the search company accidentally let slip of some of its behind-the-scenes work.

In the initial version of the filing, seen by the Wall Street Journal, Google failed to properly redact some sections, revealing the secretive business elements. A federal judge allowed Google to refile the properly-redacted version under seal.

The unredacted elements refers to a program called "Project Bernanke," a system that Google allegedly kept secret from publishers and other rivals. Bernanke was also viewed as an antitrust issue by the states in the lawsuit, due to how it operated.

The antitrust lawsuit centers around how Google's ownership of a platform for selling online advertising, as well as its position as an ad buyer for its own properties, was a problem. By being both an owner and a client, Google was thought to be able to game the system due to having access to data that ad buyers wouldn't necessarily receive.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/04/11/google-bernanke-revealed-in-ad-business-antitrust-lawsuit-error

#google #DeleteGoogle #AdTech #AdBusiness #lawsuit #antitrust #bernanke
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Google to Start Censoring Telegram

Fake news or justifiable warning? You be the judge.

I saw a message today stating the “Google Play Store is now censoring certain pages on Telegram if you downloaded the app through them.” The message suggested a simple workaround to download the app directly from telegram.org/android.

👉🏼 Here’s the message in its entirety:

"Google Play Store is now censoring certain pages on Telegram if you downloaded the app through them.

To get around this simply download the Android app directly from Telegram themselves. Less censorship and more updates.

Before you delete the Google play store Telegram app, install the new one directly from Telegram which will send you a security code to your Telegram messages. Once you have the code from the old app and you enter it into the new one, you can then delete the Google play store version."

Having seen videos I consider important disappearing from YouTube recently I wouldn’t put it past Google to dupe the chattle into downloading a doctored version of Telegram in order to protect people stamp out free speech in order to suppress the fast-rising global freedom movement organizing on Telegram.

Whether or not the message I shared above was true or false is less important to me than maintaining free speech. And so I’d like to share a few resources I’ve learned about from being on Telegram which can help you do just that:

https://habd.as/post/google-start-censor-telegram/

#BigTech #censorship #dystopia #freedom #google #DeleteGoogle #youtube #telegram #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Developers, it’s time for you to choose a side - Clean up the web!

Will you help rid the web of privacy-invading tracking or be complicit in it?

🚮 Remove third-party scripts from Google, Facebook, etc.
This includes Google Analytics (one of the most prevalent trackers in the world), YouTube videos, Facebook login widgets, etc.

These scripts enable people farmers like Google and Facebook to track people across the web as they go from site to site. If you embed them in your site, you’re complicit in enabling this tracking.

And yes, that absolutely includes fucking Google AMP.

https://cleanuptheweb.org/

👉🏼 Read as well: Nobody is flying to join Google’s FLoC - #Brave, #Vivaldi, #Edge, and #Mozilla are all out

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-tech-privacy-browsers-brave-vivaldi-edge-mozilla-chrome-safari

#cleanuptheweb #floc #google #DeleteGoogle #facebook #DeleteFacebook #tracking #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Forced unemployment and second-class status: The life of Google's data center contractors

Contractors love the good pay and engaging work in Google's data centers. They resent that Google and its staffing firm, Modis Engineering, make them quit every two years.

Shannon Wait felt a muscle pull in her shoulder as she knelt to lug a 50-pound battery into its rack, but she ignored the pain and kept going. She had 20 batteries to replace in the cavernous, 85-degree warehouse that day.

Hauling batteries is a major part of the job for Wait and hundreds of other workers like her at Google's data centers. They'd tried switching to automated machines during her two years working in the Berkeley County, South Carolina facility, but that stopped after only a few weeks when one of the machines pinned a co-worker to a wall.

Despite the heavy lifting, many of the workers in Google's 14 U.S. data centers at least start out enjoying the work. It's a tech job for people with no tech experience. It pays relatively well ($15 per hour for most contract workers). And while it's physically demanding, it's nothing like working at an Amazon fulfillment center or the local Walmart.

But Wait and other workers like her who keep the data centers running are not actually Google employees. While as many as half the workers in some data centers actually work for Google, make Google salaries and get all those famous Google perks, the other half don't. For data center contractors specifically, that difference can extend beyond second-tier social status to job insecurity and forced unemployment.

Protocol spoke with four contract and full-time Google employees in three of the 14 U.S. locations for this story, all of whom were granted anonymity for fear of losing their jobs (except for Wait, whose data center contract recently ended).

https://www.protocol.com/google-contractors-forced-unemployment

#google #DeleteGoogle #data #center #contractors #unemployment #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Google Promised Its Contact Tracing App Was Completely Private—But It Wasn’t

Researchers say hundreds of preinstalled apps can access a log found on Android devices where sensitive contact tracing information is stored.

When Google and Apple introduced their COVID-19 contact tracing framework in April 2020, the companies aimed to reassure people worried about sharing private health information with major corporations.

Google and Apple provided assurances that the data generated through the apps—people’s movements, who they might have come in contact with, and whether they reported testing positive for COVID-19—would be anonymized and would never be shared with anyone other than public health agencies.

“Our goal is to empower [public health agencies] with another tool to help combat the virus while protecting user privacy,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a tweet last May, when the framework became publicly available.

Apple CEO Tim Cook provided similar assurances.

Since then, millions of people have downloaded contact tracing apps developed through Apple’s and Google’s framework: The U.K.’s National Health Services’ app has at least 16 million users, while Canada’s Digital Service COVID Alert app boasted more than six million downloads in January, and Virginia’s Department of Health noted more than two million residents were using its COVIDWISE app.

California governor Gavin Newsom endorsed his state’s version of the app, calling it “100% private & secure” in a tweet last December.

But The Markup has learned that not only does the Android version of the contact tracing tool contain a privacy flaw, but when researchers from the privacy analysis firm AppCensus alerted Google to the problem back in February of this year, Google failed to change it. AppCensus was testing the system as part of a contract with the Department of Homeland Security. The company found no similar issues with the iPhone version of the framework.

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/04/27/google-promised-its-contact-tracing-app-was-completely-private-but-it-wasnt

#google #DeleteGoogle #contact #tracing #app #privacy
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

This morning, I was locked out of my Google account

I chatted with Google support to see if they could help me. This is a genuine live chat with Google support:

https://nitter.pussthecat.org/RaveofRavendale/status/1389507928269393921/

#google #DeleteGoogle
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv