this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Privacy

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If one chats/mails with a person using Windows, despite using secure private protocols, every message will be stored by Microsoft's Windoze Recall. Either I'm missing something but this feature seems like the most grotesque breach in online privacy/security.

What are ways to avoid this except for using obfuscated text?

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[–] Anticorp 22 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

This is a perfect example of why all of these privacy intrusion practices should be illegal. The same goes for services like Gmail. I use my own email server because I don't want Google reading my messages. But it doesn't matter, because everyone else uses Gmail, so any time I communicate with someone, Google reads my emails, despite the fact that I never agreed to their oppressive ToS. It's a blatant violation of our right to privacy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

It is the same with Google Fonts. Everyone uses them, so your browser will have to ping Google Servers to get them. Even blocking them, puts you in a smaller bin of users since most people do not block them, which can help them profile you.

I got lucky and forced everyone I keep mostly on touch away from Gmail and into either my Nextcloud instance chat and/or Signal, XMPP or Delta Chat. Which are on mobile.

Another user mentioned PGP, great in theory, but most people I know do not use it and will not touch it. They think it is too complicated, which is not. But people are lazy if they do not care about privacy. I got lucky that I made most switch.

[–] Anticorp 1 points 2 minutes ago

That's a great point about the fonts. And Google Analytics, and AdSense, and their jQuery CDN. They have a whole lot of ways to inject their tracking into every site out there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

But it doesn’t matter, because everyone else uses Gmail, so any time I communicate with someone, Google reads my emails, despite the fact that I never agreed to their oppressive ToS.

That's avoidable by PGP encrypting your emails though. But I'm sure you know that, and I'm sure you meant that getting most people to use PGP is a pipe dream.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Even if you got them using PGP somehow, there's always a risk. Apps designed to upload screenshots, share contacts or simple human errors like "hey did you hear X saying Y", etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago

Yes, but Recall is spyware by design posing as a benign feature. This kind of unethical behaviour I vehemently oppose.