Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

On Tue, 19 Feb 2025, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

On Mon, 17 Feb 2025, Dave Yeo wrote:

It's got pretty hard to avoid some of these businesses. Google, Facebook,
Microsoft are examples of companies that are very hard to avoid.

>
? Facebook is super easy to avoid. Just don't use it. They make nothing of
value.

>
Indeed, so long as you block all FB's scripts and images on
otherwise unrelated websites. Although I don't tend to make close
friends so I don't need to worry about controlling their FB usage.

I use privacy badger to block all FB scripts on sites.

If you have a job at a global mega-corp I agree, M$ and Google are
difficult to avoid. =(
>
In private you can do just fine to avoid them as well.

>
No, Google can track you via their Captchas, which I guess even
many NoScript users allow by default because the three page reloads
to let them through when a website requires it is a real pain in
the neck.

Oh, I simply don't use web sites where I get captchas. Then of course, we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'd rather block 99%, than not being able to block at all.

Quite mysteriously, all sorts of otherwise respectable open-source
software developers are happy to use GitHub even though it's owned
by M$. So even having ditched their software long ago, M$ are now
very hard to avoid online if, ironically, you want to use, and
especially work on, open-source software. I find that truely
unfathomable, but others barely seem to see my problem with it.

This is a great mystery to me! I have no clue how so many open source users can be so clueless! =( They also loooooove slck and discord. That's revolting! IRC works percectly fine, and if you need blinken lights, you can just add some of the numerous web IRC programs out there, or at least use matrix or xmpp.
Then there is codeberg, sourcehut, gitlab even, but ohhhh no, they loooove M$. Add to that visual code or what ever it is, which is M$ poison to infiltrate linux laptops.
I think the reason must be that many open source users are young and naive and do not remembre how M$ tried to close down linux decades ago.
When I teach, I make it a point to bring up these things. Sadly the students then go on to work, and get stuck in github and various proprietary tools. But such is life! We must continue to fight the good fight. =)