Tag: data privacy

The companies that know most about you – which ones do you trust?

Clario’s summary on the types of personal data collected by various companies is a sobering / fun (depending on which side of the aisle are you on) article. Continue reading The companies that know most about you – which ones do you trust?

Nextcloud conf 2020.

After god-knows-how-long, last week I finally attended a conference. (I guess the last one was MWC and the Digital Dutch, which are more a trade shows then conferences… and before them, some Hungarian mobile related ones and Mozilla Summit back in the early 2010’s… So it was long ago.)

Anyhow, so I was at a conference, out of my own will — it was the Nextcloud Conference 2020 in Berlin, or in my case, my desk with my cat: Continue reading Nextcloud conf 2020.

Side note on unclouding.

On the back of my unclouding drive, and the previous post: in case you want to understand a bit better the “why” for all of this, I strongly suggest hearing what DuckDucGo’s Gabe Winberg has to say on the matter, to Kara Swisher’s questioning:

DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg on how Congress (and you) can fix online privacy

There is a part in the second half of the interview (starting around 00:34:45), where discussion starts on alternatives. I’m not going to deeplink to 00:34:45; you should listen to the first 34:44 (the problem) to be interested in the solution. But it’s good to listen to the discussion on the solution: there are good privacy-aware solutions to almost any of the cloud apps (Youtube was mentioned as one distinct example where there isn’t), and Gabe makes a good job explaining how, with minimal extra effort, you can find these and start using them.

The Trusted Partners of Tumblr; a fairy tale.

Not being a Tumblr user sort of has its benefits. One is that, well, you’re not using Tumblr. The other one is you never accepted their cookie and tracking policy and can have a beautiful view into not only how ad tracking works, but a bit into dark patterns, and how companies, that really don’t want to, reluctantly comply with the GDPR.

Let’s look at the particular example of Tumblr! I’ll be honest, this is the first time since (presumably; see also: GDPR) last May that I actually dug into what they want you to accept without thinking. Luckily Tumblr is a site that you don’t really have to see (especially since, you know, the purge… would say a lot of other guys), so whenever I was presented with their full screen consent request by accidentally clicking a link I just closed the tab. But now I had some free time to read, and I went down the rabbit hole. Continue reading The Trusted Partners of Tumblr; a fairy tale.

On Google’s $5b EU fine.

I know I’m a weirdo: I run my own NextCloud, I use Mastodon and Pixelfed but not Facebook, I run Linux (Mint flavoured) on my notebook, and I have UK English as my default spellcheck language (see? “flavoured”). But maybe you’ll still agree with me when I say the EU antitrust decision against Google (which they just appealed while also complying) is an important milestone.

Because yes, now Samsung can start developing their own search, or Amazon can put Play store and Google Maps on their Fire devices… but there’s more, and again, I know I’m a weirdo, but bear with me. Continue reading On Google’s $5b EU fine.

Take the power (of my data) back.

So I have been rocking my own Nextcloud instance for a while.

I could say inspired by this tweet…

…but that wouldn’t be true, as I installed it some time before that, and have tested/piloted it by then.

It’s a Nextcloud on one of my servers. It works. I like it. Continue reading Take the power (of my data) back.