Since the very early 2000's I used to be a great fan of that up and coming fast and excellent search engine. The enthusiasm has waned. About two weeks ago my "smart" phone informed me that I needed to update What's App. Such updates happen all the time. But this was different. The G Play Store that handles the update demanded to sign in with a big G Account. Sign in with G Account or Register for a new one. No "skip" or "later". G Account or no go. Meaning I could not update the application that I have been using for more than a year, unless I registered at the Play Store with a G Account. Not wishing to sign in with anything, I then lost complete access to my What's App and all my conversations there. In fact, all updates were on hold until I signed up with G. You might say they were holding the use of apps and the security of my phone hostage until I signed up with them. Not the nicest guys and girls. It turns out that since March 2014 you can't install Android software on your smartphone or update your existing software without signing in or registering with a G Account. Why would that be? To sign up for a G account, G asks for my salient personal details, that is my first name, last name, birthday, gender, telephone, email address, and location. Basically, things you need to establish a new bank account. Of course you must agree to the following to be able to continue using that app that you've been using. Highlighting by yours truly:
Your Content in our Services Some of our Services allow you to upload, submit, store, send or receive content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours. When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give G (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as ...), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to G Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services. Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored. If you have a G Account, we may display your Profile name, Profile photo, and actions you take on G or on third-party applications connected to your G Account (such as ...) in our Services, including displaying in ads and other commercial contexts. We will respect the choices you make to limit sharing or visibility settings in your G Account. For example, you can choose your settings so your name and photo do not appear in an ad. You can find more information about how G uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.
Note: This is an excerpt of G's service terms. Note also that passages like "such as" are meaningless, because they don't in any way present a limitation on G's part. Did I just say "Of course you must agree..."? There's nothing "of course" about it. The fact is, it's the old Maxwell Smart "give everyone what they want for free, make everyone feel that it's friendly open source, and a good alternative to Apple, have everyone use the exceptional user friendly service, and then go in for the kill" trick. Read the newly improved Privacy Policy last version March 2014. Some excerpts, highlighting again by me:
We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). G may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your G Account.
So. G has mapped you with your device number, your phone number, your name, your birth date, your location, and your G account, all together in G's Profile of you. G has your unique identity, including the identity of your contacts, and your communications. Don't fret about non personally identifiable collection of statistics. G has graduated from being an internet analyst. Just like they do with websites to optimize their search results, they now collect all actions and content relating to you personally in order to optimize their profit from you personally. Your device is simply a means to get to you. In order to do so, G personally identifies you and follows your every move and action. The G Account "Profile" puts it all together, G uses it to profile you through continuous monitoring of device, email, Internet use, data storage, photos, video, voice recording, my location, and the contents of your complete phone backup (if you are using this ingeniously fantastic service). Your own view of that Profile is just the tip of the iceberg. The real content is all that stored data, the data analyses and the resulting detailed profiling information, about you personally, as it is performed continuously and retained into perpetuity. Forever. Talk about a deal with the devil. And its not really funny. That's not enough. Separately from these devilish conditions for a G Account which I had not yet agreed to, G still continuously pesters me about monitoring my location, my becoming a member of G+ profiling, and publishing my details, and about G acquiring permanent permission to browse ("monitor") my phone and apps all the time. I must give this company far reaching rights as they demand above if my damned smart phone is going to be of any actual use. Generally, I am not inclined to give an ICT giant these kind of rights over my personal actions, communications and achievements. In fact, I would generally not allow any known person to monitor me this closely - whatever the reason. Imagine your girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, parent or off-spring says he or she must and will constantly monitor your location, read all your mail, read all your writings, check all your internet doings - and write it all down in a long record of all your actions. They use these details to earn tons of money by enticing you into buying specific stuff that they believe you like, and presenting you with political views and choices that they believe to have figured out you like - and filtering away any other alternative choices. They also sell these details to their friends and other people, who then do the same thing. At best and at worst, you finally only get to see and hear what you want to see and hear. He or she justifies this deceptive money-making scheme by saying "it's really for your own good and "I am only trying to help you". And imagine their reply, after chiding them, is: "What's the big beef? I'm only trying to make some money, and make it easier for you to make the right decisions. And anyway, you don't have anything to hide, do you?". Then they assure you that all those millions of tiny and big details they collect about you, like that web site you looked at six years ago and also the other day (you know the one), and their profiling analysis of you will never ever fall into the wrong hands, unless they sell it, or their database is hacked by the teenager next door, or by a spammer in Jackson, Wyoming, or other criminals, or terrorists, a local or foreign government, or pilfered by a disgruntled employee, or handed over to Uncle Ben when he wants it. Nonononono. There are aptly named laws for all of this. Time to put them into action. http://www.antitrustlaws.org I sincerely regret having an Android phone. Yes, there was no other way - in the short term. But not in the medium term and certainly not the long term. I'll fix this at soonest opportunity. Fed up wit MS Windows, I already moved to Linux (Ubuntu) a couple of years ago - and it's been well worth it. And now, the dawn of a new project. Away from Android, with Microsoft and Apple already disqualified. First steps. Avoiding G and its Accounts/Mail when using Android: http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/251508/can-android-phone-run-without-google http://www.talkandroid.com/guides/beginner/install-apk-files-on-android http://www.goforandroid.com/en/apps-launcher.html http://golauncher.goforandroid.com/2014/03/go-launcher-ex-v4-16-beta1 But these don't appear to solve the underling problem. Update 2016: All alternatives have folded, remain in development or are difficult to use. The traditional Blackberry cannot increase font size for a number of apps that I use(d). The new generation Blackberry uses Android, The Ubuntu (Linux) smart phone is not ready. The Jolla Sailfish is status unknown (folded?). Mozilla Firefox Os has died. In the end, I shelved the smart phone. Back to the good old classic Communicator. 30 USD, two SIM's, 10+ days on a battery charge, and does exactly what I need it to do. chirp chirp - Beam me up Scotty. Update 2018:
Yes, finally, the EU is using Antitrust Laws to make a dent into all those bundled practices. On the phone front, two alternatives are the Fairphone, and Jolla OS, but both are not available in Asia. The good news is open source LineageOS, the continuation of defunct CyanogenMod. LineageOS is probably best in combination F-Droid, the free libre android app collection. Its installable in a whole list of phones, among others the OnePlus. Another strengthened contender is Ubuntu, now in the form of Ubuntu Touch, available for a limited number of smart phone models, such as the Galaxy Nexus. Ant then: "The main problem is how to have a privacy-minded device running non-privacy-minded apps", mentioned by open source developer advocatux on 4 Jun 2018, 15:52. Of course, those snoopers don't like operating systems that aren't made to facilitate it. For example a user that asked WhatsApp developers about when WhatsApp would be available on Ubuntu Touch appears to have been immediately banned from using WhatsApp. I haven't gotten around to trying any of these yet, but when I do, I'll make an update here.
Some friends have not exactly called me naive, but suggested to get with it. You can't stop technology. Right, but who said that technology equals having your soul stolen, squeezed and sold - for profit of a few. It makes no sense. Best avoid G A F M, as far as you can. And all that supposed benignity, just wait until these snoops start making mistakes, are hacked, get angry, get abused, or fall into the wrong hands?
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