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Google photos on ios is literally a hostage situation. Remove key functionalities like copying an image or editing an image unless you give them full unrestricted access to your entire photo library. (The holy grail of surveillance capitalism data). Data extortion masquerading as a service.
People need to get their heads out of the idea that privacy is any kind of rule. It isn’t. It’s an exception. Unless you personally use a private dns server, unless you personally use a VPN, encrypt your files, use custom roms and open software for interacting with the internet, then you should assume that you’re just an open book.
Careful, tho. You get hardcore into privacy and security and you’ll basically have a side-gig of constantly checking for leaks and reading product reviews for “linux support”.
At this point, any time I get downvotes for privacy and security discussions, I’m just going to chock it up to how the willfully ignorant cope with reality.
Google and Apple, every company and government that can, spies on you. Telling them no is not taken seriously. This isn’t some kind of slightly unbelievable truth, it’s just the way shit is, and has been for over a decade. If you’re pissed off about it, do some work on yourself. You’re a hypocrite if you’re participating in foss, vpn and self governance discussions but scoff at folks like me like we’re wearing tinfoil hats. You leave a breadcrumb trail everywhere you go. Believe it or don’t.
I’m with you. I’ve noticed that folks on Lemmy get very upset when you try to explain that, broadly speaking, digital privacy is hardly more than theater. Everything you do online is being fingerprinted, watched, cataloged, organized, and tied back to you and the devices you use either directly or indirectly. There are steps you can take to reduce this exposure, which you pointed out, but nothing that fully negates it.
This is because we do not have strong enough laws protecting digital privacy, there are either no penalties or weak penalties for companies violating privacy - even in the most egregious ways - and heaps of money to be made from engaging in such violations.
The majority of the populace just doesn’t seem to care, and this can only change when we’ve achieved widespread awareness and public support.
I’ll go one further. If you’re on this site and you’re not using a VPN, either your own or as a customer of Mullvad or something, that you van verify, hides your dns entries and doesn’t leak, then you’re a hypocrite, lazy or willfully ignorant.
Like, why are all of you here? If spyware wasn’t an issue, go back to Reddit. You can roll your eyes with the rest of the cattle. Adguard home doesn’t exist “for funsies”. We don’t contribute our lives to this shit on a whim. This is cybersecurity, it exists. God, like climate deniers…