Of course it does. Google is a personal information farming company, who uses that information to help sell targeted advertisements. They are not an email company, or a maps company, or a search engine, or a phone OS maker. The sooner more people recognize this, and the ramifications of it, the better off we'll all be.
There should be a law to enforce giving and accepting 'no' as an answer. I'm seeing "not now" everywhere nowadays, and it started to make my blool boil.
I can and I am already using all sorts of blockers at different level that even if I said yes at some point the data isn't going anywhere, but enough is enough, it shouldn't be an arms race to protect very basic privacy or simply having dignity in front of my computer or cellphone.
Rossmann calls it the "rapist mentality" and as vulgar as it sounds, I have to agree.
Do you want to hand over your data now, or later? Okay, maybe you'll "change your mind" and "consent" tomorrow when you're focused on something else... Aha! After 185 days of saying no, your finger slipped and accidentally pressed "Yes", we have informed consent!
Seems apt though groomer seems even more apt, slowly with persistence grooming a population to eventually consent. Rapists are more violent like an interstitial that denies access unless you acquiesce to its demands. Like a Hollywood couch.
I get a fucking SMS from Vodafone every day reminding me to complete some fucking survey. I even sent STOP back to the automated phone number they use, as it's specified if I don't wanna receive such messages anymore and I still receive them.
At least with Google you're using it for free. I'm f*ink paying for that Vodafone service and they still consider appropriate to spam me incessantly.
I could report the fuckers to https://anpc.ro/ but it's too much trouble on my side following up and they probably know it.
I can't read Romanian, but many years ago I reported a pizza restaurant to the British equivalent for a similar problem — I was being sent texts every day, and STOP and replying hadn't stopped the messages.
They wrote to the restaurant, the texts stopped, and I had a follow-up email from the data protection agency.
An ombudsman is a great route for any telco-related complaints, during my time at least they were flagged with the same (or higher) priority than vip-effecting issues.
If you use Android, an interesting way Google may be collecting your location data - even if you didn't accept any TOS - is SUPL (Secure User Plane Location). It sends cell tower info to a Google server to improve GPS fix times, but many implementations needlesly include PII like the SIM card IMSI number. It can be disabled in settings>location, but it's enabled by default even in GrapheneOS. In my experience it doesn't affect the GPS fix times significantly.
Another one, the play store says I must continue setting up my account every time I use it. It does this to ask for my payment details, but I can skip it, so it's not required. Yet it will ask again next time.
I get the same thing. It’s not the browser-setting which I also have set to always deny, but a modal dialog in the middle of the results page that I have to manually click deny (I think it’s actually “not now” but I stopped paying attention a while ago).
Replace your launcher with one that isn't tied so explicitely into Google (I use Rocket launcher), then replace Chrome as your default browser (I use Firefox). Finally in your new default browser set your default search engine to something besides Google (I run my own instance of SearXNG) .
They have recently updated their login page. Now instead of a single TAB to get from the user name field to the password field you need something like five key presses to get to the enter password page.
Yes, I should not use that surveillance company in the first place. Or in their opinion never log out, not use cookie auto delete, Firefox account containers etc.
Unfortunately I try to balance between the two standpoints.
I don't understand your description of the problem, it doesn't match how the old login page works at all.
1. The username and password fields have not been on the same page for like, 15 years. You havne't been able to get from one field to the other with just tab for ever.
2. If you mean the number of tabs needed to go from the username field to the "next" button, on the old login page it's still three tab presses
3. The obvious way to get from the username entry page to the password page is to just press enter while focus is on the username field. Doesn't that work with the new login page?
I must admit I have not really studied the differences. Not sure whether I could get the old login page back to do so. Probably not permanently, so not worth my time.
The new page just felt much heavier and slower, so I looked what I need to do to the stupid next button. For my UI I want: If it's not broken, don't touch it. Marketing and graphical designers go elsewhere. And there was nothing broken for me with the old UI. (Those with screen readers might have more substantial insights in one direction or the opposite, I don't know)
Login and password should always be on the same page and require only one <TAB>... How hard is that
My bank fucked that up too, long ago... I even complained about it... I think software engineers fuck stuff up on purpose for job security and/or for the sake of staying busy. Yet I can't find a job because I dont have an IT degree
Ideally, you would just require an extremly complex password and no user ID though... Something like UUIDs
Looks like they measure usability of features: the more often a feature is used, the more useful it is. Coincidentally the more they nag the user about a feature, the more often the feature is used, i.e. the feature becomes more useful. Welcome to attention economy.
Readit News
“oh what can you do”
“all phones are surveillance devices and everyone knows that”
good thing they let you have third-party app stores in the deal, otherwise people might get upset!
I can and I am already using all sorts of blockers at different level that even if I said yes at some point the data isn't going anywhere, but enough is enough, it shouldn't be an arms race to protect very basic privacy or simply having dignity in front of my computer or cellphone.
Do you want to hand over your data now, or later? Okay, maybe you'll "change your mind" and "consent" tomorrow when you're focused on something else... Aha! After 185 days of saying no, your finger slipped and accidentally pressed "Yes", we have informed consent!
With no they can’t do that.
I get a fucking SMS from Vodafone every day reminding me to complete some fucking survey. I even sent STOP back to the automated phone number they use, as it's specified if I don't wanna receive such messages anymore and I still receive them.
At least with Google you're using it for free. I'm f*ink paying for that Vodafone service and they still consider appropriate to spam me incessantly.
I could report the fuckers to https://anpc.ro/ but it's too much trouble on my side following up and they probably know it.
They wrote to the restaurant, the texts stopped, and I had a follow-up email from the data protection agency.
Ah ah ah!
They have recently updated their login page. Now instead of a single TAB to get from the user name field to the password field you need something like five key presses to get to the enter password page.
Yes, I should not use that surveillance company in the first place. Or in their opinion never log out, not use cookie auto delete, Firefox account containers etc.
Unfortunately I try to balance between the two standpoints.
1. The username and password fields have not been on the same page for like, 15 years. You havne't been able to get from one field to the other with just tab for ever.
2. If you mean the number of tabs needed to go from the username field to the "next" button, on the old login page it's still three tab presses
3. The obvious way to get from the username entry page to the password page is to just press enter while focus is on the username field. Doesn't that work with the new login page?
The new page just felt much heavier and slower, so I looked what I need to do to the stupid next button. For my UI I want: If it's not broken, don't touch it. Marketing and graphical designers go elsewhere. And there was nothing broken for me with the old UI. (Those with screen readers might have more substantial insights in one direction or the opposite, I don't know)
My bank fucked that up too, long ago... I even complained about it... I think software engineers fuck stuff up on purpose for job security and/or for the sake of staying busy. Yet I can't find a job because I dont have an IT degree
Ideally, you would just require an extremly complex password and no user ID though... Something like UUIDs