News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by gobip on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @05:51AM (#30175982)
What do you use in replacement for GMail?
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by tazjin on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @07:59AM (#30176869)
I recently moved to Yandex 360. We previously had DNS, mail etc. on Google until an outage[0] occured. The outage was the classical story of "billing error in related Play Store (!) account nuked entire GCP setup", which diminished trust enough that I decided to move everything away from Google. I'm a Xoogler, but even then getting through to the right support channels is hard.

Yandex services are pretty nice (they have an equivalent to most Google things), but even more important for me is that - even on the lowest plan - you can talk to a real human in support within minutes, 24/7.

[0]: https://b.tvl.fyi/issues/155

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by janoc on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:33AM (#30177236)
Uhm, sorry but Yandex of all things? Given that this is a Russian company with Kremlin having a "golden veto" power in?

No, thanks. Google may be evil but moving my data from Google to the Russian government spooks is really not a solution.

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by tazjin on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:39AM (#30177318)
Yeah. I live in Russia and I trust this government more than e.g. the American one. It's always a matter of perspective.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by enriquto on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:50AM (#30177435)
I don't get this point of view. If you live in Russia, of all places, you'd likely want to avoid Yandex. On the other hand, for people from non-Russian countries Yandex is probably a better and safer choice than Google.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by CWuestefeld on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:33AM (#30178066)
I made this same point awhile back to some colleagues, about my AmazFit smart watch. They were aghast that I'd have a Chinese product like that, given the possibility/likelihood of Chinese surveillance.

But, although China could monitor me, why would they care about some random guy out of 300 million Americans? And even if they cared, what could they do that might actually affect my life?

In contrast, we know that many US companies have an open wire to American law enforcement and surveillance agencies. And these people do have an interest in monitoring me (even if I'm not doing anything wrong), and they do have the power to harm me.

China might be eviller in many respects, but the products of a Chinese company are harmless to me, especially in comparison to domestic ones.

(And I also use Kaspersky for security on my home computers.)

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by tazjin on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:23AM (#30177929)
I don't really understand your point.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by ori_b on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:52AM (#30178324)
The bureaucrats and agents don't cooperate. Your surveillance data ends up locked on the drives of agencies with no power to affect your life.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by vertis on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @10:47AM (#30179175)
I don't know about Russia, but this is not really an accurate perception. US laws tend to protect US Citizens and residents. Even citizens of friendly countries like Australia don't have protection.

In some ways it's worse because Australia is five-eyes, so they can do a, I'll spy on your citizens you spy on mine kind of thing (which we know from Snowden was exactly what they were doing)[1][2].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jun/10/nsa-offers-...

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by ori_b on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:51PM (#30187355)
Yes, that's the point of using tools from unfriendly countries -- though I wouldn't be surprised if there's data sharing there, I haven't heard evidence of it.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by oceanplexian on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:51AM (#30178315)
I worked for LiveJournal, which was owned by a Russian company and what our platform removed for “misinformation” was a nothing compared to what companies like Twitter do today. I know Navalny (A Russian dissident) account is still active whereas platforms like Facebook and Twitter have banned multiple elected US politicians. If you want to avoid censorship the Russian platforms are great places to go.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by belter on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @10:38AM (#30179066)
Yandex has the best image reverse search algos of all the search engines. Dont take my word for it, just go and try it. If you live in the US what is the most dangerous for you? To be spied by your own government, or a government on the other side of the planet?
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by tedivm on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:59AM (#30177557)
I'm using Fastmail and have been super happy with them. I need to start looking into replacements for business suites though, since clearly Google Suites/Workspaces/Domains (whatever they're calling it this week) is making seriously unethical choices.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by irthomasthomas on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @07:38AM (#30176667)
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by indymike on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:18AM (#30177846)
An good old fashioned IMAP mailbox. It works fine, and my ISP has decent spam controls. Oh, and Fair Email (a client) on Android is awesome. Webmail is really slow when you get 300-400 emails a day that are not spam.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by nullify88 on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @10:32AM (#30178968)
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by nerdjon on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @10:06AM (#30178538)
It may not be perfect, but I switched to MobileMe for my personal email a long time ago and continue to use iCloud.

Search is for sure hit or miss, but I pay for it and feel... a bit better.

For my "professional" email I use Amazon Workmail with a custom domain.

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by kcartlidge on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @03:38PM (#30183693)
I've not tried the new option myself so this isn't a recommendation, but if you are using iCloud for personal email yet are doing 'professional' email elsewhere because of the custom domain, then you may not know that iCloud now supports those custom domains.

Of course there may be other reasons why you want professional email separate, such as not having it at risk should Apple decide you've broken their T&Cs because poor AI/ML says so, and they close your account.

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by nerdjon on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @04:50PM (#30184549)
I think at the time I set it up that feature may not exist?

It isn't really anything sensitive, really more just when I am interviewing and related activities.

But I also want it to be a separate email instead of just an alias which I assume iClouds is. Could be wrong though.

Amazon's is just $5 a month so not really a huge drive to change it.

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by benrapscallion on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:19AM (#30177087)
Fastmail and HEY
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by mjmj on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:13AM (#30177770)
Hey, too rich for my blood
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by names_are_hard on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:57AM (#30178408)
There are many options, as evidenced by the replies here. I've used Zoho for a few years now, no issues.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by nerdponx on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:10AM (#30176978)
Fastmail
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by eirikurh on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:34AM (#30178079)
purelymail (https://purelymail.com/) is great! Can't recommend it enough.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by bencollier49 on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:10AM (#30177722)
Fastmail is great.
Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by liveoneggs on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:24AM (#30177141)
hotmail?