CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
I'm sure this How-to Geek article won't change the minds of CCleaner lovers, but here it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...pdating-users- who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-use-instead- of-ccleaner/ -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://BrownMath.com/ http://OakRoadSystems.com/ Shikata ga nai... |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
On 2018-09-19, Stan Brown wrote:
That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-use-instead- of-ccleaner/ Do the warnings pertain to the portable version of ccleaner? As far as I can tell that doesn't install anything, it's just a standalone executable. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.) NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
Roger Blake wrote:
On 2018-09-19, Stan Brown wrote: That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-use-instead- of-ccleaner/ Do the warnings pertain to the portable version of ccleaner? As far as I can tell that doesn't install anything, it's just a standalone executable. I'd like to know too. So far, mine is the same. Maybe I will need to block all network accesses to CCLeaner for now on? -- Quote of the Week: "Still we live meanly, like ants;... like pygmies we fight with cranes;... Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify... simplify..." --Henry Thoreau Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly. /\___/\Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org / http://antfarm.ma.cx / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit- | |o o| | ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and URL/link. \ _ / ( ) |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
Stan Brown wrote:
I'm sure this How-to Geek article won't change the minds of CCleaner lovers, but here it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...pdating-users- who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-use-instead- of-ccleaner/ My CC 5.10.5373 does not call home. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
Stan Brown wrote:
I'm sure this How-to Geek article won't change the minds of CCleaner lovers, but here it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...pdating-users- who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-use-instead- of-ccleaner/ Sure glad I stuck with (actually went back to) version 5.40. No changes in later versions are needed on Windows 7 and I certainly don't want Avast's adware platform or regenerated tracking cookie. By the way, the EU's GPDR legislation is ****ing over a lot of software authors. One of the latest Windows 7 updates has only do to with changes mandated to be complaint with GPDR. https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018...nce-tools.aspx The EU are idiots: the whole GPDR stupidity is having just the opposite effect. The result is to NOT protect privacy. Software authors can now implement even more data collection which requires users to discover the change to then opt-out from new default settings that divulged them more. Or send an e-mail that notifies of GPDR changes requiring the user to make config changes in their account. Uh huh, like that'll have a 100% correction effect by users. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.co...-improve-data/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/25/gdpr_fails/ Yeah, just lock out the EU visitors from your site. That'll really help promote GPDR, uh huh. Sorry, your EU ****ed you over, so goodbye. https://digiday.com/media/everyone-b...falling-short/ |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
On 09/18/2018 08:36 PM, Stan Brown wrote:
I'm sure this How-to Geek article won't change the minds of CCleaner lovers, but here it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...pdating-users- who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-use-instead- of-ccleaner/ I like the built in Windows 10 cleaner they have now, but it's just not comprehensive like CC. I like to flush my browsers and a few other things now and then. And yes to keep the old version. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
On 19/09/2018 07:46, VanguardLH wrote:
By the way, the EU's GPDR legislation is ****ing over a lot of software authors. One of the latest Windows 7 updates has only do to with changes mandated to be complaint with GPDR. https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018...nce-tools.aspx Seemingly a Microsoft front-window, nothing useful there supporting your rant. The EU are idiots: the whole GPDR stupidity is having just the opposite effect. The result is to NOT protect privacy. None of the links you give below claim this, and in fact they mostly say the opposite, though there is no shortage of statements that the legislation needs to go further. Software authors can now implement even more data collection which requires users to discover the change to then opt-out from new default settings that divulged them more. Or send an e-mail that notifies of GPDR changes requiring the user to make config changes in their account. Uh huh, like that'll have a 100% correction effect by users. That's not my reading of those links, though they do make it plain that at least some companies are not really trying, and rather than beginning with the spirit of the law and working through their system accordingly, they're trying to obfuscate their present practices sufficiently to make them seem compliant. We don't know how that will pan out for them if/until they start to get fined, and by how much. The purport of the act seems to be similar to one that has already existed in the UK for some time, the Data Protection Act. I have already used (the threat of invoking) this successfully to: * Refuse a corporate parking fine of questionable legality * Force my school to remove me from their begging lists * Forcibly prevent a firm from sending letters to my house addressed to its previous owners. * Force Readers' Digest to remove me from their mailing lists The last must be considered the greatest victory of all - somehow they had tracked me past several house moves across the south of England for at least a decade after I had stopped subscribing. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.co...-improve-data/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/25/gdpr_fails/ Yeah, just lock out the EU visitors from your site. That'll really help promote GPDR, uh huh. Sorry, your EU ****ed you over, so goodbye. It's much more likely that any demotion in people's minds will be of such sites rather than of GPDR. What they're effectively saying is: "We don't care sh*t about your privacy!" ... Hardly a selling point. https://digiday.com/media/everyone-b...falling-short/ In many ways the best link. In summary, I'm sure the GDPR isn't perfect, but, over recent decades, the economic power of the EU has tended to ensure that its safety and similar legislation that has become the norm worldwide, so GDPR or something very like it, hopefully an improvement on it, is likely to become a template for other such legislation across the world. Might as well stop ranting and get used to it. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
"VanguardLH" wrote
| By the way, the EU's GPDR legislation is ****ing over a lot of software | authors. One of the latest Windows 7 updates has only do to with | changes mandated to be complaint with GPDR. | | https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018...nce-tools.aspx I don't get how it's a problem for software authors. If you don't spy on your customers and store the data then you don't have to worry. If MS were not collecting data that's none of their business then they wouldn't have to worry. Your link explains that they have to worry with Win10 because they're the "data controller" who's collecting surveillance data from customers. So the law says they have to protect that data, they can be fined if they don't, and customers have a right to demand that the data be erased. Isn't that good? And if you read the Register article you'll see the sites blocking EU are American companies. Why should Dick's Sporting Goods or Pottery Barn get involved if they don't have enough EU customers to justify it? That doesn't make the law bad. It just highlights our lack of protection in the US. What's worse is sites that say, "Hi! Happy to see you... as long as you agree to this thing that signs away your rights." I'm periodically getting a page at npr.org that tells me to choose between a page with a handful of links to plain-text stories or giving them permission to spy on me. A non-profit news outlet! Yet they demand the right to spy. And this is an American visiting a US site. I don't know what I'd see if I allowed javascript. As it stands now, I only see that page about once per week. (And of course I can't agree, even if I wanted to, without javascript.) The rest of the time the site works. So I'm guessing that they're experimenting with options. Another increasing problem is sites that put their content in javascript, so that their pages just won't work at all unless you allow them to use all the spy tool javascript provides. Script, as it's used today, fundamentally changes the nature of a webpage. A passive publication becomes dynamic software. (Anyone who doesn't know about that... try visiting this site with js enabled and without: https://panopticlick.eff.org/) The GPDR does seem to be unnecessarily complicated, but it provides important things like requirements to implement good anonymization of data. What's really needed is two things: 1) Fully opt-in for any data collection, without penalty for opt-out. 2) Outlaw cross-site spying, like Google Tag Manager, which allows fully ID-ing and tracking people online and goes against the original spirit of the Internet. (Cookies were supposed to be restricted to the site visited.) Any effort to share surveillance of visitors with other companies, even an advertising company, should be illegal. Let them collect data the old- fashioned way, by offering some kind of reward for completing a survey. Here's one example of only one of many ways that Google spies on people who aren't visiting their domains: https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/201...ng-real-users/ There needs to be public recognition that corporate spying on people in civil society is not allowed. Period. When and if that kind of law might happen? It certainly doesn't look good. Wired has a very interesting article, published recently, about how tech companies are trying to hijack California's already modest, proposed law: https://www.wired.com/story/why-cali...ook-or-google/ |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
Mayayana wrote:
I don't get how [GPDR] a problem for software authors. It's a nuisance to them. It is a problem for the users. Authors have to push a new version to be GDPR compliant. Users get a new version with the defaults set to divulge their information with opt-out settings. The GPDR does not mandate the authors default to opt-in, so some can add more options or change old ones that require the user to opt-out to increase their privacy. For example, Microsoft, Avast, and many other software programs have logistics collection sometimes called community reporting or some other euphemism. It lets the authors know how their programs or services are being used. Yep, you could opt-out but you were initially and covertly opted in by default. GPDR doesn't stop authors/owners from adding even more collection methods but it states the user must opt-in, not have to sometime later upon discovery to opt-out. Alas, GPDR does not require opt-in when the user has already consented. When you open an account at a site or establish any business or interaction with a site, you're supposed to have already read their TOS and privacy terms. Establishing a relationship means you grant them to contact you, which opens the door to them spamming you. There's a whole mess going on regarding spam and GPDR. Of course, that only affects EU citizens since the US and other countries are not part of the EU. What's worse is sites that say, "Hi! Happy to see you... as long as you agree to this thing that signs away your rights." Yep, their property (the web site), so they can dictate anything that remains contractionally legal for them. GPDR only mandates the user be informed although the information can be buried where most users cannot find it or won't bother to look. The GPDR does not ban any author (software or web) from collecting information on you whether it be generic (they're not identifying you but instead just collecting statistics) or specific. GPDR only requires the user/visitor be informed. Silent or covert opt-in is not allowed by GPDR. I'm periodically getting a page at npr.org that tells me to choose between a page with a handful of links to plain-text stories or giving them permission to spy on me. They aren't spying. They are collecting metrics on how you are using THEIR property. They aren't spying on YOU. They are seeing how their property is getting used. A car rental agency checking the mileage on THEIR car upon you returning it to them is not them spying on you. It's them checking how their property got used. I visited npr.org with Javascript disabled (which is presumably why they present you with non-dynamic content). As I recall, you have Javascript disabled by default. With Javascript disabled, http://npr.org won't take you to their https://npr.org site. In uBlock Origin, the only domain allowed to deliver content was npr.org. In uMatrix, I block all 3rd-party content but allow all 1st party content except scripting by default. Couldn't get the popup you mentioned. Most sites have a Terms of Service or separate Privacy Policy page and that makes them GPDR compliant. That users don't bother to read those pages is their choice for not being active in protecting their privacy. Sounds like NPR is GPDR complaint if they are showing you popups to their text-only site. They are informing you and letting you opt-out rather than covertly opting you in. Since they, like many sites, have TOS or privacy policy pages, that may be all they need to be GPDR compliant. However, you think web surfing would be convenient if every site upon visiting them first redirected you to the TOS or Privacy Policy page as their home page? Of course, there is https://text.npr.org/. Have fun there. GPDR is only protecting its EU citizenry. International web sites (those that have a regional presence, not just that some user can reach them across the oceans) are now creating different content based on region. For example: USA Today EU site Size: 500KB javascript: 0 US site: Size: 5.2MB javascript: 124 scripts Remember when it was a bitch visiting sites because they rendered differently depending on which web browser you used to visit the sites (by the way, Google is becoming the new Internet Explorer for just that reason)? Now we're getting into the same mess with GPDR. NPR went hardcore and has their text-only site (text.npr.org) to be GPDR compliant; however, did you find that site as easy to navigate or read? Not sure how you are setup to get NPR to issue prompts about using their text-only site. If you give some clues, I can try to simulate. Like those good old days of having to decide which web browser to use when visiting a site depending on how you want it rendered, now we're getting differentiation between EU and non-EU sites. Oh joy. The Chinese already know that joy: the Great Firewall Of China. Another increasing problem is sites that put their content in javascript, so that their pages just won't work at all unless you allow them to use all the spy tool javascript provides. Script, as it's used today, fundamentally changes the nature of a webpage. A passive publication becomes dynamic software. Yep, their content so they decide what, if anything, you can view of theirs. Old-timers think they are entitled to free content because that's the way it was long ago (by the way, I'm an old-timer, too). They can block based on IP address of the visitor. BBC has been using that for a long time to keep non-UK visitors from seeing some content at their site. Many sites won't present all of their content unless you create an account with them. None of that has anything to do with GPDR. You are complaining that content is becoming more dynamic over an electronic venue rather than remaining static, like books printed on paper. Nothing to do with privacy. Just you reminiscing about the good old days of static content. The GPDR does seem to be unnecessarily complicated, Actually the biggest complaint I've seen so far by site owners is that it is too vague. That's how law works: it cannot be written for every conceivable case but gets modified over time to adapt to what actually happens. However, these type of "laws" or regulations often stay static for decades. Here's one example of only one of many ways that Google spies on people who aren't visiting their domains: https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/201...ng-real-users/ Ever notice how many sites no longer produce their own specialty fonts, don't use a limited set of fonts that most of their visitors are likely to have already available in their OS, and are using Google's fonts? The redirection to Google's fonts lets Google track who used their fonts, at which site, using which web browser, and when. Programmers are taught not to rebuild the same code if they can use a pre-built library. Same for fonts. While the fonts could be embedded (copied) to the site, that requires further management of the server's resources, so web devs just link to Google's fonts to get them from there. Google isn't the only one providing fonts to sites through redirection, so other font houses can also just as easily track who is using their fonts from where and when; however, they are the huge data collector of Google. https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq So even with you disabling Javascript and using various ad/content blockers, you can still get tracked when a site uses someone else's font library. Well, actually when a site utilizes anyone's resource external to the site to which the client must connect. I've seen this in practice. Some fonts are graphics, like arrows or special images. Sites will use them rather than design their own image, save in a file, and deliver from their server. Instead they use Google Fonts to pick a charset with the cutsy image-like characters. My pharmacy is one of those. When you visit their login page, and if external font loading is blocked, you see weird characters and don't know what to do on that page. With external font resources unblocked, the goofy chars turn into arrows or other chars that make the page understandable. This became apparent when I configured uBlock Origin to block remote fonts. All of a sudden a lot of web pages were hard or impossible to figure out how to use. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wi...o-remote-fonts So just who is supposed to inform a visitor per GPDR requirements that they may be tracked by fonts? Is the site going to interrupt your visit with a prompt saying a 3rd party (perhaps Google if the site is using their fonts or someone else if using other external fonts) /might/ collect information about the visitor at that site or can they not bother at all because the one doing the actual tracking is not the site but whomever is providing the font library used by the site? It's not just fonts as external resources used by a site that could be used to track. Anyone providing resources commonly employed at many sites can do similar tracking; however, mostly likely that is them doing metrics measuring of how their property is getting used but there is the potential for tracking of users. Would you bother [re]visiting a site that prompted you on every external resource they use at their site that the external resource might collect metrics which could possibly be used to track you? How many dozens or hundreds of prompts would you have to get through before you could view the site? And do that on every visit to the site? Sites just don't realize how all those external resource they employ could be used to track their users. Protonmail (outside US and EU jurisdiction) uses web fonts at their site (in this case, Google's). Of course, ProtonMail service is only to protect the content of your e-mails, not from getting tracked by them, Google, or anyone else when using ProtonMail's web site which is outside the scope regarding the content of your e-mails or to whom they are delivered. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
"Wolf K" wrote
| It's that promise to "personalize" that's the giveaway. That, and "... | to improve your experience..." | I was surprised at how blatant they are. They'll share data about me with advertisers, business partners, Facebook, analytics companies and "other third-party service providers", which means "anyone else we decide to share it with". Yet this is, in theory, a non-profit company. They don't even have ads as such. They have sponsorships. (At least that's the way the TV branch works.) This whole spying thing has gone beyond crazy. Yesterday there was a story about Facebook trying to get people to use Messenger for banking so that Facebook can collect financial data directly from banking transactions! https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/18/1...cy-advertising |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
Mayayana wrote:
Only if they're spying. There's no reason for software authors to be collecting personal info in the first place. Many users consider metrics measurement as spying despite that it doesn't necessarily identify the user. For example, they're afraid a site will get their IP address (but then EVERY endpoint must know your IP address to know where to handshake and send back the requested content). Since the IP address could be collected is why users get afraid that their identity is surrendered. If you had someone's IP address, can you tell what is their name, sex, age, religion, political affiliations, economic status, marital status, and so on? Nope, just something like a 50+ radius circle for their geolocation. Does the GPDR apply to web browsers? If not then those clients don't need to alert their users that geolocation is enabled. In Firefox, you have to dig into about:config to disable geolocation. There have been many programs that send metrics on their use (crash reports, run-time, etc). Avast is one. There are many others. Yes, users can disable that "feature" but how many users actually delve into a program's settings? Is collection your IP address considered "personally identifying information" when it merely lumps you in with everyone else in a 50-mile radius? Is repeated capture of your IP address considered personally identifying you? Of course they're spying. They say so themselves. They want me to agree to being tracked for the purposes of targetted ads. Here's their quote: "By choosing "I agree" below, you agree that NPR's sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR's sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR's traffic. This information is shared with social media services, sponsorship, analytics and other third-party service providers." Cookies are used for re-login. Do you actually have an account at NPR? You are not forced to retain their cookies. DOM Storage is local data similar to cookies but to hold more information about your visit and current state at a site to be reused later. You are not forced to let them store your user data in a local cache. If you configure your web browser regarding privacy, they cannot detect your return. So whose responsibility is it to comply with GDPR? The site for using features in your web browser or the author of the web browser for defaulting to enabling those features? This getting akin to the argument "Who is responsible for someone getting shot? The gun maker, the gun shop that sold the gun, or the person that used the gun?" See, NPR is GPDR compliant and you even stated such. They identify their practices in their TOS or privacy policy. So is it your responsibility to read those site documents or for the site to prompt you on each condition in their policy requiring you to allow or deny each condition, and do so upon every revisit to their site? Even if site's didn't create EU versus non-EU versions of their sites, they could infuriate EU citizens by prompting them to okay each condition of their TOS or privacy policy. And, or course, denying any of their conditions could have them just say "Goodbye. We respect your privacy restrictions." If users are currently ignorant of how to configure their web browser regarding their privacy, you really think they'll understand a barrage of prompts querying on each point in a privacy policy or read it should there be an obvious link on the home page? How many users read the EULA that comes with software? There's also a link to further details: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=609131973#cookiepolicy None of which qualifies as *personally identifying information*. IP address: Identifies the IP pool for your ISP, not you. Domain of ISP: That's not you. Website, application, platform or service before or after your visit: So who warns you? Them or your web browser maker telling you how to configure their web browser regarding privacy? Info about your web browser: Again, that's info your web browser sends to them. So whose fault is they can get that data? And how does "someone using Google Chrome or Firefox" identify YOU? Unique identifiers from your devices: Only if an app sends it. NPR has an app? Geolocation: You're the only person in a 50-mile radius to have a region identify just you? Dates, times, duration, frequency of visiting their site: Yeah, metrics, not personally identifying information. Listening data, downloads: Obviously they will know what content they delivered. Info in e-mail interactions: How does anyone doing e-mail with you not know what you said? Error in using their service: More metrics. Info from a social service when you use it to login: Again, is it the site at fault or the social service sharing that info in the first place? What was your agreement at the social service? Likely you agreed to the exchange of info, so NPR isn't violating your privacy because you already agreed to divulge. They say flat out that they'll tell ad companies, analytics companies and others about whatever info they get about me... Metrics, again. Not personally identifying information. That they'll send me spam and try to track whether I read it. And so on. If you establish a business relationship with them, you agree to their terms regarding them contacting you. Visiting their site doesn't expose your e-mail address (unless you're dumb enough to sign in with a social service that divulges that info). If you create an account with them, and part of that info is your e-mail address, yep, they have permission to contact you regarding your use of their service. That's not legally defined as spam. In fact, it is a legal exemption per the CAN-SPAM law. Your e-mail client actually defaults to allowing connections to external resources by default when viewing a message? | Of course, there is https://text.npr.org/. Have fun there. GPDR is | only protecting its EU citizenry. NPR is American. GPDR is EU. I block [web fonts]. But most people have no idea. And there's jquery if a site uses Google's copy instead of copying it to deliver from their own domain. You don't care because you disable Javascript but you are the rarity in the populace of web surfers. ANY resource external to a site's web server can collect data on the client that retrieves those external resources. You're going somewhere else than the site to render the web page delivered by a site. All those CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) are collecting the same metrics at Google's web fonts. Sites use CDNs to warehouse their content and let larger data centers pool their resources rather than incur all the overhead, like bandwidth, at the site's server. Very similar to corporations leasing a "company" jet shared by several corporations rather than buying their own and having it sit mostly idle. Google have made things so easy. And now they're pushing their AMP, to actually be the host of sites. How is Google doing webhosting different than CDNs, Amazon, 1 and 1, Level3, GoDaddy, or any other webhoster? How is providing a library of code or services different than programmers using an IDE to code for multiple OS platforms? They're using someone ELSE's code, not building from scratch. There are tons of code and services available to web devs to build their sites without having to do it all in-house. There have been IDEs to do cross-platform development for a l-o-n-g time. It's been moving to cloud services for a long time, too. Not really much of a surprise that development of web content has been moving to the web. I certainly wouldn't want to write the assembly code for the C runtimes included in Windows. Microsoft provided a common graphics library (DX) for use by many game programs. This really isn't news, just another getting into the fray of providing code or services to assist others who CHOOSE to use that shared code or service. Is it Google's fault for providing the service or the web dev for making use of Google's service? In fact, sites moving to Google AMP might make it easier to filter out ad content at sites: just block the resource connects from a site back to Google's AMP servers. Like you blocking web fonts (don't know if you block all off-domain font sources or just Google's web font server), adblock authors could add Google AMP servers to their blacklists. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/disabl...ndroid-iphone/ From what I've read of AMP, the problem is with misuse by sites, not by Google providing an open-sourced library, like popping something up if you arrive at a site using a non-AMP URL listed in a Google search (assuming you use that search engine). Is it Google's fault to collect metrics on the use of their web fonts or the site that chooses to use Google Fonts instead of storing their own locally at their server? AMP is just a runtime library. Bitch to the site owners if you don't like them using that library. Good luck with telling them how they deliver their content from their servers; i.e., telling them how to manage their properties and what content they can deliver. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
Wolf K wrote:
For most services online, I would be happy to pay a per-use or subscription fee, if and only if I had absolute control over the information they gather about me (and some of which they have to have, merely to provide the service(s) I've paid for). Reminds me of the e-mail electronic postage stamp proposal a long time back: require a tiny charge on every e-mail sent from any provider or, alternatively, require a tiny "postage" on every e-mail recieved at a provider's SMTP server. I think it was called CentMail (because the proposal was to charge 1 cent per outbound e-mail rather than a more acceptable 0.001 cent per outbound e-mail). It would be likely impossible to force the sending server to charge the spammer because that would require knowing who is the spammer. So, more likely, the postage method would only work at the receiving end: receiving servers wouldn't accept e-mails unless the sending server paid a postage fee to the receiving server, and let the sending service figure out how to charge their users. E-mail would no longer be free but extremely cheap. I think the proposal was something one-hundredth of a cent for the postage. Spamming works because one boob in a million qualifies the spam campaign. Spamming would not have survived if no one bought from the spammers. It would've come and quickly disappeared because no one acted upon that spam. So, is spam the fault of the spammers that find it lucrative to catch one out of a million or the fault of the assholes they buy to further fund the spamming effort? Prostitution and drug trafficking continue to exist because there exist customers. Same for spam. With a new revenue stream to the e-mail providers, I was thinking they would embrace the "e-mail postage" scheme. Spam volume is currently about 53 billion messages per day. Even at 0.001 cent per e-mail (trivial to personal-use senders who would have to send 10,000 e-mails before paying just 1 dime), the e-mail providers could collect about $53 million per day, or $19 billion per year (or charities would get a lot of money if CentMail had the proceeds sent to charities but then e-mail providers would have to do the accounting and money payment for free). There are a lot of e-mail providers but even a tiny slice of that pie would bring in a lot of revenue to offset the cost of operating their service. Even legitimate marketers, because they don't puke at the same volume as spammers, wouldn't care about the postage expense provided the e-mail services provided guaranteed delivery. It would be the high-volume spammers that would disappear because it would no longer be free or galatically cheap to puke their turds via e-mail. I haven't counted how many e-mails I've sent in my entire e-mailing history but I doubt I come anywhere close to 10,000 even when including those I sent to/from or within the workplace. And it would only cost me a dime for all of those ... and over many decades of me doing e-mail. I've posted in Usenet far more times than the number of e-mails that I've sent: 30,742 (and now 30,743) versus ? (sorry, unknown for my outbound e-mail count, especially since I purge e-mails older than 5 years - older than 1 year goes into my archive, older then 5 years in my archive get permanently deleted). For e-mail, I get a hell of a lot more incoming e-mail than I send out. Even if I assume I've sent as many e-mails as posts submitted here, and guessing that I started e-mailing around 1984 when I got an IBM PC-AT and using dial-up back then, and discounting any e-mailing from work before that, that is 30K e-mails for a cost of 30 cents over 34 years - under a cent per year. If I had sent out 1 million e-mails, that would've been $10 over 34 years - still ****ing cheap at 30 cents per year. Compared to how much money I've wasted on beer, what I would've paid for e-mail postage fees for sending e-mails would've been so miniscule that I'd surpass that entire 34-year cost with just a couple beers at a bar with my buddies. But a spammer spewing out 1 million turds per *day* and having to pay $10 each day would severely deter their spam flood. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
Mayayana wrote:
"Wolf K" wrote | It's that promise to "personalize" that's the giveaway. That, and "... | to improve your experience..." | I was surprised at how blatant they are. They'll share data about me with advertisers, business partners, Facebook, analytics companies and "other third-party service providers", which means "anyone else we decide to share it with". Yet this is, in theory, a non-profit company. They don't even have ads as such. They have sponsorships. (At least that's the way the TV branch works.) This whole spying thing has gone beyond crazy. Yesterday there was a story about Facebook trying to get people to use Messenger for banking so that Facebook can collect financial data directly from banking transactions! https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/18/1...cy-advertising https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/face...2017-arpu.html $6.18 average per user worlwide. $26.76 per US+Canada user. And just for Q4 of 2017, not for the entire 2017 year. Uffda! |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
In message , VanguardLH
writes: [rant] Info in e-mail interactions: How does anyone doing e-mail with you not know what you said? [mega-rant] From conversations I've had by email (usually starting with a webform) with various entities (most recently ebay "customer services"), I've _frequently_ been pretty sure that the person I'm communicating with hasn't read what I've said ... (-: -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Never make the same mistake twice...there are so many new ones to make! |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
"VanguardLH" wrote
I snipped the foregoing because you're just arguing for the sake of it. Issues are getting blurred rather than clarified. But Google AMP is something that could stand some airing out and you're mischaracterizing it. | Google have made things so easy. And now they're | pushing their AMP, to actually be the host of sites. | | How is Google doing webhosting different than CDNs, Amazon, 1 and 1, | Level3, GoDaddy, or any other webhoster? | They're not acting as web hosts. Look it up. It's a system of script tools and caching, connected with ads. The script tools are yet another step toward letting Google track visitors and also another step in the growing complexity of script in pages, resulting in pages that just won't work without script. But the bigger concern is caching. Google and some other big tech companies are developing their own proxy servers and encouraging commercial websites to take part. The trend could easily lead to having a handful of large corporations controlling most of the Web. Not so much by force as by providing business reasons for websites to hand over control. "The Google AMP Cache is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically." https://www.ampproject.org/learn/overview/ In other words, you write an AMP version of your page using Google's tools, they cache it, then when someone searches for your site they get Google's AMP version from the Google server. Maybe you see that as no problem. Maybe you'll see it as no problem merely because that's the opposite of what I'm saying. :) I see commercial control of the Web in any manner as a problem. I certainly wouldn't hand the running of my site over to Google. In fact, I'd consider it a betrayal of my visitors to be letting Google lasso them when they think they're just visiting my website. No company should be able to track you on a page that's not part of their domain. That was the original intention and design of the whole thing. That's why cookies can only be read from the domain that serves them. Now it's gone way beyond that. It's reached a point where a visited website can track fine movements *and* numerous external trackers can follow you around online. Yet no one is working to stop these intrusions. 3rd-party cookies are spyware by definition, but even Mozilla sets them enabled by default. Now with things like AMP there's an escalation. It's headed toward the shopping mall-ification of the Internet. AOL had their walled garden because people were inexperienced with the Internet. But the trend now is toward the whole Internet being a commercial product. (Ironically, shopping malls are now dying because they all have the same bland chain stores, mostly selling tight jeans and t-shirts to teenage girls. Ironic but not surprising. The shopping mall exists *only* for making money, so the denizens naturally try to take the shortest, easiest path to profits.) Interestingly, that trend has gone so far in so many areas of life that people often don't even notice. Citizens are now "consumers". Teenagers often grow up in the private, commercial world of shopping malls rather than hanging around public parks and city streets. Festivals, which used to be community-based events centered around cultural semiotics, are now typically created by PR people from local business organizations and are often comprised entirely of commercial services like food stands and craft sellers -- a tent city version of a shopping mall. To celebrate "Millville History Day" people go downtown and buy stuff. To celebrate "Anytown Harvest Festival people go downtown and buy stuff. To celebrate "Porttown Annual Marine Arts Festival" people go to the beach and buy stuff. Increasingly, people are living their lives in commercial venues and are not noticing. I read just yesterday that John Hancock insurance will no longer offer basic life insurance. In the future you'll have to let them track your exercise with gadgets and report your food purchases to them. Why would people put up with that? Two reasons: 1) JH will offer discounts, coupons, freebies in exchange for buying fresh produce and running around the block. People love freebies. 2) People increasingly don't consider it odd to view themselves as "consumers" and their lives as a series of retail interactions. I'd love to hear what the real John Hancock might say about this. He risked his life for personal freedom. Now his namesake is telling you that if you want to provide for your wife in the event of your death then you'll need to let them monitor and partially control your personal activites. But the consumers are already plotting ways to beat the system without questioning it. One person suggested getting a dog, fitting it with a fitbit, then sending that data to John Hancock. It would be funny if it weren't pitiably true. What has all that got to do with Google? You're finding excuses to accept Google, Facebook and others controlling your use of the Internet. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
VanguardLH wrote:
Mayayana wrote: I don't get how [GPDR] a problem for software authors. It's a nuisance to them. It is a problem for the users. Authors have to push a new version to be GDPR compliant. Nope. They only have to inform the user if they were/are collecting *personal* information (i.e. things like name, e-mail address, address, phone number, age, sex, etc.,etc.). *If* they've been collecting such information, it most likely includes the user's e-mail address, so they can just send e-mail, no need for a new version of the software. And that's exactly what's happening. I've received many such e-mails. [...] For example, Microsoft, Avast, and many other software programs have logistics collection sometimes called community reporting or some other euphemism. It lets the authors know how their programs or services are being used. Yep, you could opt-out but you were initially and covertly opted in by default. GPDR doesn't stop authors/owners from adding even more collection methods but it states the user must opt-in, not have to sometime later upon discovery to opt-out. The GPDR is about *personal* information, not about anonymous/ anonymized statistical/usage data. Alas, GPDR does not require opt-in when the user has already consented. Nonsense. When you open an account at a site or establish any business or interaction with a site, you're supposed to have already read their TOS and privacy terms. Establishing a relationship means you grant them to contact you, which opens the door to them spamming you. There's a whole mess going on regarding spam and GPDR. Of course, that only affects EU citizens since the US and other countries are not part of the EU. Allowing a 'relation' to *contact* you is a seperate issue. It does *not* mean that you've implicitly given consent to their past TOS, etc.. Actually the GDPR *mandates* that - as of May 25, 2018 - the relation must explicitly ask *again* for any and all consent. And, as I've said above, that's exactly what they're doing. Before and after May 25, I/everybody got many, many of such requests-for-consent. What's worse is sites that say, "Hi! Happy to see you... as long as you agree to this thing that signs away your rights." Yep, their property (the web site), so they can dictate anything that remains contractionally legal for them. GPDR only mandates the user be informed although the information can be buried where most users cannot find it or won't bother to look. Nope, the information can *not* be "buried". The GPDR does not ban any author (software or web) from collecting information on you whether it be generic (they're not identifying you but instead just collecting statistics) or specific. GPDR only requires the user/visitor be informed. Silent or covert opt-in is not allowed by GPDR. Correct, so why do you say/imply otherwise in your earlier text? [Non GDPR stuff deleted.] |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
"Wolf K" wrote
| I have two online subs (one includes the paper versions as well). No | ads, well worth the money around $25/month. | The problem with that, though, is that the system of dishonest spying is already entrenched. It ends up being payment *plus* spying. We have a paper subscription to the NYT. Personally I don't think it's worth it. They tell me the news with a business skew 36 hours after I read it online. (But I have no choice. My ladyfriend is from Brooklyn and apparently anyone who leaves there is required to get the NYT if they want to retain citizenship. :) I think I could get an online version of the NYT for free with the paper, but why let them spy on me while I read? They're so anxious to collect that data that they now fill pages 2 and 3 with nonsensical tidbits and lures to online content. I've developed the habit of skipping pages 2 and 3 altogether. I'm struck by the nerve of the NYT in this, that they're willing to risk the alienation of customers by actually refusing to print some articles, making them available only online. If it were up to me I'd cancel the paper on that point alone. Though when I do look at what they're offering online, it turns out it's often what the British so delightfully describe as "paff". Today there are photos of some amateur interior designing done by a movie director. Huh? |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
In message , Mayayana
writes: [] But the consumers are already plotting ways to beat the system without questioning it. One person suggested getting a dog, fitting it with a fitbit, then sending that data to John Hancock. It would be funny if it weren't pitiably true. [] There could be an opportunity there, for people to offer to wear your fitbit (and similar devices), and wander aimlessly - or aimfully for that matter. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; he who dares not is a slave." - Sir William Drummond Above all things, use your mind. Don't be that bigot, fool, or slave. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
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"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | But the consumers are already plotting ways to | beat the system without questioning it. One person | suggested getting a dog, fitting it with a fitbit, then | sending that data to John Hancock. It would be | funny if it weren't pitiably true. | | There could be an opportunity there, for people to offer to wear your | fitbit (and similar devices), and wander aimlessly - or aimfully for | that matter. Maybe. But their payment would probably be little more than a coupon for power granola bars. Those things will kill you. :) |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
VanguardLH on Wed, 19 Sep 2018 23:21:02 -0500 typed in
alt.windows7.general the following: Spamming works because one boob in a million qualifies the spam campaign. Spamming would not have survived if no one bought from the spammers. It would've come and quickly disappeared because no one acted upon that spam. So, is spam the fault of the spammers that find it lucrative to catch one out of a million or the fault of the assholes they buy to further fund the spamming effort? Prostitution and drug trafficking continue to exist because there exist customers. Same for spam. Advertising in a nutshell. There is a cliche that half your advertising budget is wasted, but you can't know which half. If enough people respond to an ad campaign to pay for the campaign, manufacturing, distribution, management, and show a profit, it was money well spent. With Email, the cost is low, so you only need one "sale" to recoup.* tschus pyotr *I'm recalling a radio ad for HP printers (iirc). Brand X was selling printers for $1,000,000. Hadn't sold any yet, but when they did, the second one would be pure profit. -- pyotr filipivich Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing? |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
On 20/09/2018 04:28, VanguardLH wrote:
Mayayana wrote: Only if they're spying. There's no reason for software authors to be collecting personal info in the first place. Many users consider metrics measurement as spying despite that it doesn't necessarily identify the user. For example, they're afraid a site will get their IP address (but then EVERY endpoint must know your IP address to know where to handshake and send back the requested content). Since the IP address could be collected is why users get afraid that their identity is surrendered. If you had someone's IP address, can you tell what is their name, sex, age, religion, political affiliations, economic status, marital status, and so on? Nope, just something like a 50+ radius circle for their geolocation. Not necessarily even that - as the crow flies, I'm about 500 miles away from where my IP comes out into the world, which is further than the nearest capital of a neighbouring country. However, it does identify a particular user from a particular ISP at a particular moment in time, and this can be used with other metadata to identify particular individuals over longer periods of time. Does the GPDR apply to web browsers? If not then those clients don't need to alert their users that geolocation is enabled. In Firefox, you have to dig into about:config to disable geolocation. There have been many programs that send metrics on their use (crash reports, run-time, etc). Avast is one. There are many others. Yes, users can disable that "feature" but how many users actually delve into a program's settings? You're missing the point. Users have the democratic *choice* of configuring most such programs not to phone home. GDPR is about giving users similar choices about the information collected from them on the web. Is collection your IP address considered "personally identifying information" when it merely lumps you in with everyone else in a 50-mile radius? Is repeated capture of your IP address considered personally identifying you? Combined with other metadata, it could be. Of course they're spying. They say so themselves. They want me to agree to being tracked for the purposes of targetted ads. Here's their quote: "By choosing "I agree" below, you agree that NPR's sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR's sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR's traffic. This information is shared with social media services, sponsorship, analytics and other third-party service providers." Cookies are used for re-login. Not necessarily. Potentially, within limits concerning the number of cookies and their maximum individual size which differ across browsers, they can hold any textual information a website programmer wants them to hold. DOM Storage is local data similar to cookies but to hold more information about your visit and current state at a site to be reused later. You are not forced to let them store your user data in a local cache. Agreed. If you configure your web browser regarding privacy, they cannot detect your return. Much less certain, see below ... So whose responsibility is it to comply with GDPR? The site for using features in your web browser or the author of the web browser for defaulting to enabling those features? Certainly morally both, and but legally probably the site, because ... This getting akin to the argument "Who is responsible for someone getting shot? The gun maker, the gun shop that sold the gun, or the person that used the gun?" Again, morally all of them, but obviously primarily the person that did the shooting. Legally, the person doing the shooting, but the other two may be guilty of criminal behaviour as well, depending on the circumstances. Even if site's didn't create EU versus non-EU versions of their sites, they could infuriate EU citizens by prompting them to okay each condition of their TOS or privacy policy. And, or course, denying any of their conditions could have them just say "Goodbye. We respect your privacy restrictions." They'd lose business, not just from EU citizens, but also because Americans visiting the EU would get mad at them. If users are currently ignorant of how to configure their web browser regarding their privacy, you really think they'll understand a barrage of prompts querying on each point in a privacy policy or read it should there be an obvious link on the home page? How many users read the EULA that comes with software? Again, they have the democratic *choice* to do so if they wish. However, of course, the EULA is designed to protect the company's interests, not the End User's. There's also a link to further details: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=609131973#cookiepolicy None of which qualifies as *personally identifying information*. IP address: etc Again, you are missing the point. While none of these pieces of information ON ITS OWN seems to identify very much, taken together with other metadata that can be gathered, they can reveal an astonishing amount, often being able to identify a particular individual. https://panopticlick.eff.org/ Clicking 'Test Me' gives me ... Test Result Is your browser blocking tracking ads? ✗ no Is your browser blocking invisible trackers? ✗ no Does your browser unblock 3rd parties that promise to honor Do Not Track? ✗ no Does your browser protect from fingerprinting? ✗ your browser has a unique fingerprint Note particularly that last result. It seems I am easily tracked. The details of that result are appended for those who are interested. If you were a UK resident, I'd recommend you to listen to a recent episode of BBC Inside Science via the BBC iPlayer, but I'm not sure whether even radio downloads are available outside the UK. Throughout the summer they have been showcasing the short list for the Royal Society Book Prize. One of the candidates is a book by mathematician Dr Hannah Fry called "Hello World!" about the modern use of computer algorithms. In this clip she explains how disparate pieces of information, each apparently insignificant on its own, are pieced together to be able to draw surprising conclusions. Perhaps the best example she gives is that if you have a store loyalty card, are female, and buy vitamin pills and unscented body lotion, they can work out that you're pregnant, and send you offers for nappies, etc: https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b0bgw30j 19:02 minutes in Alternatively, a little longer ago she was a guest panelist on The Infinite Monkey Cage, where she expounded on this story in greater detail, including that it was an American store called 'Target' and that in 2012 a father of a teenage daughter had actually gone to his local store in Minneapolis to complain about her being sent these coupons as it seemed to be 'normalising' teenage pregnancy, but by the time the store rang him at home to apologise, his daughter had admitted to him that she was indeed pregnant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b9wbf8 7:38 minutes in Much of the following needs updating, but nevertheless it's still quite a good canter around some of the individual threats, but the real danger is how the small, apparently insignificant, pieces of information get combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy Cookies: "The original developers of cookies intended that only the website that originally distributed cookies to users could retrieve them, therefore returning only data already possessed by the website. However, in practice programmers can circumvent this restriction. Possible consequences include: * the placing of a personally-identifiable tag in a browser to facilitate web profiling (see below) * use of cross-site scripting or other techniques to steal information from a user's cookies. [...] one of the most common ways of theft is hackers taking one's username and password that a cookie saves. While a lot of sites are free, they have to make a profit somehow so they sell their space to advertisers. These ads, which are personalized to one's likes, can often freeze one's computer or cause annoyance. Cookies are mostly harmless except for third-party cookies.[23] These cookies are not made by the website itself, but by web banner advertising companies. These third-party cookies are so dangerous because they take the same information that regular cookies do, such as browsing habits and frequently visited websites, but then they give out this information to other companies." Photographs on the Internet "Face recognition technology can be used to gain access to a person's private data, according to a new study. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University combined image scanning, cloud computing and public profiles from social network sites to identify individuals in the offline world. Data captured even included a user's social security number.[45] Experts have warned of the privacy risks faced by the increased merging of our online and offline identities. The researchers have also developed an 'augmented reality' mobile app that can display personal data over a person's image captured on a smartphone screen.[46] Since these technologies are widely available, our future identities may become exposed to anyone with a smartphone and an Internet connection. Researchers believe this could force us to reconsider our future attitudes to privacy." Google Street View " In one instance, Ruedi Noser, a Swiss politician, barely avoided public scandal when he was photographed in 2009 on Google Street View walking with a woman who was not his wife – the woman was actually his secretary" and so on. Also ... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...n-the-same-pc/ https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromi...ion-mechanisms https://pet-portal.eu/files/articles...erprinting.pdf Here are the detailed findings ... Browser Characteristic bits of identifying information one in x browsers have this value value Limited supercookie test 0.37 1.29 DOM localStorage: Yes, DOM sessionStorage: Yes, IE userData: No Hash of canvas fingerprint 20.05 1088160.0 de7fbe2badf5c8a7fff29615325949c3 Screen Size and Color Depth 2.85 7.2 1366x768x24 Browser Plugin Details 21.05 2176320.0 Plugin 0: Java Deployment Toolkit 8.0.1410.15; NPRuntime Script Plug-in Library for Java(TM) Deploy; npdeployJava1.dll; (; application/java-deployment-toolkit; ). 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Plugin 2: PDF-XChange Viewer; PDF-XChange Viewer Netscape Gecko Plugin; npPDFXCviewNPPlugin.dll; (Portable Document Format; application/pdf; pdf). Plugin 3: Shockwave Flash; Shockwave Flash 31.0 r0; NPSWF64_31_0_0_108.dll; (Adobe Flash movie; application/x-shockwave-flash; swf) (FutureSplash movie; application/futuresplash; spl). Time Zone 3.1 8.59 -60 DNT Header Enabled? 0.84 1.79 True HTTP_ACCEPT Headers 16.1 70203.87 text/html, */*; q=0.01 gzip, deflate, br en-GB,en;q=0.7,fr;q=0.3 Hash of WebGL fingerprint 12.08 4335.3 83663cdc2084dc0bace5dcbde258572b Language 4.15 17.72 en-GB System Fonts 16.88 120906.67 Arial, Arial Unicode MS, Book Antiqua, Bookman Old Style, Calibri, Cambria, Cambria Math, Century, Comic Sans MS, Consolas, Courier, Courier New, Garamond, Georgia, Helvetica, Impact, Lucida Console, Lucida Sans Unicode, Microsoft Sans Serif, Monotype Corsiva, MS Gothic, MS Outlook, MS PGothic, MS Reference Sans Serif, MS Sans Serif, MS Serif, Palatino Linotype, Segoe Print, Segoe Script, Segoe UI, Segoe UI Symbol, Tahoma, Times, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3 (via javascript) Platform 3.0 8.02 Win64 User Agent 15.63 50612.09 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:52.9) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/3.4 Firefox/52.9 PaleMoon/27.9.0 Touch Support 0.59 1.51 Max touchpoints: 0; TouchEvent supported: false; onTouchStart supported: false Are Cookies Enabled? 0.22 1.17 Yes |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
"Java Jive" wrote
| Cookies are used for re-login. | | Not necessarily. Potentially, within limits concerning the number of | cookies and their maximum individual size which differ across browsers, | they can hold any textual information a website programmer wants them to | hold. | In addition to your extensive listing of unique data collected, there's an almost endless list of possibilities for tracking. For instance, simple web bug images can help ID by allowing 1st-party cookies to be set by tracking companies. There's even a trick of using script with the DOM to check the color of links in the page, thereby telling the server which linked pages you've visited. (Though notably, few of these tracking methods can be used without script.) Time and again it's been demonstrated that there's no such thing as anonymous data. That, after all, is the whole point of data collection in the age of computers. Before computers you might give personal info to a local store but it was kept in a file cabinet and only used to deal with you as a customer. Today that same info can be distributed and analyzed instantaneously. A company like Google would be thwarting themselves if they didn't personally identify people. They would actually need a complex system in place to avoid making the connections that their business depends on. The page I linked the other day details some of the simplest personal tracking that can be done even by someone with no expertise, just by using Google tools and thereby letting Google spy on your visitors: https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/201...ng-real-users/ |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
On 09/20/2018 09:31 AM, Wolf K wrote:
I used to check FB 4 orÂ*5Â*timesÂ*aÂ*week,Â*nowÂ*it'sÂ*downÂ*toÂ*less *thanÂ*onceÂ*aÂ*week. I'd say 10 years ago, I lived on FB. 8-10 hours playing games. My niece and nephew got me hooked on the games. I even bought FB money for investing in the games to buy those extras they entice you into. But alas I get on there once a week maybe. It's poor sort order and lack of a good feed anymore has driven me away. My wife and I both follow a lot of the same people and subjects and she is constantly asking me how I see a post she doesn't. I wouldn't cry if FB Died. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 20:36:00 -0400, Stan Brown wrote:
I'm sure this How-to Geek article won't change the minds of CCleaner lovers, but here it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...pdating-users- who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ No silent updates on my end... -- s|b |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
On 09/20/2018 04:14 PM, s|b wrote:
On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 20:36:00 -0400, Stan Brown wrote: I'm sure this How-to Geek article won't change the minds of CCleaner lovers, but here it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...pdating-users- who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ No silent updates on my end... What version are you? |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off AutomaticUpdates
On 20/09/2018 18:42, Java Jive wrote:
Alternatively, a little longer ago she was a guest panelist on The Infinite Monkey Cage, where she expounded on this story in greater detail, including that it was an American store called 'Target' and that in 2012 a father of a teenage daughter had actually gone to his local store in Minneapolis to complain about her being sent these coupons as it seemed to be 'normalising' teenage pregnancy, but by the time the store rang him at home to apologise, his daughter had admitted to him that she was indeed pregnant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b9wbf8Â*Â* 7:38 minutes in When I wrote the above I'd only re-listened to the program as far as finding that particular clip, which on first hearing had been been emotionally striking enough for me to remember something about it, but, having since re-listened to the entire program, there's actually a better, but less emotional and therefore I had less reason to remember it, example later on, beginning at 22:06, which describes how data from *different* sources was combined in a similarly revealing way ... Apparently a database of New York taxi cab data was made available to those who had a legitimate reason to access it, but it was insufficiently well encrypted, and someone broke the encryption and published the data online - it contained details of every cab ride made over a given period: cab number, starting point, destination, fare paid, etc, even tip received. A journalist then realised that he could search paparazzi photographs of celebs getting into cabs, identify the cab, and then search the database for the ride data, and as a result published a list of the different tips given by celebs to cab drivers, and the programme also mentioned something about where they lived being revealed! Now, I'm not particularly sorry for the celebs in question, or most others for that matter, but the point is that if that sort of thing can happen to them, it can happen to private individuals as well - think stalkers, or troublesome gangs of local youths seeking revenge on someone who they suspect of reporting their activities to the police, etc, etc. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
FredW wrote:
On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 22:14:38 +0200, "s|b" wrote: On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 20:36:00 -0400, Stan Brown wrote: I'm sure this How-to Geek article won't change the minds of CCleaner lovers, but here it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...pdating-users- who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ No silent updates on my end... My 5.40 portable (!) tried to phone home (never done before). It showed in my firewall (asking permission) and I blocked. End of CCleaner for me. Yeah, mine phoned home too. -- Quote of the Week: "Still we live meanly, like ants;... like pygmies we fight with cranes;... Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify... simplify..." --Henry Thoreau Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly. /\___/\Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org / http://antfarm.ma.cx / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit- | |o o| | ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and URL/link. \ _ / ( ) |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 16:57:26 -0400, Big Al wrote:
What version are you? 5.46 portable. I used Privatefirewall to block it though. Anyway, funny thing just happened when I turned on my PC. CCleaner apparently crashed and then Windows warned me my antivirus wasn't active. No panic, it happens sometimes.I use Avast Free Antivirus, so I clicked on the icon and got an option to restart the service. Didn't get to activate it until I noticed the (broken) icon of CCleaner in systray. I hovered over it with my mouse pointer, it disappeared and suddenly I was able to restart Avast... And yet, somehow I don't feel that safe anymore... :-o -- s|b |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
Stan Brown
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...matic-updates/ That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-of-ccleaner/ I'm late to the party, so I read this first: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/ccleaner-is-silently-updating-users-who-turned-off-automatic-updates/ Which said: - Even if users opt out of automatic updates, they're happening anyway - Piriform is "gathering anonymized information about the user" - The way to tell is to check the version number - I just checked mine, which is not portable, which is "v5.39.6399" - The article says it happens at and after version 5.46 - Privacy settings revert to the default, which sends usage data The original forum thread discusses earlier versions having the problem, but the summary article fixes the problem at 5.46 and above. |
CCleaner Is Silently Updating Users Who Turned Off Automatic Updates
On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 16:12:19 -0400, Big Al wrote:
On 09/20/2018 09:31 AM, Wolf K wrote: I used to check FB 4 or*5*times*a*week,*now*it's*down*to*less*than*once *a*week. I'd say 10 years ago, I lived on FB. 8-10 hours playing games. My niece and nephew got me hooked on the games. I even bought FB money for investing in the games to buy those extras they entice you into. But alas I get on there once a week maybe. It's poor sort order and lack of a good feed anymore has driven me away. My wife and I both follow a lot of the same people and subjects and she is constantly asking me how I see a post she doesn't. I wouldn't cry if FB Died. I'd applaud. I have friends who get their 'news' only from FB. Yes, they're extremely misinformed, especially about current events and politics. I have friends who use FB to ask their contacts what kind of car they should buy, what they should eat and where they should go for lunch, what color shoes to wear with khaki shorts, and so on. I'd be happy to see the whole thing collapse in a heap. Oh, these are the same people who post a picture of every meal, as if to say, "Hey, look at me, I found food today!" Well, so did a lot of people. It's not exactly newsworthy. How about the people who didn't find food today? -- Char Jackson |
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