Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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Is your phone secretly listening to you? Here's an easy way to find out (www.pcworld.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] grey_maniac 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This might sound naive, but what ads? I don't get ads on my phone, I have functioning adblockers on my browsers, and I use alternate front ends for the occasions I have to access normie social media.

I don't watch TV or listen tp the radio, I read books and research papers primarily, and my actual social media use is on the federated options using apps that don't have ads. I have my phone pretty tightly locked down, so even the apps I use don't have ads.

Aside from the occasional product placements in something, I don't get much exposure to advertising. And before anyone goes there, I work from home and don't even see billboards. I don't even get flyers.

Would I have to change a lot of that to run these tests?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I'm the same. It is quite jaring to see an add now. They seems very obnoxious.

The only issue in have is ads in podcasts. This isn't a huge deal as the provider usually determine add based on IP so i get a 30 second ad in a language I can't understand.

Any solutions to this?

P.S. before I switched from YouTube I disabled all data collection and personalisation a few notable ads I used to receive:

Ads for balls soap (this ad was repugnant)
Ads for Muslim speed dating, with male chaperone (I'm not a Muslim)
A 1hour Chinese party political conference, in Chinese (I don't speak Chinese)

^ Ive got the last one saved out of curiosity.

I remember a time when YouTube was not owned by google and was ad free.

The internet was better before all of this tracking.