[abhisheksircar]

What irked me is the attitude of, 'This is what I'll do with your data, its my way or the highway'.

Today, for many, whatsapp is indispensable and that's scary. Glad they got a wake up call, that they are not indispensable and have deferred this whole imposition for now.

And a simple thumb rule is that if it's a profit making organization, chances of them aggressively monetising 'you' is very high. Holds good for any big organization.

[Slick]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

While it might look safe to keep the data fragmented, I believe the tracking is deep enough to figure out what is happening. Especially, when you have google, facebook, instagram and WA running on the same PC on the same browser, or on the same phone.

What about using a different browser? I use Brave browser and duckduckgo as the search engine while surfing. While I use Chrome for gmail and Amazon

And you never know the data-sharing agreements between companies. In the financial domain, I know for sure that companies do share/collaborate for various products. These are legal and documented but just saying that a lot of data sharing happens, even between seemingly rival companies.

Well I guess we can only try.

Already google and FB know a lot about you to form a profile. The only escape is getting away from gmail which is a bigger source of important data than whatsapp or instagram. Until I find an alternative, my plan is to confuse the AI engine as much as possible.From time-to-time, browse stuff that I have no interest about, subscribe to a bunch of junk, post random shit on FB etc.

In my case, my FB profile is super old and I was never really active, at best a login every few months. I don't have an Instagram account. Only place where I am active is Whatsapp.
What you suggest might work but that is extra work and and will end up giving you unnecessary and sometime weird adverts,

We still heckle a colleague of mine who was reading a news website and a google ad said - Meet Hostel Girls

Any idea if VPN helps ? Is it legal ?

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

That's easy. You get your own domain and get a services supplier to host email services (and a web site if you want!) for you. In theory, you could host your own, but I heard that ISPs block outgoing email: I guess it could potentially flood their networks if they let everyone do this, especially as many would be set up badly and become spambots.

So, where to get that service from a supplier who respects your data and is not just another data fisher? I don't know. Mine has been with a small company in UK for over twenty years. I have a gmail account: it is used for backup only.

That's a good idea, How much does it cost?

Originally Posted by abhisheksircar

Glad they got a wake up call, that they are not indispensable and have deferred this whole imposition for now....

The only wake up call they got is that they cannot be honest about it, I think they will sugarcoat it in to smaller upgrades in batches till they reach that level of control.

- Slick

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Slick

That's a good idea, How much does it [mail server on your own domain] cost?

Hmmm... I get two or three invoices a year for domain, email and web serving. I'd have to dig to answer the question. It is one of those things that gets filed under want-so-pay.

Ask google (or some other search engine!) about hosting services in India. Any members reading this thread who currently work in IT industry may also have an idea: I retired in 2003.

At a two-minute glance, it looks as if companies want businesses not individuals. But someone must provide such a service here.

[landcruiser123]

Originally Posted by Slick

That's a good idea, How much does it cost?

Another option is protonmail. Supposed to be the privacy-focused alternative to gmail.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

That's easy. You get your own domain and get a services supplier to host email services (and a web site if you want!) for you. In theory, you could host your own, but I heard that ISPs block outgoing email: I guess it could potentially flood their networks if they let everyone do this, especially as many would be set up badly and become spambots.

Well, it is easy to setup. But maintaining it is a pain. I have personally done this between 1999-2011 using Microsoft exchange, running on an in-house server, own domain, static IP, reverse-dns entries, etc. One could use free stmp/pop servers by using Linux.

Cons:
1) You are totally responsible for safety of the data. You need to have strong firewall, spam filter, malware detectors, anti-virus, backup strategies, etc. This becomes very expensive, if you are only having few email accounts. Plus, you have to be very well versed in maintaining this setup, or hire a person to do it.

2) You need to get a clean static IP, which is a challenge by itself. Often, your ISP will provide a static IP that was previously used by a spammer. That means the IP address will be blacklisted in most spam databases. You emails will be blocked by most recipient mail servers.

3) If the senders/recipients of your emails are on Google-Suite or Office365 or any free email providers, there is still no privacy, after all the hard work.

Pros:
I am not sure there are any pros anymore. Unless you only communicate with people who also self-host their email, there is no privacy from google/microsoft eyes.

Let us see what mail services are used by two popular companies. You can try this on windows or Linux. You can see Uber uses G-Suite and Wipro uses Office365. If you are exchanging emails with those companies, you are not escaping either google or microsoft.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Well, it is easy to setup. But maintaining it is a pain. I have personally done this between 1999-2011 using Microsoft exchange, running on an in-house server, own domain, static IP, reverse-dns entries, etc. One could use free stmp/pop servers by using Linux.

I did it too, for corporate email: a simple setup using a previously retired small RS6000. We had a Checkpoint firewall. And, the week before some big worm struck (I forget what) we also took on an outside virus/malware check service. We had a leases line that cost a thousand GBP a month; we got refunds for downtime, even at night/weekends. No dodgy IP addresses!

I'm not suggesting having a home server, it would indeed be a pain. My domain/e-mail/web is not and never was run by me personally. But nor is it done by one of the data-sucking giants (I think you can have your own domain on gmail?). I hope that I am actually the customer, not the product. But I can't be 100% sure.

[docmoya2007]

The moment we linked our AADHAAR card to our personal mobile phone number and our Bank account, our privacy was gone.

Desi Big Brother has always been watching, ever since.

[roy_libran]

Originally Posted by docmoya2007

The moment we linked our AADHAAR card to our personal mobile phone number and our Bank account, our privacy was gone.

My understanding is that these linkages establish the disparate Identity elements into a cohesive Individual's profile, and obviously compromise some aspects of Privacy that are available at a surface level. How does this help compromise Deeper Private information, unless one starts breaking encryption, cracking passwords/biometric auths, or without the connivance of rogue corporations that help Big Brother with Backdoors?

[mvadg]

I would like to abandon WhatsApp, not because I think I can outsmart these tech giants, but simply because I dislike Zuckerberg . I don't use Facebook. Deleted Instagram.

I already have Signal and Line and many, many other apps installed. Except Signal, all the other apps are dormant.

Here's where I need your suggestions. I would like to install a threaded messaging app (Discord?), or "instant email". It should be completely free, easy to administer and messages should be segregated subjectwise. The main reason for staying with WhatsApp is the Apartment RWA group, and important WA messages are hijacked by people sending "for sale" and "Coronavirus" messages. If I could persuade the admin to switch to Discord or similar, it would be win-win.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by mvadg

I would like to abandon WhatsApp, not because I think I can outsmart these tech giants, but simply because I dislike Zuckerberg . I don't use Facebook. Deleted Instagram.

I already have Signal and Line and many, many other apps installed. Except Signal, all the other apps are dormant.

The main reason for staying with WhatsApp is the Apartment RWA group, and important WA messages are hijacked by people sending "for sale" and "Coronavirus" messages. If I could persuade the admin to switch to Discord or similar, it would be win-win.

What is the guarantee the Zuckerberg won't buy signal or any other app that you use?

For the apartment WA issue, persuade the management committee to create another official apartment group that restricts the post only to admins. That way you have one clean group that you can be a member of and quit or ignore the other.

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

What is the guarantee the Zuckerberg won't buy signal or any other app that you use?

For the apartment WA issue, persuade the management committee to create another official apartment group that restricts the post only to admins. That way you have one clean group that you can be a member of and quit or ignore the other.

Zuckerberg / NSA, or whoever can buy up the entire world and there would be nothing much I could do about that, but that won't stop me from disliking him.

Didn't know it was possible to create WhatsApp groups with read-only permissions for participants. Thanks!

[Akshay6988]

Let me share an incident about WhatsApp's "encoded" messages and calls. Yesterday I was talking with my friend on whatsapp call about higher education in Canada and European countries. I had not googled anything about Master's degree before this talk, neither did I google anything today. Guess what my social media feeds are bombarded with !? Yep, 10s of ads of universities and consultancies which help in GRE/ TOEFL prep. So there goes our whatsapp "privacy".
I don't mind ads as long as they are actually useful and not annoying (looking at you, YouTube and Spotify).

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by Slick

What about using a different browser? I use Brave browser and duckduckgo as the search engine while surfing. While I use Chrome for gmail and Amazon

Well I guess we can only try.

And today I learnt duckduckgo leaks as well, but only to Microsoft, if that is any consolation
https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1528849586827280384

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by Akshay6988

Let me share an incident about WhatsApp's "encoded" messages...

Yep, 10s of ads of universities and consultancies which help in GRE/ TOEFL prep. So there goes our whatsapp "privacy"....

How do you know it was WhatsApp? Do you have "OK Google" enabled? Or Alexa? And even if not enabled, are they listening?

[mayukh42]

Originally Posted by whitewing

And today I learnt duckduckgo leaks as well, but only to Microsoft

Probably they use some search algos from MS and are not able to opt out of it until the contract lasts, based on the tweets.

Between MS and Google, the former is lesser evil, only because they have not yet captured the market as much as the latter. Hopefully by the time they catch up, DDG should have their own algos.

Getting more "to the point" results instead of ads when searching the web would still keep DDG more useful meanwhile. Few months back too, Google seemed to have better results but DDG page rank seems to have caught up (the algo is supposed to improve over time).