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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: February 15th, 2021

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  • This is the full paragraph:

    We collect certain device and network connection information when you access the Service. This information includes your device model, operating system, keystroke patterns or rhythms, IP address, and system language. We also collect service-related, diagnostic, and performance information, including crash reports and performance logs. We automatically assign you a device ID and user ID. Where you log-in from multiple devices, we use information such as your device ID and user ID to identify your activity across devices to give you a seamless log-in experience and for security purposes.

    It looks to me that they are using it to identify the user uniquely, maybe also related to captcha to prevent bots (it’s common practice to capture mouse and keyboard while resolving captchas to see if the movement is human-like).


  • But that’s not what the terms on both Google/Meta and Deepseek say.

    Google/Meta has no obligation to restrict the data collection to forms, if the ToS allowd them to collect them from forms (and as you admited, we do know for a fact that they do), then there’s no reason it also does not allow them to collect them outside of forms (which we don’t, for a fact, know).

    In the same way, Deepseek terms don’t say the logging happens for “anything typed” like you are assuming without evidence. For all we know the only place they might be capturing it is exclusively in very specific forms, or they might even only added that to the terms so that they can add suggestions in the future. You can only make assumptions, since the terms are not specific on exactly what’s being captured and in which way, it only says keystrokes in the case of Deepseek and even more generic (and thus allowing more possible vectors) in Google/Meta’s terms.


  • Yes, it’s possible. To be honest, I find it very sad that we have grown so dependent on ISP and big telecom companies to have a working network.

    In theory, you could have an infrastructure in your neighborhood and be able to play Quake with your neighbors without making use of the phone line at all, completely free of monthly fees and with a very efficient and fast connection too! you’d just need cabling connecting the apartments/houses and some decent routers controlling/restricting access on each subnet. It’s a pity that’s not a standard thing when designing residences.

    Though less efficient and more limited in range, you can technically do it with Wifi and mesh networking too… there are projects like B.A.T.M.A.N (https://www.open-mesh.org/), however, it’s not very user-friendly to set up. I believe there have been some projects that attempted to launch embedded devices to act as mini routers for this, but the spread has not been wide enough to make it worth it, sadly.




  • The argument stands, though.

    Yes, not ALL other apps do that, but the comment was specifically talking about companies like Google and Meta… they definitely do collect incomplete strings from forms, down to individual characters when they display search suggestions, for example. They might not mention “keystrokes” in the legal text, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to extrapolate your typing pattern since they do have the timing information which should be enough data to, at some level, profile it.



  • This specific comment thread is focused on that because that was the topic started by the choice of words of the first comment.

    The conversation would not have continued in that direction if there was an admission that the only point (which I’m perfectly happy to say it’s an important one) is not really that Proton betrayed anti-Trump principles they had (they didn’t), but that they have proven now being sympathetic towards Trump.

    What was said doesn’t even deny the problem, what was said is that this is not surprising. This is as silly as thinking that Zuckerberg is a betrayer because of the recent changes in moderation policy, as if Facebook was ever on the side of any particular political ideology other than their own interests.

    What makes you think tuta is gonna oppose all and every policy coming from the far-right including the ones that align with their stated goal of digital privacy? … has tuta stated a goal of being anti-Trump? or is that another assumption on what people think it’s “coming to represent”?

    If (hypothetically) tuta had some level of relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (or pick your favorite Trump-opposed party) and made a post about how they are happy about certain changes that are beneficial to their mission, would that be a betrayal of their own principles? I would say it’s not, regardless how many far-right customers might “feel betrayed” if they had some alt-right parasocial image of tuta.





  • It’s true that they say both things out of comfort.

    Though to be completely honest, both statements are not contradictory. They are not necessarily accepting that they do have something worth hiding, but just stating that hiding is too difficult these days anyway. That does not mean (sadly) that they would start doing it were it easier, just that they have even less of a motive to care about it now that hiding is so much harder (to the point of almost being “a myth”).

    I’m not saying they are right, I’m saying that lack of consistency is not the problem with that attitude. It’s not a “shift”, just a consistent continuation of a lazy attitude towards comfort.


  • Stock Android does not have tools to do that verification. Just verify it from the desktop and then send it to your Android device.

    But I don’t see how verifying the apk signature would help if your concern is that “you have bare to none knowledge how it works”. The only thing that would fix that would be if you actually learn how it works.

    Luckily, unlike other stores that are closed source and actively and purposefully hide from you what they do, F-Droid is open source, so anyone can go to the repo holding their source code and learn how it works, or build their own themselves, as long as they wanna spend that much effort.



  • In that counter argument they are essentially admitting that 99% of their content was distributed without the copyright holder’s consent.

    In the CDL lawsuit, they have admitted that of the millions of books we have digitized, they themselves have only made about 33,000 available to libraries; only about 1% of what we have done, and only under restrictive and expensive license agreements. This is, they claim, the essence of their copyright rights: the ability to restrict access to information as they see fit, to further their theoretical economic interests, without regard to libraries traditional functions and the greater public good.

    Was it fair use in the past to redistribute reprints/format-conversions of works without the copyright holders consent?

    I agree that copyright law sucks… but that’s why it needs to change so it actually serves “the greater public good”. The judiciary system is not the right place to advocate for that (they don’t make the law, just interpret it), so I don’t really think there’s much hope in them winning this. Sadly.