this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like "headphone status" and "screen density."

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Holy crap are you kidding? Mastodon IIRC requires zero priviliges/personal information to run.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"They "trust me". Dumb fucks." - Mark Zuckerberg c. early 2000s: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#2000's

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Why anyone would try a ‘new’ Facebook product at this point is mind boggling.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s insane, well I know one thing. This is making me want to go download the DuckDuckGo browser.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What’s your preferred private search engine?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

A public Searxng instance is a great way to get some privacy back. We can run searches against multiple engines and settings stay in the local browser. Image searches can be proxied as well if the particular instance allows for it.

Enjoy!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait, they're trying to check the status of your headphone? That's way too far. Why do they need to know if the headphone's plugged in?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

200 in a few hours sounds like a lot (well, it is) but is small compared to some apps I use. Revolut tried to make tens of thousands of requests in an hour last time I looked! I expect that particular app is coded badly so when it gets rejected it just endlessly tries to repeat the request.

I highly recommend everyone installs something like the DuckDuckGo android app because it blocks tracking attempts in all apps. It's a bit horrifying to see how often, how much, and what type of data all our apps are requesting.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why I use Privacy Badger

Not only does it show you what and where it blocks, but you can also whitelist blocking in case you play browser games.

You get a lot of information out of one addon.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been using Chrome with Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin for eons, now. Listening to youtube playlists without getting interrupted by ads is a real treat...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You'd LOVE Sponsor Block then.

It uses AI to cut out all sponsorships from within YouTube videos. Anything AI misses, the users can cut out.

So no more Raid Shadow Legends or Nord VPN interruptions. Just pure entertainment!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is it AI based? I thought people add their own time segments with a label. I know I can turn the feature on to do that using Revanced.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's AI based, but humans can put in the segments too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's not AI based whatsoever and is entirely crowdsourced by users creating the segments. Not sure where you got the idea AI has any part in it other than a purely blind assumption that you're now spreading as fact.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/about/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That seems so unnecessary. Why do they want to interfere with screen density??

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So much Threads panic, yet we're apparently willing to just believe whatever DuckDuckGo says, even though the company has a pretty terrible track record.

Go look at the permissions Threads is granted. Mine has Notifications and nothing else. Android won't let it have access to most of the information in that list.

"Known to collect" - this app is sending data back to Facebook and we've made some wild ass assumptions about what that data might be in order to scare you into getting all your friends to download our browser. Worked pretty well, huh.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Oh cool, the bots are here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Those infos are different for everyone. It's like your extensions in web browsers, it creates a fingerprint.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Other than GPS coordinates, what's the problem?

It's pretty standard stuff that every app collects.

I'm actually asking what specific thing is the problem.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Not sure why anyone would install that garbage. Even a one off install to check it out means it will upload lots of data.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some people simply do not care.

Is it really that hard to understand that some people like the idea of participating in a community with all their friends and favorite content creators, and find the idea of getting access to this for free at the cost of some privacy that they don't hugely value to be an acceptable enough trade?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

"some" privacy lol

Zoomers don't value privacy at all, and that's a huge problem.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's easy to missjudge how much of our society are just mindless drones.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What does Threads do that Mastodon doesn't? Aren't they basically just a different app for the same thing? What am I getting wrong here?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

We need a third party app.

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