goferito

Are they truly secure devices if booted with the correct OS?

I've seen some talks of elite hackers defending Windows is a more secure OS over open source solutions because malware developers can't easily find vulnerabilities if they don't have access to the code.

I ask myself, has never been found evidence of governments/mafias to have copies of Windows/iOS source code?

A lot of sites have IP crawl restrictions, but add exceptions for Googlebot. Could Google or the crawled site legally do something when they find out?

Appreciated HN Community,

I, naively, really had hope on the Don't be Evil motto. But the Google's trend of invading our privacy a bit more every day without asking at all for our permission, tracking absolutely everything, I think it's getting too far. Their open support to TTP has felt like a slap in the face of awakening reality. Their presumed support Hillary also concerns me quite a bit.

As a techie, I admire a lot of their work (I may be easy audience, but Google Maps really flips me out), but I think we should worry about limits in the name of progress. I wouldn't mind to give some personal data away to enjoy some of their services, but I want to know and decide which data I give away. I have recently checked myactivity.google.com and what I saw there was quite terrifying.

I'm aware how highly I depend on their services. I have an Android phone, Gmail as my main email account, organise myself with Google Calendar, I browse the web with Chrome, solve every question with Google Search, and get directions with Google Maps.

Since my unconditional love for the company has clearly been damaged I think it's time to start looking for alternative services.

I have replaced Google Search with Duckduckgo. That was easy. It feels a bit slower, and I still miss how google suggestions know what I want before I type it, but it could work. Fully replacing Gmail is going to take a while, but I think Protonmail is a nice alternative. I don't mind paying the yearly subscription if I'm still happy with it when the space limit becomes a problem. I have come back to Firefox even though some things feel smoother on Chrome, which I haven't totally abandoned. A work in progress.

The thing is, what about Android, is there any solution you would recommend? (Apple products are not an option) And to Google Maps? How do you guys manage the balance privacy/usability/comfort?

I've made a small proof of concept with Google Analytics. I was checking that running the frontend code coming from my localhost I could already receive the events on my Google Analytics (GA) account. So GA is just not running any kind of validation on where the events are coming from (domain check or something). Then, since the tracking ID remains public, it's possible to just send any kind of event using someone else's tracking ID, therefore messing with their insights in their GA dashboard. I have published the code on github.com/goferito/gapoc in case someone wants to take a look, even though it's pretty simple.

So the question is, how can I know someone is not sending events (pageview events or whatever) using my tracking ID? Is there any way in GA to filter those, before or after GA stores them?