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  • Showing only topics in ~tech with the tag "privacy". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Where is everyone hosting their email these days?

      This is more focused towards those that use custom domains for their email. My current plan is up at Zoho for my team in a month, and even though I've used them for the past few years its been...

      This is more focused towards those that use custom domains for their email. My current plan is up at Zoho for my team in a month, and even though I've used them for the past few years its been hit-or-miss (especially when using third-party apps or programs).

      Who do you use? Who do you not trust? Who would you never go back to?

      Sidenote: I hope this might eventually kick off a ~privacy group, one day.

      72 votes
    2. Are phones really listening to us at all times?

      Had an interesting conversation with my colleagues this morning. We were pretty split whether phones listen to us for advertising or not. On one hand, we anecdotally see Google news and ad...

      Had an interesting conversation with my colleagues this morning. We were pretty split whether phones listen to us for advertising or not.

      On one hand, we anecdotally see Google news and ad suggestions based on what we say. We know our mics are on at all times for voice assistant and music detection. But we also read online talking about how there is no evidence about the phones recording us. It's hard to trust anything nowadays.

      67 votes
    3. Google seems to be running OCR on photos in my Gmail. Is this happening to you too?

      This morning I was asked to find an archived email with photos of some scientific equipment. I searched "Powerlab," the name of one of the instruments, in gmail, and the email came right up....

      This morning I was asked to find an archived email with photos of some scientific equipment. I searched "Powerlab," the name of one of the instruments, in gmail, and the email came right up. Great! But then I noticed that the word "powerlab" never appeared in the text of the email. I tried searching "ML206", an arbitrary character string from one of the photos in the email, and again, the email appeared in the search, without the search phrase highlighted in the search result, as it normally would be. I tried different phrases from jpgs in emails; not all yielded search results but some did.

      I'm not happy about this. I accept some compromises to privacy when using Gmail, but sending text as an image can be a way of specifically avoiding information being harvested. All I ask for is a way to turn it off.

      Can anyone replicate this? Did anyone already know about this?

      51 votes