Mauve 👁💜 @mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe

free software? aye comrade, and food should be free as well! and housing, and the hospital, and the library and post office too. ah, but why are these things not gratis? that is a dangerous question, isn’t it? why when there is more food than even all of us could eat, is there poverty all around us? do not limit your query to the business of software, comrade, for the villains of this play have a far greater span than your meager discipline.

Many people seem still unaware of just how bad Chrome Sync is for your privacy. By default, Chrome will sync all your data – including e.g. your passwords, bookmarks, browsing history and open tabs. And by default, Chrome will not encrypt any of this data. All of it will be accessible by Google, by anyone who subpoenas Google to turn up your data and whoever else managed to get access to these servers.

If you want this data encrypted before it is first uploaded, you need to click “Settings” instead of confirming sync, then expand “Encryption options” and set up a sync passphrase. The default option “Encrypt synced passwords with your Google Account” is essentially a disguised “We can access all your data but we promise not to look. Don’t you trust us?”

Except that they will look of course. Apparently, they now started censoring your synced bookmarks: https://strangeobject.space/@silvermoon82/110969122337810598

The only positive aspect here: Chrome Sync used to be a lot worse. It used to enable automatically when you signed into Chrome. It used to encrypt only passwords and none of the other data even if you set up a passphrase. It used to warn you when setting a passphrase because Google’s web services would no longer be able to access your passwords. It used to upload data without encryption first, only allowing to enable encryption after the fact. And its encryption used to be horribly broken. I wrote about that five years ago: https://palant.info/2018/03/13/can-chrome-sync-or-firefox-sync-be-trusted-with-sensitive-data/#chrome-sync

But even now, Chrome Sync requires you to take action in order to get privacy. Because Google knows that you won’t. Compare that to Firefox Sync which has always been encrypting all data by default. I criticized the implementation here as well, but that was really a minor issue compared to the mess which is Chrome Sync.

#Google #GoogleChrome #privacy

Quick reminder that we are not actually in a "Cost of Living Crisis".

It's a Extreme Inequality and Record Untaxed Profits Crisis.

While we struggle for the basics, banks, energy companies, supermarkets and the oligarchs are posting record breaking profits.

It would be pretty straight forward to even it out. If they wanted to.

Don't buy the framing that makes it seem like nothing can be done, other than suffering through it.

@futurebird The science fiction species I'm writing are plant-people. Their "technology" is largely biohacking of their (and other plant) physiology.

A backpack? It's a living plant grafted to the host. A space ship? One of the People sacrificed themselves to be mutated into that vessel. Communication and transportation? "World trees" link colonies whose space-born seeds offer zero-risk expansion. #peirspapre #spapre

The complexity of life and its interactions will never cease to amaze.