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Comment by machomaster | Hacker News Reader

I have the same issue in Yandex Browser (based on Chrome) on Android.

You've chosen to let the Russians spy on your web browser?

I don't understand this comment because American/European governments (where I would guess most HN commenters are from) are almost certainly doing the same thing according to what we've learned about for example the NSA. Maybe you trust your own government more.

Most westerners I've spoken to think that even when a Western government does bad, there's probably good intentions behind it or at least more noble than any non-Western government.

On the flip side, even if you believe that, there's an argument to be made that if you live in the West then the Russians/Chinese care way less about you than the Five Eyes.

I mean, it’s been at least a few decades since my home country started it’s latest war.

It’s not that it’s non-western, it’s just that the countries I don’t trust are mostly dictatorships or something very close to it.

Yeah, I just think that after Snowden (but before him as well) it's naive to think that we in the West are free from being spied on. The methods are more refined, I'll say that.

Few decades of not starting a war is a very weak qualifier. Let's start with "100 years of not participating (!) in wars, not even in a supporting role, while respecting people's human rights, democracy, freedom of speech and privacy" and then the country has some kind of backbone to lean on when offering it's enlightened perspective.

There aren't many countries that would qualify (Sweden fails because of the Snowden case) and I suspect your country is not one of those. What country are you from?

It's all about risk assessment, risk analysis, scenarios, probabilities, threat vectors, worst/probable/best cases of cost/benefit, etc.

What are the chances that Putin wants to get to you? How probable is it? Does he have better options than through seeing your browsing history? What happens if he actually gets it - what's the worst that can happen?

It's really all a big nonsense about nothing. You are most probably just an ordinary human, just like me. We are not even worthy of such an attention. Be realistic and know your position, role and pecking order in the world order. Be a cog and live peacefully. :-)

There is a big difference between a government that is ultimately on your side. And a government that is actively trying to kill you.

As a Finn, both American government and Putin have the same amount of energy put into trying to kill be. As in zero energy. Because if it weren't zero, I would already be dead. And it would happen kinetically, not through capturing my browser history.

And anyway, it's a bad comparison, there is a conspiracy that, say Google or Firefox is collaborating, but it's very clear that yandex is an arm of the Russian government

And what is this clarity of the Holland-registered company being an arm of Putin is based on? Specifically in terms of software/privacy.

I might be missing something, but why is it clear to you that Yandex is an arm of the Russian government? Yandex has been critical of the Russian government's war on Ukraine [0] and faced consequences because of it which signals to me that this isn't the case. Yandex made plans to exit Russia because of the company's disagreement with the government even. [1]

[0] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-yandex-government-control/321...

[1] https://fortune.com/2022/11/25/yandex-leaves-russia-ukraine-...

As someone living in the west, I'm disappointed by our governments' hypocrisy over the massacre in Palestine while supporting Ukraine's right to resisting an invading force. Our governments' support of the massacre in Palestine (even dealing out death to peaceful resistance, as we can see by the bombing of Yemen when its people merely made economic trade inconvenient to protest the massacre) made me think the people in charge of western countries are no better and probably even worse than dictatorships such as China and Russia. (Western governments are just better to their own citizens apparently.)

It can be argued, that Yandex didn't do enough to fight the Putin's regime, but: 1. How realistic is to expect something like this from Corporations? How much have American corporations fought against American terrorism or attacks on freedoms (e.g. of speech)? Exactly. 2. It absolutely does not mean that they were an arm of the government. Among the tech giants, even without the Russia caveats, Yandex was definitely a good guy, with good ethics and core, with people who cared (and who helped a lot in personal capacities).

A very telling sign is a list of Western countries that participate in the Yemen war, but want to keep it a secret from their citizens. Yes, they fully know that what they are doing is wrong. No, they don't want to stop doing the evil, they only want for people not to know.

This is a pattern. Remember illegal CIA prisons all around the world, torturing people?

Democracy often means that bad deeps must be better camouflaged/hidden, not that thr actions and people doing the deciding are inherently better.

It's possible that the user is Russian and using the locally popular browser

This is such a non-issue.

1. I live in the EU and I would worry much more about my country/Union spying on me than foreigners.

2. In the same token I trust Yandex much more than Google. And yes, I am competent enough to make that assessment. The same goes with using the world's best antivirus in Kaspersky vs. using something weaker from Five-Eyeish+block.

3. Yandex Browser is technically good. But the main killer feature for me is having the address bar on the bottom of my screen. This should just be a common-sense default for mobile browsers, yet it is't.

I think this is my first time reading about someone using Yandex browser

You should check it out (for mobile) and share your opinion.

It has all kinds of interesting features like automatically translating (and voicing) youtube videos.

Address on the bottom of the screen is a total killer.

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