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Comment by victork2 | Hacker News Reader

I might have a bleak vision of this place but unfortunately I think this article is not going to ring a bell in here. Well it might be upvoted but sparsely read.

A good portion of HN users don't care at all about privacy, or at least not when they could be the ones protecting it. I read this board every day and every time I am floored by the fascination for cloud services, the (relative) savings from it and monitoring software. As long as they are glossy and beautiful, that's it, sold.

Anyway I was shocked by the last one with Brita and that's great that EFF is publicly calling these companies and their actions.

Thanks for reminding us that we must remain vigilant.

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Privacy probably doesn't strictly monopolize HN's concerns because cloud services are Good Enough when it comes to privacy for our Ruby on Rails MVPs, our benign blogs, and our JSconf slideshows.

Conflating privacy where privacy is needed with privacy for privacy's sake is a waste of time and dilutes real privacy concerns with a bunch of "Wolf!" cries.

One example of a huge cloud-based privacy problem: Google Analytics, which I discovered by using NoScript.

So, google knows about me even when I don't use it. Even when I am explicitly avoiding it, and use DuckDuckGo instead (I do, by the way). Your "benign blog" which uses this service is hurting my privacy big time. I'm okay with you knowing that my computer is visiting your web site. I'm not okay with third parties such as Google, Facebook ("like" buttons, anyone?) or some advertiser automatically knowing that as well.

Same problem with Gmail. They look at and analyse your emails to send you those targeted ads, remember? You pay with your privacy to use it. Which may be fine. But you also pay with my privacy, each time you send me an e-mail, and each time I send one back. That is definitely not fine.

Personally, my heuristic for privacy is this: By default, don't sacrifice your privacy. Think twice before you do. And never ever sacrifice others' privacy without their explicit, informed consent.

We're quite far from that.

I read someplace that 60% of the English language web sites use google analytics. add in any DNS requests passing through google's DNS, adwords js views, google searches etc and it's not hard to assume they can see pretty much whatever they need to build an advertising profile for you.

I suspect facebook is a close second with the tracking of outbound links from FB and "like" buttons all over...

At the moment we're not really seeing signs of malevolence from that corner. My worry is: what happens if those companies take a nose-dive [1] or get a new commander [2].

[1] There are plenty of examples like that floating around. Large companies that were once the kings of their tech field now seem to focus on patents as a source of income.

[2] We kinda had a sneak preview of what a change like that can do when Schmidt handed over the torch.

And yet as an older citizen of HN I am very concerned about privacy, enough that I use cash for at least half my purchases. Cash is wonderful because cash is anonymous.

I wise boss I had one time told me "Don't worry about the banks and US government and your privacy, they don't have the ability to actually do anything with it. You should worry about Google getting your information."

Why? As a younger(ish) citizen of HN I don't see the benefit of being anonymous.

Being on the receiving end of a legal interrogation might change your mind.

Or go read up on your history. The Spanish Inquisition. The Holocaust. The House Unamerican Activities Committee. Soviet Russia. The Lives of Others. Just to name a few.

One oddly eloquent argument for the value of anonymity comes from ... Google: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/02/freedom-to-be...

It might affect your insurance premiums. Or, search for 'headache' too many times and you might become uninsurable.

While I largely agree with you (and have written as much in my blog) I disagree about the risk with cloud services. I only see two places where "the cloud" increases the risk of a privacy violation: 1) Inherent decreased security of cloud services makes a data breach more likely and 2) an increased risk that authorities could seize a server that contains sensitive data.

Even though the EFF singles out The Cloud for an award they only highlight risk #2 of my list. I'd like to hear why you are singling out the cloud (I'm not trying to be combative, I'm truly interested). I see very similar problems with cloud architecture as I do with VPS or even single owner servers.

In my opinion the real privacy risks (controllable ones anyway) have to do with services sharing information with third parties, not information security risks.

I never thought Brita would make the list. I've been using them since Consumer Reports gave them a good review for low-cost but effective water filtration systems. Does anyone know of a good low-cost alternative?

I wouldn't have called Brita low cost. Anything but. The reason they switched from the cylindrical refill to the rectangular one was to put an end to the cheap third-party cartridges, which had become endemic for the cylindrical ones. Cynical marketing was used to make it sound like a benefit for the consumer.

I use an old Brita jug with cheap third-party refills, about 1/2 the price. You can also re-use old cartridges and refill them with activated carbon (google for it, there should be plenty of hits). Not quite as good as a new cartridge, but good enough to remove chlorine and bad tastes.

An alternative is reverse-osmosis filtration. Marine aquarists use them as a matter of course as the chemistry, especially water quality, of a home marine aquarium needs to be tightly controlled. You should find that you can get a reverse-osmosis kit aimed at marine aquarists set up for a couple of hundred dollars, much cheaper than a consumer kitchen set up.

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