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This is an article on why you should stop using Google Accounts and find a different, privacy focused, and efficient provider.
05.0 - Other things to check out
Like other Google products, Google Accounts have a history of privacy and performance issues. Google offers some promising features, but it is just trying to cover for bad things going on behind the scenes. Don't let them think what they are doing is OK.
General description from Wikipedia: Google Account - Data from Februry 23rd 2021 at 8:58:32 pm (PT: Pacific Time)
A Google Account is a user account that is required for access, authentication and authorization to certain online Google services. It is also often used as single sign on for third party services.
Google has a very very bad record when it comes to user privacy. (I could go on and on with evidence of this, but it took a long time to find and go through all these articles)
Privacy on Google products is always bad, due to all Google products containing spyware.
No matter what you do, when you are using Google, all of your sensitive personal data is being sent to Google and others. Google has also been spotted going through open programs. For example, from personal experience (on Firefox) with a YouTube tab open that I didn't visit, I watched several videos offline (VLC Media Player) Later when I went to check the recommendations, it was nearly everything that I had watched. There is no doubt they are spying on other programs too.
In Chrome (and many other browsers) an incognito mode is present. In Chrome, this mode is pointless, as Google will still mine your data. Even if you turn data mining/tracking off, and enable the "do not track" signal, surprise suprise, Google is still mining your data.
If you think you have nothing to hide, you are absolutely wrong. This argument has been debunked many times over:
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Edward Snowden remarked "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. "When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights."
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Daniel J. Solove stated in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education that he opposes the argument; he stated that a government can leak information about a person and cause damage to that person, or use information about a person to deny access to services even if a person did not actually engage in wrongdoing, and that a government can cause damage to one's personal life through making errors. Solove wrote "When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say."
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Adam D. Moore, author of Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations, argued, "it is the view that rights are resistant to cost/benefit or consequentialist sort of arguments. Here we are rejecting the view that privacy interests are the sorts of things that can be traded for security." He also stated that surveillance can disproportionately affect certain groups in society based on appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion.
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Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and cryptographer, expressed opposition, citing Cardinal Richelieu's statement "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged", referring to how a state government can find aspects in a person's life in order to prosecute or blackmail that individual. Schneier also argued "Too many wrongly characterize the debate as 'security versus privacy.' The real choice is liberty versus control."
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Harvey A. Silverglate estimated that the common person, on average, unknowingly commits three felonies a day in the US.
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Emilio Mordini, philosopher and psychoanalyst, argued that the "nothing to hide" argument is inherently paradoxical. People do not need to have "something to hide" in order to hide "something". What is hidden is not necessarily relevant, claims Mordini. Instead, he argues an intimate area which can be both hidden and access-restricted is necessary since, psychologically speaking, we become individuals through the discovery that we could hide something to others.
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Julian Assange stated "There is no killer answer yet. Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) has a clever response, asking people who say this to then hand him their phone unlocked and pull down their pants. My version of that is to say, 'well, if you're so boring then we shouldn't be talking to you, and neither should anyone else', but philosophically, the real answer is this: Mass surveillance is a mass structural change. When society goes bad, it's going to take you with it, even if you are the blandest person on earth."
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Ignacio Cofone, law professor, argues that the argument is mistaken in its own terms because, whenever people disclose relevant information to others, they also disclose irrelevant information. This irrelevant information has privacy costs and can lead to other harms, such as discrimination.
Google Accounts are the same as all other Google products, it contains spyware, as Google is not just a search company, they are a user data company, and you are the product. To Google, you are only worth about $700.00 (unless you are making them ad revenue)
Google Accounts are required to use most Google services. Once you degoogle, you won't need it anymore, just make sure not to have a single company have control over every productivity/entertainment site you use, because letting this happens just creates another monopoly like Google, and it can devastate the Internet (for example, when Google went down for 5 minutes in 2012, global Internet traffic dropped by 40% and Google is going down more frequently and for longer times due to bad management. This is a major issue as well, along with major privacy and performance issues across their products)
Wikipedia - Wikipedia only
No other sites currently listed
This list is incomplete
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This list is incomplete
Google Accounts are restricted by Google. Your access to everything Google relies on what Google thinks of you.
Upon termination of YouTube accounts and parts of the service, the user can be restricted from their data and uploads. If Google determines your account is being run by someone under 13, they will try various options to confirm if you are 13 or older, such as writing a Google form (which requires a Google account to begin with) giving photo ID, and sending a fax (hardly anyone still has a fax machine in 2021, it is almost as rare as seeing floppy diskettes that aren't part of a save icon) Once you exhaust all these options and deal with nightmare tech support with robots (as Google uses machines for tech support and algorithms, actual humans rarely intervene) you can get your account back by giving them your credit card information and paying them $0.30. This is very sketch.
Google has become increasingly malicious with its identification of users, going from the rate of new accounts to a phone number verification to (recently) Credit card information and ID
Google Takeout is a good way to get your data out of your account before you delete it, but there are still some problems with Google Takeout:
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- All metadata is stripped from files during the archive process (information like the location, the camera used to take it, etc.) is scrubbed from the archive you download
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- The archive process can take a while, and will not always give you everything like it is supposed to (such as some missing content, and the inability to download Google Sites)
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- The archive process only gives you 7 days to download. If your account is over 1 terabyte (or requires more memory than you have left for the month) and you live with Comcast, this is simply impossible due to their 1 terabyte monthly datacap (data caps are a real problem)
The Google Graveyard (killedbygoogle.com) - a sorted list of the 224+ products Google has killed
Alphabet worker union - The new workers union at Google with over 800 members
Don't want to part with the dinosaur easter egg? This website has you covered
There are other alternates, just search for them.
Some fact checking is needed for this article. This article was rushed, and more info needs to be added.
File type: Markdown (*.md)
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All of my works are free from restrictions. DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is not present in any of my works. This project does not contain any DRM
This sticker is supported by the Free Software Foundation. I never intend to include DRM in my works.
Version 1 (Tuesday, February 23rd 2021 at 9:11 pm)
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