irotsoma

...worse for users. Better for them...in the shirt term. That's the real issue. Short term Profit overrules everything in modern corporations.

One of the main reasons I moved to GrapheneOS was to avoid the impending push for Gemini to be everywhere and I don't trust Google not to use some subset of my data by not making a setting for it and not making it clear that it's being used. They started doing that in way too many places the last several years.

If it is a pay once and you own it kind of thing and never requires internet access for anything, then you may be able to back IP the all and use it later. But most games have some online component that requires a periodic login to use. Same goes for a lot if software on desktops, though.

There are many places that have those rules as I mentioned. For private property, it's not uncommon, but mostly only in secure locations that you buy tickets or otherwise pay or that have other restrictions to enter. Especially artistic venues where artists don't want their works recorded. This is mostly for protecting financial interests over privacy, though. It's not common for stores, gyms, and other locations that are open to the public, even if on private property, where taking photos isn't a financial concern of the location. That's pretty rare because it was too difficult to convince people to leave behind their phones or trust a worker to keep track of who's phone is whose, so it kept people from coming to those places. Instead people often voluntarily keep their phones secure in lockers or keep them in their pockets or otherwise don't take them out in plain view due to social pressure for privacy, especially in public showers, bathrooms, and changing rooms which were the places some politicians insisted it would end up being a major issue without laws.

Lifetime never means your lifetime. It's the lifetime if the offer or if you're lucky, the current ownership of the company. I've always weighed them as, is this cost significantly less than the cost of the product over the amount of time I think the product might be useful to me and the development of the product is likely to stay on track.

I have one for Plex that I got very early on and was well worth it even though I'm moving away from Plex. And one for 1TB of storage on rsync.net which will pay for itself in 5 years and hopefully will survive for another 5 after that at least for me to consider it more than worth it. After that it's all bonus. I don't expect it to be around in 20 years or for it to be worth nearly as much then either as storage needs grow and costs shrink. But when I got it a couple of years ago I deemed it worth the gamble.

That's cool. I wish there were alternatives in the US. The banking apps seem to have all removed their tap to pay features even. I don't want something like Curve that sells your purchase history in exchange for a few features. I just don't want to carry a wallet just for credit cards anymore.

Yeah there's a lot that apps are doing to uniquely identify you. Not just the apps themselves, but the advertising systems and unfortunately, the telemetry systems which were originally meant only for tracking errors and how apps are used so they could be improved. And often you can't block those systems without blocking the app from working, usually by design, but sometimes more because developers don't understand how their customers' data is at risk by using those systems. Often because their told it's not used that way, but actually is, just in a convoluted way so it's technically true. It's quite confusing as someone who used to develop apps myself.

I don't think it's a big deal most of the time if in public. And private places are always allowed to ban cameras. If you ban smart glasses because of the camera, then you have to ban phones and that was tried and failed in most places. And banning cameras in public or requiring a license to carry one would be a huge hit to freedom overall. All of those things were already tried when portable cameras and then cell phones with cameras were new if you want to research why.

The idea is to allow social pressures to deal with these things. And most of the imagined problems never actually pop up. Like there wasn't much of a significant increase in illicit photography in changing rooms when cell phones were allowed. The only difference here is that the smart glasses may end up being difficult to differentiate from ordinary glasses eventually. But companies like putting their brands on things, so that may not end up being an issue.

And there have been illicit versions of these things for ages and that isn't going to go away just because it's illegal to wear it. It's already illegal to do a lot of the things people are using them for that you're likely worried about. Having an additional law for possession is not going to change that very much and definitely won't balance out the harm caused by disallowing all cameras in public.

Only because you are the product with the others, pr your information anyway. Without selling that info, they need to do a lot to make up the lost profit. Assuming this is real and not just a sting op or something.

I'd guess they would give the data to government agencies as it comes in through backdoors that most communication companies have these days. Likely they just don't store the data for future requests and don't have your data stored to sell. That's about the only way I could see it working without them getting shut down.

But that's assuming they're being truthful at all. Only way to be confident would be if someone can trace the money used to make the company to see what their possible business plans are and wait and see. Based on the current government, I'd be more likely yo assume they're actually just a government agency doing a sting operation for which they aren't legally required to tell any truth at all, but time will tell.

Well, they have to be accused of something to be detained. Immigration violations of some types don't get a court hearing to be "convicted" of those violations by a judge by default.

What kind of device are you using? There was recently there was a leak that Meta is using technology to have web browsers talk to the Facebook and Instagram apps on your phone without your permission and link your identity to every website you visit that has any Meta plugins. I'm sure other companies are doing the same or similar like Amazon and Google. I've been using GrapheneOS on my Android Pixel phone which isolates apps. There are other ways to do this as well if your phone is unlockable. And I use IronFox web browser wherever possible to reduce the capabilities of the browser to do things without my knowledge. And use ReThink and a pihole to reduce the cross site communication where possible. I also left all Meta platforms, but still am migrating away from Google, Amazon, and some other platforms. And make sure your advertising ID is disabled at the OS level.

Those are where I've found most of the targeted ads were coming from. Not from the IP address alone.