Privacy Matters: One step forward, two steps back
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Vivaldi’s CEO shares his thoughts on the rollback by US Congress of privacy regulations and why protecting our privacy on the web is more important than ever.
Click here to see the full blog post
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How is it in Norway? In Iceland?
Most of what we do go through the US, but doesn't Norway and Iceland have privacy issues too? -
@Kirikirasert : No issues here, as you can see:
World Happiness Report -
My rule #1 - don't use facebook, twitter or other social media, keep contact with people by e-mail or phone calls, or in person, maybe some chat client that is known to be not very popular.
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@TianlanSha It's not that easy, for example google is known for analysing all email you send/receive -- for targeted ads.
The pity is everyone who can do it -- does it. The ISPs are hungry for a piece of the cake, and before Obama's privacy regulation hit, they made damn sure that it won't go through. The problem is ISPs shouldn't be allowed to do it. They are mere service providers, and they charge you for it!!! They are different from other companies, you are really dependent on them. And as mentioned in the article, you often even have no choice but to stick with them, that's what makes it so ugly and wrong, even if their greed is understandable.
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Sad to see where the world is going. I'd bet my ass some of these congressman have some money invested in VPN companies
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What about open-sourcing Vivaldi if you guys really care about user privacy? advanced user be confidence if they can inspect the source code. (The distributed JS/HTML is not enough)
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@whizzwr: Salving user paranoia and respecting user privacy are unrelated issues.
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@duarte.framos Sounds crazy but I wouldn't even be surprised... lol
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@Ayespy I agree that making it legal for a provider to use and sell your private data is worse than not having access to the source code of the software of a company you trust. And I understand that there might be concerns for a company in a competitive market to publish their source code (while keeping it under copyright of course). But to call the desire for open source paranoid sounds not very diplomatic and claiming that that would be unrelated with privacy is not consensus exactly.
Still, I use Vivaldi because it trust the company and hope that the sync servers and the legal residency is and stays under the consumer friendlier European law. For me that is an important quality criterion.
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@whizzwr: The C++ code can be downloaded here.
The HTML/JS is just minified so quite sure lot of people have already checked it.
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@luetage Yes, as long as you use the internet you're being monitored. I use now Protonmail as my e-mail and maybe it does something, maybe it doesn't do anything, I was just sick of using Outlook and switched. I've never used GMail and don't plan to. And it has nothing to do with Google tracking, it's just that I don't like using it.
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@Saimondo: There's nothing about Vivaldi that can't be read by a person with the expertise. It's not a black box. Its two main ingredients are an open book and have already been made public by the company.
Factually, while "open source" has been a battle-cry for privacy advocates for some time now, the vast majority of people asking for it have no idea what it means or what they would do with it if they had it. "I'm not going to use this unless I get to read every line of the source code." "OK, there it is. What do you think?" "Uhhhhmmmm, I can't really tell what it says..." They just heard someone say "open source is more private" and jumped on the bandwagon. These same people use 3rd party security software, none of which is open source, and some of which phones home, and are none the wiser.
Yes, that's not terribly diplomatic. But it's true.
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@Ayespy -- Hmm. I'm commenting more on your general open-source remarks, not at all entering the eternal "OperaPresto / Vivaldi should be open-source" debate [which debate i choose to skirt with a very wide margin].
"the vast majority of people asking for it have no idea ... what they would do with it if they had it. ... "Uhhhhmmmm, I can't really tell what it says"..." --> I'm sorry, but here i believe your logic is faulty. I shall personalise this by using myself as the example. A few years ago i chose to leave Windoze after decades with it, for Linux. At the time, my reasons were primarily flexibility, customisability, reliability & stability. I was acutely conscious also of safety/privacy, but at that time that was still [slightly] secondary [back then, i used Win7, the Win10 downgrade still being a few months away].
As i learned more about my new Linux multiverse i became more & more impressed with its open-source philosophy & execution, wrt Kernels, OS's/distros & the vast GNU 3rd-Party pgm availability. Now I have no skill whatsoever for accessing OS/pgm source-code, reading it, & interpreting its efficacy & security. However i'm very comfortable that world-over there are gazillions of talented benevolent generous GNU-philosophy people capable & willing to do just that, freely post about it, & where desired for various reasons, even fork the original code off into a new branch, to attract other like-minded users. In this way I, & other inept but keen enthusiasts, derive the full benefit [utility AND security] of the open-source software, all with me not being able to read a single line of code.
Over this period MS's latest bid for world domination rolled out with the bulk Win10 downgrade, which i duly joined by converting my Win7... but now only in a VM Guest running in my Linux Host, not directly on "bare metal". Accompanying this i widely read the burgeoning web articles by people waaaaay cleverer than me, who uncovered the galling litany of privacy-theft measures built into Win10, & in many cases presented amelioration or even elimination workarounds. But i said "many", not "all", as not all of the invasions were able to be solved apparently. Of course with the OS being closed-source & proprietary, there is nil legal choice of someone forking the code & eliminating the problems. People's only choice is to either vote with their feet like i did, or embrace the Kubrickesque philosophy of "Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".
For me, the GNU vs closed-source paradigm dichotomy is stark, & i'm incredibly pleased i took the leap. I enjoy all the benefits despite not having the talent myself, because i can comfortably leverage off the very talented global community.
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Tower & Lappy = Maui Linux 17.03 x64 Plasma 5.9.3.
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- This is not a "roll back" of privacy regulations.
- Google, Apple, Bing (MS), Android, Firefox, and many others **already collect this info. Oh yea, Opera, too. I'm guessing that Vivaldi does as well via the search panel etc…
- This *only levels the playing field..
Mod Edit: Shouting removed.
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This post is deleted! -
@whizzwr: "open sourcing" has nothing to do with proving they care about user security. "Open Source" has failed. Have you looked at Firefox, lately?
Mod Edit: Shouting removed.
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@markljackson -- I have flagged this for moderation. Your anger & slander is inappropriate & unwelcome.
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@BenyaminL I guess for the negative and selfcentric boasting attitude.
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@Steffie: I take your point that you trust open source products because you trust those who get their internal workings. I, too, trust Vivaldi because I trust those who get its internal workings.