this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Mozilla’s Annual Consumer Creep-O-Meter distills what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s just plain creepy in the world of consumer tech.

Includes 'big picture trends', 'best and worst products', and 'numbers'

If you haven't used PrivacyNotIncluded before, here is a link to the homepage where you can search up other products and services that you are interested in: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Seems like a weird and random assortment of items. Why was Google Hangouts mentioned, but not Gmail? What about Discord, Slack, etc? Or smart TVs? Almost felt more like guerrilla advertising for a few niche products.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's a short fun quiz that's meant to direct your attention to the actual tool (https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded) which has a lot more stuff. The key bit on this page is the summary underneath

You can find the rest of the video call services here: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/video-call-apps/

They have sections for smart home products and entertainment, but no smartTVs yet. Would be a cool category to request

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh. That's not clear at all; I don't even remember seeing a reference to a tool.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

The tool is the site itself, I guess they could have included a link back

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded

It's also on me since I got to the article from the site, so maybe they assumed users would have done the same

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hangouts was an odd choice. Didn't that get shut down recently?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, I'll be damned. It's still in the play store.

Is it just for workspaces or something? I would have sworn they shut it down.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I saw discord in there as well as smart TV platforms

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Oh interesting; I wonder if the quiz just chooses a random assortment of a big list of tools?

[–] Baku 4 points 1 year ago

I was thinking the same thing. Apparently I'm "off the grid" because the only thing they listed that I use is telegram

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

BetterHelp is probably still violating US federal medical-privacy law.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

BetterHelp has partnered with the Israel government

I offer no commentary on the war but that's pretty... weird..

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Don't worry, if you're an Israeli citizen and you told your therapist at BetterHelp that you might not support the government they'll kindly inform the government to help make you understand that what they're doing right now is for the best of you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/ftc-ban-betterhelp-revealing-consumers-data-including-sensitive-mental-health-information-facebook

FTC to Ban BetterHelp from Revealing Consumers’ Data, Including Sensitive Mental Health Information, to Facebook and Others for Targeted Advertising

I've also heard that the therapy they provide is mediocre, from friends more involved with mental health stuff

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

NASCAR drivers don't drive for Uber.

Why would top-notch therapists side-hussle for Better help? It's the Cameo of mental health

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Um... the page literally asks me to enter my email address so my privacy can be protected? WTF?

Hows about no, I don't enter my email, and you just let me read episodes of the newsletter on a webpage? That would protect my privacy.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

As the other comment thread says, you can just click no

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

but its mozilla

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huh, it thinks I'm off the grid because all my horrible privacy invading gear is Google, Samsung, and Philips.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The tool itself is decent. I think the quiz is broken lol

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Having to put my email address in after clicking on the products I own to see how bad they are for my privacy is irony in the extreme!

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can skip it. Read things carefully 🙃

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Indeed they can skip it, but it's still ironic because it's still creepy to ask before giving the results.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Not when the text says "hey, do you want to share your email?" and there's a big button that says "no, just take me to my results"

This stupid shit is the reason we need warning labels on things. They're not there to protect the idiots that drink bleach to get rid of covid, they're there because idiots will drink bleach anyway then blame Clorox for not having the label they wouldn't have read anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

That's for the newsletter, which is separate from the results

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

There’s a button to skip to results!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I guess the emoji were there to set the proper mood, which they succeeded in, as the most horrifying thing about that article definitely was the abhorrent use of emoji.

Closely followed by me not being able to tick a single product in their quiz and getting a "perfect score" while using Discord, of all things, as primary messenger....

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I noticed that devs really love to put emojis on everything.

Must be a correlation.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Neat, says I'm off the grid, I'm a bit shocked after clicking like 6 things but hey.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Out of curiosity, which ones did you go with? Since I only picked a smaller handful

The quiz is more just for fun, but it looks like they mixed a few of the best with a few of the worst. So if we pick only from the good pile, I guess we get a nice score

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I half expected them to absolutely rip into the Apple Watch. Instead, a lot of other smart watches and fitness trackers that are a lot higher on the big list, and the top two things in this list that I have are... WhatsApp and Discord. Figures, those are the two I'd be most happy to get rid of for good (though Discord a lot more than WhatsApp).

Also holy shit the state of car privacy is bad.

Cool site! Subscribed to the newsletter.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe the Apple Watch is far better for privacy than Fitbits are. Health data is end to end encrypted on Apple watches. Fitbit requires you to sync things with their cloud services and they have access to all of the data AFAIK.

[–] Baku 2 points 1 year ago

Also Fitbit is owned by Google now and if you created an account afterwards, everything is tied to your Google account. Which is a yikes

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How in the world could all of these products have good privacy? https://i.imgur.com/1NdcB5y.png

https://i.imgur.com/fKJ9OV1.png

There's no way lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yea I'm starting to think the quiz is broken lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Guess they should have hired me one of the 3 times I applied to Mozilla, smh.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It is because nobody uses Google Hangouts

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just looked for e-readers, but they seem to only check privacy policies, no logging of traffic, no nmap, no look into the system, nothing?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Nissan thing was recently clarified by Louis Rossmann as accidental misinformation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

He says to dont trust him.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting read! I signed up for the Newsletter. The eyeballs following where my thumb touches on my screen is definitely surprising though I guess it shouldn't be that surprised.

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