For reasons that boggle my mind, I am required to keep a Google account for work (ties into some proprietary software the company uses)

Earlier today, I got the following -

Yes, I’m certain people under the age of 16 are known for their use of very specific EHR software that requires professional license to subscribe to in the first place. Makes perfect sense.

Anyone else get one of these “for you protection” msgs from Big evil?

    • SuspciousCarrot78@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 hours ago

      I dunno how GOOD / broad peertube is, but I’ll tell you two things -

      1. I got the “we’ve restricted your account to age appropriate content for your safety” message today while browsing YouTube with the kids (admittedly, using Firefox, not my usual SmartTube or PipePipe, which I think bypass that).

      2. I’ve already specced out the Youtube replacement stack for myself.

      • Nova Player (plug hard drive into router, install Nova Player on Android device, boom - all my media with a nice front end. Easier than Jellyfin, not as slick, does the job)
      • 1337x.to (I’m sure I have no idea what that is) + WinSCP (to transfer files). Again, not as slick as my older *arr stack, but that broke when the Rpi4 died and ICBF fixing it right now. (Yes, I know Debride, Streamio etc).
      • Nebula (follow my favourite youtubers and give them actual cash money? Why not.)
      • Hoopla (streaming audio books, movies, tv via Library)
      • Tubi (ad hoc, sometimes trash, sometimes amusing :)
      • Grapplers Guide (jiujitsu stuff)
      • ABC Iview (local content, kids shows etc)

      Fuck it…if someone can tell of a GOOD cloud replacement for Google Drive (which work lumped me with) that I don’t have to self host, I’m all ears. I’ll pull the fucking plug myself. Come to think of it…I have a Proton mail…how’s the cloud drive on that? I’d heard Proton was in the shit for various reasons.

  • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    Ai generate an adult face, display it on a display, point camera at it, “selfie”, ???, profit

    Scratch that. Draw a face. See if that works. I bet you could draw a face well enough to fool the detection software.

    • SuspciousCarrot78@lemmy.worldOP
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      Oh for sure I could…but should I have to?

      The whole thing is bass-ackwards.

      I reckon I’ll just leave it and see what happens. If it shits itself - awesome. Business case then and there for ditching big Evil.

      We don’t need this shit, no one asked us our opinion on using it, it just … “became a requirement to have a Google account” one day.

      • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        Oh absolutely not… yeah no, don’t comply with that by any means, and encourage everybody else not to, too. I’m all for good progress and love tech, but I love it in a "it should serve us way, not the other way around.

  • Gutek8134@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Personalized ads are off
    Timeline is off

    I see this as an absolute win, keep not knowing my age!

    • kyub@discuss.tchncs.de
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      Data gathering and analysis is still happening in the background. They just won’t show you these 2 things in the frontend.

    • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Right. Safe Search doesn’t matter because Google Search has been outclassed for a while now. There’s no drawbacks… other than the fact that apparently OP gets told about this every single day.

      • SuspciousCarrot78@lemmy.worldOP
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        2 days ago

        Really? That’s… astonishing.

        You know what? I hope they do that. So long as they give fair warning, so I don’t rock up to work one day and no longer have access to work files / OAuth / 2FA without warning.

        They send an email, I can escalate. Not my problem then.

      • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
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        2 days ago

        is this true? i think i have some few old google accounts i used to use, guess i should see if i can login and backup some data if there’s any left…

    • Anna@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      That one Tech support who downvoted you. I mean yes it’s a headache for them but they should also make sure to have backup options for BYOD or whatever the f is in this case

  • SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    At least here in Canada it is illegal to share employees personal information without their consent, and I don’t consent to giving my id to anyone. They can’t fire you for not consenting. We can’t do business with any company that does their customer support through Discord as a result. Discord fucked themselves so hard in the corporate world. If it requires personal id EU can’t do business on it.

      • SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev
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        21 hours ago

        The responsibility of government is split between the federal government and the provinces. The conmen and postmedia have convinced you that the prime minister, the leader of the ruling part, is the President. We don’t have a President. Everything they have told you to get mad at Trudeau for was probably a responsibility of the province, and you fell for it. Labour, Education, and Healthcare are all responsibilities of the provinces. Next time you make a comment at least do the research and understand what you are saying.

        • CurbCuts@lemmy.ca
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          18 hours ago

          The Privacy Act and The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) are Federal. Carny has shown he is willing to trample on our rights and is pushing for a majority to make future attempts easier.

          Being critical of Carney is not an endorcsment of PP. Holding Carney accountable won’t put PP into power.

          Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of Trudeau by the end but still better then Harper, PP or Carney.

          • SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev
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            6 hours ago

            It’s specifically a labour law that regulates employers. In Quebec it is Law 25. So I guess get mad at François Lagault? This was an easy 20 second Google search to know the answer. People constantly say epically stupid shit to me that could be prevented by a 20 second Google search. Stop being that person.

    • zerobot@lemmy.wtf
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      2 days ago

      it could be passed down from your parents, fairly common to register emails for your unborn children, otherwise the cool ones might be taken by the time they are concieved and in need of an email. personally, i have reserved emails for many generations to come, my eventual grandchildren will have dope emails

  • atropa@piefed.social
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    2 days ago

    Google tried for 3 months to get me to respond to their mail messages every day, now 1 year later I am glad I took the step to degoogle.

    As a search engine I usually use No Ai DDG, searX,swiss cows,startpage. Browser is vanadium, ironfox,cromite on phone .

    Librewolf or zen on linux laptop.

    Filen as cloud storage.

    Posteo.com as a mail provider

    • Cranjis_McBasketball@piefed.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m de-Googling right now, and I’m trying out Kagi for search. It’s paid, but so far I’m liking it. No ads, and very customizable in that you can boost or lower results from specific sites, among other things.

      • versionc@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Something to keep in mind is that Kagi is sponsoring Russia’s war against Ukraine through their business with Yandex.

      • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Honest question: if you’re paying for Kagi, how is that different than using a credit card for verification with Google. It would seem to me that you’re willingly connecting your identity in either case. Maybe i’m wrong.

        • Cranjis_McBasketball@piefed.world
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          2 days ago

          Cheat code: Have your employer pay for it. ;)

          A more serious answer is, you could use an anonymous payment card, or apparently crypto as well, if that’s your threat model. I’m not looking for total anonymity, but theoretically paying for the service means you are a customer and not the product. No ads/paid search rankings, no tracking, no selling your data to third parties. Yes, I do use uBlock Origin, I could block ads on DDG or whatever, but that doesn’t seem like a sustainable business model. I’m kinda rethinking the services I use and how much they are worth to me. I’m not here to sell you on it, I’m on day two of my Kagi subscription, but so far I like what I see.

          Edit: I don’t think I really answered your question. Kagi isn’t in a position to be an identity verifier, and it doesn’t look like they have any interest or requirement to do that. It is looking more and more like Google/Meta/et al will be policing the Internet, and I just want no part of it. Google will absolutely sell your data to third parties. Kagi says they will never do so. I don’t know how they’d prove that, but I hope they are true to their word.

          • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            I’m a proponent of privacy for the sake of privacy and as a right. Anonymity is the only way to ensure privacy. Seeking privacy does not inherently imply nefarious intent (not that you explicitly said it does). Sounds like Kagi wouldn’t be a good choice for me. And that’s OK. Thanks for answering my Q!

            • Cranjis_McBasketball@piefed.world
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              2 days ago

              I added some more context in an edit to my comment.

              I agree with you about privacy being a right. It’s extremely difficult to have 100% anonymity, and I think that’s part of the calculus when deciding who we trust our data with. Google 100% already knows my identity, and therefore they shouldn’t need to collect any further identity verification documents “papers, please”-style. Maybe it’s more of a protest on my part, and I’m sure it’ll be just as effective as one, but I don’t want to participate in this identity police crap.

              • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Thanks for the heads up about the edit.

                Certainly 100% anonymity isnt possible, even with a VPN. Best practice is always dont do anything online that you wouldnt want attached to your real identity/life.

                • Cranjis_McBasketball@piefed.world
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                  2 days ago

                  It sucks, there’s inherently a trade-off between anonymity and participating on the Internet. Here’s my step-by-step plan to staying anonymous on the Internet:

                  • Acquire a Thinkpad T480 with cash. Meet somewhere without cameras. Don’t drive past traffic or Flock or Ring cameras on the way. Leave your phone at home.
                  • Flash libreboot, install Qubes OS
                  • Spoof your Wi-Fi adapter MAC address
                  • Crack your neighbor’s Wi-Fi password
                  • Operate over TOR to exploit machines and build a botnet around the world under different jurisdictions
                  • Be active during set hours to appear as if you operate in a different region
                  • Build proxychains across your botnet
                  • Don’t do anything at all on the Internet because everything now requires an account and identity
                  • Go outside and touch grass

                  Edit: I don’t know how to format.

      • atropa@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        Good luck on your degoogle journey, transfer gmail account piece by piece to new provider and test every login, Don’t do it automatically

        • Cranjis_McBasketball@piefed.world
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          2 days ago

          Thank you. It’s a long process to migrate all these accounts, I have hundreds of accounts listed in Bitwarden, and I’m going through them one at a time. I’m moving my email to my own domain that I’ve had email hosting setup on for a while now. At least I shouldn’t need to do this again as I “own” the domain.

        • quips@slrpnk.net
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          2 days ago

          I mean to be real, every search engine in the world has or will implement an AI quick search feature.

          I feel so bad for ddg getting absolutely reamed for simply trying to innovate. They have one of the best most private ai implementations yet, and for that innovation they got nothing but hate.

          If you don’t like quick search whatever, but ddg’s implementation of it is great.

  • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I hate that we live in a world where a selfie is now an official form of ID. My bank wanted one the other day to use their app so I just deleted it lol, get fucked

  • drolex@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    Since porno sites are limited to 18+ people, I suggest you could authenticate yourself by providing the link to a very specific type of videos

  • racoon@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    My work Microsoft profile as a civil servant in an American subject estate in Europe doesn’t require these documents. I gather my employer is swiftly providing them in my stead at the double

    • HawtP0tat0@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      As an American sysadmin that mainly works in a mainly google house, there is literally just a checkbox that says ‘The users in this OU are 18+’. Can’t say for MS though.

  • durinn@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    I’m so sorry. :(

    My workplace hasn’t forces Big Evil upon us yet, but I think it’s just a matter of time. Whenever that happens, I’ll buy the cheapest off brand phone for that purpose.

  • ExtremeDullard@piefed.social
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    2 days ago

    Speaking of Google: has anybody noticed how unbearably slow Google sites are lately?

    I almost never use Google search anymore. But I hit it the other day because I couldn’t find some really obscure kernel error message, and the damn thing froze Firefox. And it did so repeatedly and consistently after restarting the browser, until I killed almost all Google scripts in uBO.

    The same “experience” can be felt on any Google site, like Map.

    • chunes@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’ve heard they intentionally ruin the experience for Firefox users, but my canon is that google engineers are simply incompetent. If they want to prove me wrong, they can fix it.

      • promitheas@programming.dev
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        2 days ago

        YouTube definitely does that. Im on Brave, been for years, and in the past year clicking on videos makes them load with several seconds delay, with a popup in the bottom left along the lines of “Experiencing interruptions? Find out why” and the help page it takes you to if you click it, basically gives the default reasons of “youre internet may be slow”, but IIRC it also includes the reason that you are using ad blocking scripts