Jan-Lukas Else

Thoughts of an IT expert

Tags: Privacy


The Circle

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Some years ago, I started reading the novel “The Circle” by Dave Eggers. I never finished reading it, but today I watched the movie. It has an important message about privacy, transparency and surveillance and shows that there’s a thin line in between. I can definitely recommend watching it, although I sometimes wasn’t impressed by the acting.

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Promoting the use of Tor

Published on in ✍️ Posts

You might have discovered two new links in the footer of my blog or homepage. “🔓 Connect via Tor.” and “What is Tor?”. I now try to promote the use of Tor with GoBlog.

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How data protection should happen

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Today I got an email that read something like this:

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“A Day in the Life of Your Data”

Published on in 🔗 Links

Honestly, I don’t quite believe Apple is that altruistic and actually cares about the privacy of their customers and users, rather I think it’s driven by a desire for even more profits. Apple has jumped on the privacy bandwagon because it’s financially rewarding.

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WhatsApp drama

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Right now, there’s drama because WhatsApp is changing its terms of service and wants to share even more data with Facebook (at least from users outside the EU).

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“My Adventures in Leaving Big Tech – A Status Update”

Published on in 🔗 Links

Chris Wiegman shared a status update about his journey to replace big tech with small tech.

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I deleted my Instagram account

Published on in ✍️ Posts

Today I finally deleted my Instagram account, or rather initiated a deletion for 30 days. Yesterday evening I started a data export, today I was able to download a ZIP file with all my data from Instagram, including all photos, likes, comments and stuff like that. So if I think of something important, I can still pull the data from the archive.

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“Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal”

Published on in 🔗 Links

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some good arguments against selling your privacy, a so called “data dividend” or “pay-for-privacy”.

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My thoughts on Cloudflare Web Analytics

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Cloudflare currently celebrate their 10th birthday and launch a new product or feature everyday for a week. Today they launched Cloudflare Web Analytics. Until now you had to proxy your site through Cloudflare to use their analytics, because they collected those stats – “at the edge” – on their servers. But now they are adding an JavaScript-based option, similar to Google Analytics and all the new privacy-focused analytics services like GoatCounter and Plausible. But like GoatCounter and Plausible and unlike Google, they promise privacy, because they don’t make their money tracking users, but selling products (that aren’t users) – at least that’s what they say in the announcement post on their blog:

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Nothing to hide

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Tonight I spoke with my girlfriend on the phone and we talked for two hours about all kinds of topics. One topic was that I don’t think corona tracking apps, where the data is stored centrally, are a good idea because of privacy and stuff. My girlfriend, on the other hand, said why is privacy important at all? The argument that nobody needs to know what I do with whom, when, where and for how long was not convincing to her. She said that I track my runs via GPS anyway. And she asked who would be interested in your data if you are not famous or something?

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Jan-Lukas Else