Apple is not a privacy hero

Many people believe Apple is a privacy hero. It’s surprising that a lot of people believe Apple really respects their privacy. For years, Apple has advertised about how it respects users and cares about their privacy and many people fell for their lie.

Apple is simply one of the worst companies when it comes to respecting people and users privacy. Apple doesn’t encrypt your data and when it does, it has full control over encrypted data and decrypts whatever it wants, but that’s not even the case.

Apple tracks users , collects personal information , stores sensitive and personal data, gives away every data it wants, targets people with advertisements and even uses human workers to listen to people’s conversations with Siri sound recordings.

Apple is no better than Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. What Apple does, is the same as what Google does but Apple does it in a fancy way and falsely advertises about its fake privacy practices.

Every Apple device and service is a violation of people’s privacy. Don’t listen to those who are hardcore Apple fans and want to reduce Apple’s privacy violation to service providing. Apple and every other major company can deliver service without tracking and storing people’s data.

Yes, to get maps and routes working, the device needs to track your location but the service provider doesn’t need to store this location data. If Apple respects people’s privacy, then it should stop storing data, or at least, at least store data anonymously without any piece of data that can be used to identify an individual personally.

There are ways to avoid Apple and Google. We can still buy phones that has no Google or other trackers in it or we can simply install custom Android distributions ourselves. Some like Replicant and LineageOS are freedom-respecting and privacy-focused.

Remember, Apple is no better than Google or other companies. Respect yourself and avoid it.

Lenovo releases first Fedora ThinkPad laptop

ThinkPad have been GNU+Linux users first choice for years and now Lenovo has released a ThinkPad with a ready-to-run GNU+Linux. And, not just any GNU+Linux, but Red Hat’s community’s, Fedora.

Red Hat Senior Software Engineering Manager Christian Schaller wrote:

This is a big milestone for us and for Lenovo as it’s the first time Fedora ships pre-installed on a laptop from a major vendor and it’s the first time the world’s largest laptop maker ships premium laptops with Linux directly to consumers. Currently, only the X1 Carbon is available, but more models are on the way and more geographies will get added too soon.

First in this new Linux-friendly lineup is the X1 Carbon Gen 8. It will be followed by forthcoming versions of the ThinkPad P1 Gen2 and ThinkPad P53. While ThinkPads are usually meant for business users, Lenovo will be happy to sell the Fedora-powered X1 Carbon to home users as well.

The new X1 Carbon runs Fedora Workstation 32. This cutting-edge Linux distribution uses the Linux Kernel 5.6. It includes WireGuard virtual private network (VPN) support and USB4 support. This Fedora version uses the new GNOME 3.36 for its default desktop.

I personally love Fedora. I’m currently a Trisquel user after I found out about Fedora’s discriminatory act (rule) but Fedora is actually one of the best.

Google is warning at least two Mastodon clients over user postings!

Two famous Mastodon clients, Subway Tooter and Fedilab reported that they’ve got warnings from Google over what their users have posted.

A Mastodon app does not host or promote any of the generated contents. It’s only used to connect to different instances. The responsibility of moderating resides with the server/instance the user is active in. Exactly like how web browsers work. A web browser is not responsible for what websites promote and doesn’t host their content. A web browser only shows those content.

So, unless Google removes Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Edge, and other web browsers because they may show sensitive contents such as racism or adult stuff, Google’s warnings are ridicules and out of line.

Also, I really suggest developers to publish their app on platforms like F-Droid instead of Google Play Store. F-Droid only hosts free software apps and is much safer and better than Google’s platform. The Mastodon client Fedilab is also accessible on F-Droid.

Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, directly!

The Register has reported that Google’s Chromium developers team has proposed a way to establish web applications direct network connections.

The Raw Sockets API, which may end up being renamed the Direct Sockets API, represents an attempt to give browser apps networking capabilities that aren’t possible via data transport options like HTTP, WebSockets and WebRTC. It essentially allows the browser to talk directly to devices and other computers via the network.

This can put web at huge security risks and can be used to heavily violate users’ privacy. Nothing can go wrong except for everything related to users’ security and choices over privacy.

I highly encourage you to get away from Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers that follow Google’s path.

Should we block ads?

Ad-blockers are technically filters. Just like how your email system or software filters spam email messages and only gives you the necessary ones, ad-blockers only give you the content you’re looking for, not the ads. But, something many people don’t know about is that ad-blockers don’t block all ads.

Ad-blockers are actually blocking those ads that violate your privacy and/or freedom. Well of course not all ad-blockers act like this but most famous ones only block trackers.

Web trackers are files and codes which try to follow (track) you online and build a profile upon your activity to show you more relevant (to your personality) ads. For example, if you start searching for a penguin using Google, after a while, you’ll see ads about penguins. Or start searching for a red scarf, and then penguins, you probably will see ads about a penguin wearing a red scarf!

Now, should we block ads?

Read more… “Should we block ads?”

Emotional decisions are mostly destructive

While ago, I wrote about how freedom of thought is more important than free software itself. I also mentioned that people should move forward step by step with patience.

Hasty and thoughtless decisions often have a devastating effect on that work. Specially when it comes to free software, many people get excited about new tools they see. They see logic in our conversations and, unfortunately, they want to make quick changes without addressing the principles.

Free software movement is heavily focused on principles of it. There is no software that can violate or give us freedom by itself. It’s people who violate the essential freedoms and/or make a free software. When a software, for whatever reason, fails to respect and comply with the four essential freedoms, it is called nonfree and proprietary software.

Now, if people understand the concept of software freedom and believe in the philosophy of the movement, we see less of these violations and a better community. Emotional and hurried decisions, most of the times, lead us to regret. I’ve seen many people who decided to stop using proprietary software and privacy-violating services and they regretted it after a while.

Most of the times it’s because they were unable to repeat the experience they had with proprietary programs they used to use. Every time a person decides to join us in the free software movement, I tell that person to be patient. I ask people to first study about the movement and try to understand every principle of software freedom and also free (as in freedom) culture.

Software freedom is more about principles of freedom and people/users’ rights than the software itself.

Let’s campaign for our (digital) rights

For many years, campaigning was the only option we had to defend our rights. Even today, when we want to raise our voice to show what we want, we campaign for or against stuff. For example, FSF is now campaigning against using proprietary software for education and wants schools to use free software instead, to protect students and defend their digital rights.

Well not every time we campaigned for something, we succeeded but at least many people heard our voice and started learning about what we said. Campaigning is still very important for advocacy. Individuals like me, can do nothing without the power of society joined together for a common interest.

In today’s world, many of our rights are being violated. Even those who believe that are supporting us sometimes do stuff we don’t expect at all. The 16th anniversary of OpenStreetMap was celebrated at an online Zoom conference. We know for a fact that Zoom has serious problems over security and is a proprietary software.

Now, as a user of OSM, if I protest against it, nothing would happen as I would be considered an individual who doesn’t like Zoom. But if we campaign against it, the anniversary holders will realize that what we’re talking about is a matter of public interest of OSM users.

Joining the campaigns that defend our rights is very important. In many ways, campaigning is the only way that can support our belief and rights. For example, while ago, ICANN was giving the .org registry control to a private firm, which EFF campaigned against. The results were great. ICANN canceled it because it realized that people are highly disappointed. Now, PIR (Public Internet Registry which is a nonproft) is still in control of .org domain extension.

Now, our problem is that many people don’t participate in a campaign because they see a large group of people were already joined. We should know that no number is considered enough when we campaign. The amount of people who join the campaign shows the power of that statement people are campaigning for.

Sadly, many people don’t bother to take few minutes and signing a campaign which they know is for their own benefit. It is very wrong. As I said, more people joining the campaign, more power the campaign gains to defend its goal.

Please join the campaigns that defend your rights because they are not worthless. In fact, they did a lot of things for our own good and they are still powerful to defend us. Campaigning is still important and useful in many ways. Let’s campaign for our rights again.

Freedom of thought is more important that freedom of software

It’s been quite some time that I’m active in promoting software freedom and free culture movement. In all these years that I’ve been active, I saw many people that use free software because they are excited about it. They are trying something new (for them) and they are interested in finding every aspect of it.

However, when I talk about software freedom to somebody and that person decides to immediately delete his Google (and other proprietary) accounts, services, and programs, I ask for patience and tell that person to not hurry. I tell those who make emotional and hurried decisions not to move fast and to move forward step by step with patience.

I believe, freedom of thought is much more important than using free software.

A free-thinking person makes decisions not out of temporary feelings but out of study and awareness. That person weighs the consequences of each action and chooses tools not on the basis of emotion, but on the basis of its long-term impact on himself and society.

A free-thinking person cares about free software because that person is deeply aware of his rights and responsibilities.

Instant decisions often lead to short-term use and boredom, while informing people and giving freedom of thought to people leads to the right choice and development of software and culture freedom movement.