Feel really guilty, my one family member gave me this. I don’t use much google stuff anymore and I really dislike the company as it gets more intrusive. Is there anything I can do with this thing besides give it away? Nothing is worse than getting a gift that you can’t use.
Just sell it online and be honest when asked. Gifting culture is too guilt based, just do the sensible thing and plow through that ridiculous social barrier like a bulldozer.
Yeah. I already informed them I don’t feel comfortable with it in the house. But I’m also the type to use TOR on all my devices. So I don’t know how paranoid that came off as.
I think I am going to try to trace down where they got it from. I’m thinking Walmart so, they may take it without a receipt I hope.
Best to sell it. Since you use Tor you’re probably already on a watchlist
I’ve heard this a lot - is it just a common joke in privacy circles, or is anyone using Tor/Tails actually likely to be on a list?
Its pretty likely to be the case, using tor makes you stand out significantly.
I don’t really know what I’m talking about tbh, but my understanding is the more unique you make yourself, the easier you are to identify. For example, as soon as you use an ad blocker, your browser fingerprint becomes more unique because your average person doesn’t use an ad blocker. Even fewer people use Tor. So if someone knows you are using Tor, then they know you are 1 of maybe 100,000 people instead of millions (idk if those numbers are accurate, but you get the point).
That being said, Tor does do a pretty good job of making you blend into all the other Tor users.
But what I was talking about initially was mostly your ISP identifying your Tor traffic. So you use a VPN, but again you are now more unique than someone not using a VPN, even if your traffic is more encrypted.
How so?
The Snowden leaks revealed that simply subscribing to Linux Journal was enough to put you in a list for enhanced monitoring.
Well. Shit
Didn’t you know? Only criminals use Tor! \s
I just prefer it to not get pre-aggrigated results.
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The thing with gifts is to thank them for their intent, even if you tell them why you’re not going to keep the item.
If you don’t succeed in returning it, you might also consider giving it to someone with a movement disability, for whom the assistance might outweigh the privacy issue.
They are fantastic for the disabled. Everyone I know whonis disabled has the Amazon ones for some reason.
There is a stereo microphone and a camera in that thing. What good would Tor do in that case? That data would still make its way to google, unless you can root the whole thing and put a custom OS on it.
I’m not running TOR on the nest. That would be dumb. I’m mentioning this is coming from a whole other end of technology. I like privacy. Google is not very private.
oh ok i thought you were considering tunneling that things traffic through tor somehow
No, because the data would still need to find a way to google services
They have microphones. They don’t have cameras.
Oh i thought it did the motion recognition with a camera, but it actually uses a type of radar.
https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/10388741?hl=en
I don’t know if that’s better or worse