Comment by rufugee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rufugee | Hacker News Reader

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As a long time Linux user and a long time Google product user, I'd be willing to go all in on Apple if:

  * They were truly, actively committed to defending a user's privacy.

  * They allowed using your own domains (I currently have around 30 domains pointed to the same GMail account).

If both of the above were true, I'd ditch my Cyanogenmod-running HTC One M8 and buy an iPhone today. My privacy is worth more to me than the ability to install whatever music player, keyboard, etc that I want or drop to a command line (though I do love having that ability and would miss it).

Nope. Just nope. I'll stick with choice and privacy over promises of privacy by a for-profit.

You really think you get privacy with Android? Have you ever monitored outbound connections on your device? There's a LOT of activity there. Even with Cyanogenmod's Privacy Guard, which at least improves the Android permissions debacle.

Combine that with GMail. I pay for the business version, yet the privacy policy is still hard to understand and I still get suspicious ads popping up which seem to have come from no where else but my email. Could be wrong, but it's uncanny.

I have a hard time trusting Google.

It doesn't matter whether it's open source or closed source, non-profit or for-profit. If it's made by a company headquartered in the US, there's no escaping a national security letter with a gag order. Anything within Five Eyes (AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US) jurisdiction (such as Ubuntu) is probably not much safer. We really need a new Linux distribution headquartered in a safe jurisdiction.

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