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Comment by tomphoolery | Hacker News Reader

Is signing up for an account really that big of a deal to you?

Pinterest and Twitter really bug me. I usually hit Pinterest when doing a google image search looking for a product page to buy something. By hitting Pinterest I'm clicking through to the product page (which I would have preferred if that was my result instead), so it's not much different to me than blogspam. I really liked the idea of Pinterest and could see myself browsing and maybe eventually creating one, but the casual experience is so user-hostile I avoid it.

Twitter has been similar because their landing page has been useless (when not logged in) and no search box. Usually I hear about a tweet I want to see for myself. I'll go to twitter.com, then leave and go to Google to search for it. Looking now twitter.com has changed dramatically and now has a search box.

I, like most people, are lurkers and consumers. I lurked here for awhile and I lurk in a lot of communities. At some point I may sign up and contribute, but if my lurking experience is terrible I won't make it that far. I realize this isn't what companies want, and I guess I'm not the "normal" use-case because if I was they wouldn't have anybody sign up. I have a Twitter account, but don't see the value in signing in on every device for my casual use.

You can use Twitter's website to search Twitter without being logged in.

Go to

https://twitter.com/search

You are only proving @pfranz's point. There's no search bar, there isn't even a "Search" link on the home page.

One would be encouraged to think they are doing this on purpose.

Each user will have their own reasons, but if it's a big enough deal that websites will try to strongarm users into signing up then I believe it's likely a big enough deal for users as well.

Did you even read the post? This is about avoiding tracking. And yes, signing up for accounts can be grueling. Try making a google account without submitting a blood sample.

Wat? It's been years since I created my "real" Google account, so I just created "fakeasdlkvjasklfvjasdkljfgasdf@gmail.com" out of curiosity.

It literally took 20 seconds, with a fake name and birthday. There are form fields for your phone number and alternate email address, but you can leave them blank.

Can you create a new account on every visit? If not you essentially volunteered to uniquely identify yourself.

Whether you want to opt out of tracking is irrelevant to the BS claim that it's difficult to create a google account. StevePerkins was specifically responding to the difficulty claim.

bugmenot.com still works. Although an even better solution would be a browser plugin or add-on that, with one click, creates and logs in via a fake account populated with fake, throwaway info, changing every time you visit the site. Don't just avoid tracking, poison it. I'd help fund that kickstarter.

potentially related, Marlinspike's Google Sharing: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/googlesharing-a...

Even if you did that I think there are a lot of ways to identify you, using everything from your browsing patterns -- what sites, when and for how long -- to even just the account creation process itself; you'll still need to complete the captcha and with the "click all images that match" captchas that Google is currently using on reCAPTCHA (which btw was quite a bait-and-switch; they originally got a lot of people to use reCAPTCHA because the original purpose was to help book scanning, "read books, stop spam", remember?) as far as I've come to understand continuously sends your cursor position to Google servers, and with the movement data and the order and the timing that you press the images I would not be surprised if there was a pattern that uniquely identified you there.

Likewise websites that stream your input key by key instead of submitting the text when you press the submit button should in theory be able to easily identify you by the timing of your keypresses. I've only heard of a couple of instances of sending keys as-you-type but I think that if someone made the kind of project you spoke of above, then we would start seeing more tactics like the kinds I mention in order to counter that.

Even if you then proceed to disable JavaScript globally and only browse the web in 1.0 style with user-initiated GET and POST, the way that you write has some uniqueness to it that might be possible to identify.

I think it you want to make browsing data completely anonymous you're going to have to download a snapshot of the internet and unplug your connection. Unfortunately, that's really not the user experience most people want.

Or prevent a chunk of the Internet pages from abusing JavaScript, then use proxies such as Tor.

There's a chrome extension trying to do just that, hopefully it will ported to other browsers.

>> Kill Analytics[1] is a chrome extension that runs in the background while you use the web.

When you visit a website, it sends a little extra data to the server which breaks that site's Web Analytics. <<

[1]: https://hello-kill.github.io/

It has November 1st, 2016 as the release date but I can't find the extension anywhere.

Just tried this (again) and it does require me to enter a phone number.

See here: http://i.imgur.com/LFZjcvG.png

I used to think it was dependent on the IP from which you register, like whether it was a home connection or something shared with many people (like in a train or café), when obviously you'd want to use the latter (and definitely not the IP from which you've been mainly accessing your main Google account for years).

But this time I did try it from my home connection, which is in the Netherlands (though I selected "Germany" for my home country because Fravia+ has taught me well).

I wonder what makes the difference. Maybe if I had a US-based IP? Could be something with EU privacy laws. It should just clearly tell me, though.

Now, I won't whine about it when Google doesn't want to give me something for free. I will, however, whine about it when Google pretends I should hand over the thing it wants at no cost but for my own benefit. I will also whine about it when it purposefully obfuscates the cost/benefits and leaves me guessing like this. If it's a trade it wants, either be upfront about it, or be shady business.

A blood sample? The only fields they ask for that might be too much for someone is a phone number and prior email, and neither is required to make an account.

I take my privacy very seriously and understand a lot of the apprehension about Google's tracking, but I think you are being a little ridiculous.

I've never been able to sign-up for a google account without entering a valid phone number. Even typing 555-5555 it will state it needs a valid phone number.

I had thought this was the case as well, but just tried signing up for a throwaway google account from the US browser homepage and it seemed to go through without a phone number or alternative email.

It probably depends on your IP address and how many accounts were registered using it (if your ISP uses NAT then many users share a single address) and maybe other factors like country etc.

From Dubai. Didn't need to enter a phone number or a recovery email to create an account

You "can" sign up for gmail without a phone number (iirc it's fairly difficult, and you need to do something like use a fresh install of an android device or something to trigger the right sequence of dialogues). However if you try to use that account outside of the device, they will soon (within a couple of logins) ask you for a phone number for "security purposes," - the dialogue says something like "there is something suspicious about this login" at which point your account is linked to whatever other accounts have your phone number (unless you have an unlimited supply of burner phones). - Note that I am remembering this from when I tried specifically to create an unlinked gmail account around nov 2015-jan 2016 (I used a formatted nexus 7 to do it), so things may have changed, maybe details are slightly off from memory.

(For those who are saying it is possible, they might already know who you are based on browser cache, ip etc. Try it in incognito on a vpn. I get this: http://imgur.com/a/Y5Cxq

That's probably the result of using a VPN. Google undoubtedly knows that lots of accounts registered through VPNs are spammy.

I just registered billyjiminy123@gmail in a private browsing session and didn't get prompted. I even sent an email without being prompted for verification.

/s/phone number/ip

Yes, Google can track my ip. I guess you should browse through tor if you're this worried about tracking.

Google tracks IPs like Amazon tracks shipping addresses. It's kind of hard to deliver what you've requested if they don't have your address.

I can still get email through a vpn just like I can get packages at a p.o. box.

My point about the address comparison was that if you're using Google, you're asking them to send you data. Yes, you can route all requests through a VPN, just as you have send to a P.O. box or through a courier to hide your home address from Amazon. But I question the sanity of this. If you're worried about Google knowing your IP address or Amazon knowing your mailing address, it seems generally better to simply not use them.

If you're using Gmail (or sending email to people who use Gmail), Google already knows a ton about you. They can probably guess where you live without knowing your IP. They can certainly guess where you live if you're ever searching for region-specific stores/parks/directions/etc. I suspect if you're browsing through a VPN regularly, Google has enough data to pick you out of the searches coming from the VPN's outbound IPs with fairly high confidence.

Asking for a phone number seems pretty valid.

The number of times people forget their password, or accidentally type it into a phishing site, or re-use passwords across different websites where one of them (e.g. Yahoo) get breached....

Without a recovery phone number, these people are hosed - and they've lost data, photos, contacts, email, their entire digital life etc. That's a pretty poor user experience. So most people are like - yeah, OK, that sounds reasonable, let me put a phone number I can access just in case somebody hacks my account.

NB: I work for Google, but I don't speak for them here in any official capacity.

> Asking for a phone number seems pretty valid.

I agree with your reasoning that for the vast majority of casual users it is useful (and maybe gmail is only intended for casual users). Otoh, there are countries where you could be punished for speaking your mind via en e-mail account that is linked to you (say by phone number) or from that e-mail account being linked to you via your using it to sign up for another service. For example, in the US one could conceivably be punished (or at least face an expensive court battle) for publishing certain types of software see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States from an e-mail address linked to you

The security considerations are valid, but this is missing the point.

The point is rather that google is in the business of selling personal information, and that telephone numbers are valuable personal information. As such, some people don't trust google with this information despite the valid pretext.

Why would Google create a high barrier of entry to get you on their platform? Their entire business model is based on tracking and advertising, so they have every incentive to lower this barrier to the greatest degree possible.

It's about having high-quality information about these people. Google would rather have fewer people that are more valuable.

Seriously? Their business is advertising and their technology depends on big data and is designed to scale, and they offer all of their services for free. It seems like they have a huge incentive to know as much as possible about as many as possible.

The question you should be asking is whether letting me see Pintrest or Quora content (for example) without an account is really that big of a deal?

FWIW, I won't sign up for those two sites specifically because of the sleazy way they get their content show up in search results, but don't let people see the content without an account once they get there.

Try signing into your Google account in Chrome. It will track everything you then search in the address bar, even if you have paused Google history.

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