Hacker News Reader

Comment by reacharavindh | Hacker News Reader

I'll add one more to your side note.

Please tell your particularly non technical friends and relatives to avoid Google like plague if they care about privacy. Show them how - give a link to Firefox, Privacy badger.

A relative of mine who paid $7/month for a VPN service because he cared about his privacy from ISP, but was using Google Chrome and Gmail for sensitive personal Email. Fewer people from the non-engineering world know/understand what we assume is common sense. When you get a chance please don't hesitate to tell people of better choices.

View on HN

>Please tell your particularly non technical friends and relatives to avoid Google like plague

For anyone that has never had a conversation like this, you really have to be careful with this and pick your battles wisely. Some people are so non-technical, that they will not understand what you are explaining to them, or why you are even bothering them. You will be perceived as a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Some people will understand what you are explaining and might even understand your stance, but ultimately will still continue in their ways because it's so much easier and convenient.

What ever you do, don't be judgemental about their decision. You will only make them less interested. Start slowly. It can be overwhelming how fubar'd the web experience has become.

Exactly. I regularly argue about this with my colleagues who are all mostly trained statisticians with some programming experience. Generally, what happens is that people are in awe of the "innovation" coming from Google and my protests are generally laughed off.

There are things that can be explained but can be understood only by direct experience. This is one of them. They'll eventually get burned by their faith in Google and suddenly they'll understand.

Latching on to GP's context, statistically speaking, most people don't see these issues themselves. So they don't care if one in a million or even one in a hundred might get affected. As long as they (or their close ones) haven't experienced it, it doesn't exist and doesn't matter. It's exhausting to deal with such people, and most of the general public are this way.

I find it really easy to pitch privacy in a "do you really want your medical insurer to know that you're googling weight loss or pregnancy stuff?", "do you really want your future employers to know what kind of dank memes you looked at?", "when you're booking a hotel the price will go up because they'll know you've looked at it before and want to fake a sense of urgency so you buy" sort of way. Providing concrete examples of how a lack of privacy can cost money seems to be useful.

> Some people are so non-technical, that they will not understand what you are explaining to them, or why you are even bothering them. You will be perceived as a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Some people will understand what you are explaining and might even understand your stance, but ultimately will still continue in their ways because it's so much easier and convenient.

This is a very common reaction I've seen. People don't care as much about privacy as one would assume they might when given some information about it. It's like a case of extreme apathy triggered and nurtured by ignorance. Add to this the convenience factor of Gmail or similar platforms, it's a big task.

But I have seen that there are at least a few people who, over time, get the heeby-jeebies about privacy intrusions. That's a good result compared to not telling them about this over and over for a long time.

Do you have any recommendations for a good alternative to Gmail? I've already made the switch away from Chrome, but for some reason my mind blanks on email -- I can only think of Yahoo or Hotmail

Protonmail.

My alternative is not free :-( I use FastMail and pay for mine and my wife's accounts. It may not be for everybody, but it is one choice, and I'm a happy customer.

It is by far a "No bullshit" email service. They do one thing, and very well. It's simple, fast and reliable.

I'll give them a look, thanks! It may not be free but it is cheaper than I expected. Looks nice.

Here's a 15 hour old HN thread asking this exact question and getting over 500 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574

Reply on news.ycombinator.com