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Lilbits: What the FLoC?

Google plans to end support for third-party tracking cookies in the Chrome browser, which is ostensibly a response to users’ growing demands for privacy. But Google is first and foremost a company that makes its money by advertising… and these days that’s primarily targeted advertising. So the company plans to keep doing that. Instead of cookies […]

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Lilbits: Privacy wars, app stores, and advances in color E Ink

Much of the web, including this website, is primarily funded via advertising. And in recent years advertisers have chosen largely to focus on targeted advertising, which tracks user behavior as folks move from website to website to choose ads that are most likely to appeal to specific individuals. Plenty of folks don’t like being tracked to […]

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Now you can buy smartphone with /e/ OS in the US and Canada (Android phones stripped of Google services)

The /e/ Foundation has been developing a custom version of Android that doesn’t include Google’s propriety apps and services for a few years, and in 2019 the team began selling refurbished phones with the de-Googled software pre-installed. At the time the phones were only available for purchase for customers in Europe. But now customers in […]

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iodé sells Android phones stripped of tracking and advertising (and the Play Store)

A new French company called iodĂ© is selling smartphones that ship with a custom Android-based operating system that offers some of the benefits of Android (like ease-of-use) while offering more privacy. The company says its software blocks advertisements, spyware, and other apps and services from tracking your personal data. One trade-off is that the phones […]

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Caviar will sell you an iPhone 12 Pro with the camera removed (for $5000 and up)

One of the key selling points for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max smartphones are their top notch camera systems. But some folks don’t want a camera on their smartphones. If you value privacy and/or have the sort of job where you regularly go places where cameras are not permitted, you might be stuck […]

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Former Google Plus users to get (a little) money from class action settlement

Google shut down its Google+ social network last year after the company decided that not enough people were using it to justify the trouble of keeping it up and running and… you know, bug free. That last part accelerated Google’s timeline for ending the service, after a major security vulnerability was discovered in late 2018. […]