Fair enough. I (my opinion only) believe that there is no practical way on earth that I can keep my Email/contact/calendar information out of various data mining companies. Email, by its very nature, has to be transmitted across servers, and at the very minimum, the transmitting and recipient servers will have copies of it. Same thing with contact Email addresses. Contact addresses and Calendar information - sure. Local copies could work - but is cumbersome to me, to not have that information available to me on other devices.
But given that you are sensitive/careful about that information, I see your point about not wanting to share that.
Whether Apple has illegally stolen data or did that legally based on the fine print in their agreements/T&Cs, all I can tell you is this - I have run a sniffer, and while I couldn't see the exact data being sent (encrypted), I don't see any reason for itunes to be sending several gigs of data every week (not talking about receiving updates - I'm strictly referring to outbound transmissions) to Apple (and other) servers. I noticed this because my connectivity was painfully slowing down (I was on a low-speed internet connection then), and was forced to figure out what was using up the bandwidth.
No, I have never used iCloud, and this is with iTunes years ago, when I had just downloaded and installed iTunes for use with my iPod. The only "Accept" button I had clicked was the one needed to launch iTunes.
Refer my link to the article explaining where apps were pulling your data illegally.
Ok. I don't really mean to get into an argument, but this is something that I have debated about (with myself) for a long time. "Why?" So, what if I store my contacts/calendar on Google servers? Besides the obvious advantages, what exactly are the issues with that? (I'm not saying that it is perfectly ok/safe to do so -I don't know, and this is a genuine question).
I use "Google now", and find it incredibly useful. Obviously, it works only if I store my info with Google.
What can google do with it?
- Will they spam my friends/co-workers on my contact list? (no evidence yet)
- Will they use it to help the govt if I do something illegal? (well, govt will get what they want - regardless of what you share, and what you don't)
- Will they use my information to show me ads on the browser? They are going to show me ads no matter what. This just lets them show me relevant ads (which I promptly block using adblock.)
Again, please understand that I am in no way trying to argue that it is ok to share your information with the giants. It is your info, and you have your reasons for your choice. Perfectly valid, because it pertains to you.
Personally, I gave in a while ago, because I didn't see a reason to not do that. Who knows, I may regret that choice in a few years
Agreed. Google doesn't really make it easy to keep your information to yourself. Not only that, they really don't encourage us to use non-google applications. Unless you are a paying google-apps user, you can't really sync your outlook contacts/calendar with google - there are third party applications that claim to do that, but why wouldn't google offer that? Because they want people to use their services. Sucks that they don't encourage syncing with other online services, but it is their choice.
Thanks for this (civil) discussion - it is appreciated
