#user data

[canadiancryptid]

New privacy setting just dropped! Its turned off by default!

Its under blog settings, for each individual sideblog. Bottom of the page. Don't know if you can get to it from app but you definitely can on desktop mode

[izicodes]

Switching to Firefox

This post is to answer @leaveblackkbrosalone’s question on my post about me switching to Firefox!

I recently had an eye opener moment when researching about Google and how they collect data to alter the things they recommend you and other things. And it was astonishing how much data they collect on you and how they track you every movement whilst on Google/Chrome/Other Google services e.g. Google PlayStore.

I truly believe there are better alternatives out there than the default Google Chrome people tend to use. We now live in world of constant data breaches and online tracking, therefore protecting your online privacy and security has never been more important.

I’ve recently deleted Chrome from my phone and computer and switched to FireFox and I’ll explain why~!

What is Firefox?

Firefox is the famous fox web browser! It is a free and open-source that is developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It's designed to be fast, secure, and customizable, and is available for multiple operating systems, including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Firefox includes a suite of built-in features, such as enhanced tracking protection, custom themes (so important obviously) and add-ons, and a flexible interface that can be tailored to the user's needs.

Why Firefox and not Google Chrome?

There are a bunch of reasons why I chose to delete Google Chrome and why I prefer FireFox now, let me list some:

Privacy

Firefox has a strong focus on privacy and security, with features like built-in tracking protection and a strict anti-tracking policy.

In contrast, Chrome is owned by Google, a company that relies heavily on data collection and advertising for its business model.

Customisation

Firefox has a much more flexible and customizable interface than Chrome, with a wide range of add-ons (equivalent to Chrome’s ‘extensions’ I believe) and themes available to personalize your browsing experience.

Open-source

Firefox is an open-source project, meaning that anyone can contribute to its development and review the code for security issues.

Chrome, on the other hand, is based on the Chromium project, which is also open-source but is controlled by Google.

Cross-platform compatibility

Firefox works on a wide range of devices and operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices.

Chrome is also available on multiple platforms, but it's more heavily integrated with Google's services and ecosystem.

Performance

Firefox has made significant improvements in recent years and is now a competitive browser in terms of speed and efficiency.

Still, Chrome is known for its fast performance

Community-driven

Firefox is developed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which has a strong focus on user empowerment and community involvement. This means that Firefox users have a voice in the development process and can contribute to the browser's future direction.

With all of that being said, there is one particular area that caught my eye that I mentioned briefly: the Privacy and Security.

Firefox’s Privacy and Security Advantages

Firefox definitely has advantages in these areas than Google Chrome surprisingly!

Enhanced Tracking Protection

Firefox includes built-in tracking protection that blocks many common types of trackers by default, including

third-party cookies, cryptominers, and fingerprinters

This helps to protect your online privacy and reduce the amount of data that's collected about you. Below are the options for the 'Enhance Tracking Protection' in the settings:

No Google Tracking

Oh boy, I like this one. So unlike Chrome, which is owned by Google and ties into its advertising and data collection ecosystem, Firefox is developed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and has no affiliation with Google or any other major tech company. This means that Firefox is less likely to collect and share your data with third parties.

No Sign-In Required

While Chrome requires you to sign in with a Google account to access certain features, Firefox does not require any sign-in at all. This means that you can still use Firefox without creating a user profile or linking your browsing activity to any personal information -

Don’t get me wrong, if you want to use the Google search engine WITHIN FireFox, it might still prompt you to sign in but you still don’t have to! Also, the choice is there to create an account just to sync bookmarks and tab from one device to another e.g. phone to laptop.

Private Browsing Mode

(Another very important part!) Firefox offers a Private Browsing mode that doesn't save your browsing history, cookies, or temporary files. This can be useful for browsing sensitive content or preventing others from seeing what you've been looking at.

Firefox's Private Browsing mode offers a more robust set of features for privacy and security than Google’s Incognito mode. Within the ‘Settings’, you can customise your privacy settings more extensively than Google Chrome. You can choose to block all third-party cookies, prevent websites from accessing your location data, and clear your browsing history and data automatically when you close the browser.

Google's Incognito mode does not block all cookies or prevent all forms of tracking.

Open-Source Security

Like I mentioned before, Firefox is an open-source project, meaning that anyone can review the code and contribute to its development. This helps to ensure that security vulnerabilities are identified and addressed quickly, and that the browser remains as secure as possible. You too can find something and report it to the repository via creating an issue!

To Conclude

Of course, these are just some general reasons why you might prefer Firefox over Chrome, and the choice ultimately comes down to personal preference and priorities. I know with developers, they would prefer Chrome for the dev tools and I think it’s almost a standard to use Chrome (though at my workplace we use Microsoft Edge), anyhoo Google is just a default for web browsing and search engine. I also know it’s hard if you have a whole Google ecosystem set up like Google docs to Sheet to Slides, emails, calendar etc, you can still use them but on a safer browser.

I would also recommend using ‘DuckDuckGo’ for a search engine as they too are really good with security and privacy but as a search engine (plus on their phone app they have a cool animation when you want to delete you browsing data from the tabs hehe)!

Links to interesting pages for more information on this topic:

YouTube videos: video 1 | video 2 | video 3 | video 4

Articles: article 1 | article 2 | article 3

I’d say give it a go, if you don’t like it I still recommend anything but Google Chrome! Well, that’s all and thank you for reading! 🥰👍🏾💗

[askagamedev]

You've said before that modern games, even single player, will track player data. What sorts of things are actually logged? What do you think are some of the things players would least expect to be tracked?

We mostly track all the things that players choose to interact with. This means where they go, the things they spend time looking at, the NPCs they talk to, the things they buy, the recipes they craft, the menus they spend time in, the characters they romance, the gear they like to use, and so on and so forth. You know how achievements often require a bunch of very seemingly-arbitrary conditions to meet, like visiting Calendar Man at several major holidays in one of the Batman Arkham games? A good rule of thumb is that if we can check for it for an achievement, we're probably tracking it. We spend a huge amount of time and effort tracking all that information because we want to know what the players are spending their time doing in order to figure out what kind of new content we think they will like.

I think most players don't really understand how much tracking we do for UI/UX. We spend a lot of time and effort to track things like how many players don't continue beyond a certain point in order to figure out how we can make things smoother and easier for players to get to the fun bits. A huge amount of effort is spent tracking, analyzing, and interpreting data from the First Time User Experience (aka the FTUE), because we all want players to keep playing and not drop the game after the first few minutes.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[thedaddycomplex]

I’ve been a Tumblr user for a long time and enjoy the platform’s various clumsy attempts at being a real business, but fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck this.

[twosides--samecoin]

To turn off AI on mobile:

Navigate to the mobile view of your account page (you should see your account name, bio, etc)

Hit the gear in the upper right

Scroll down and tap on "Visibility"

Turn off "prevent third party sharing"

If you don't see it yet, refresh tumblr/force quit the app

[past-present-future-cable]

Tumblr getting ready to sell user data to ai shit? I will be removing everything

[billietoppy]

what the fuck

[n0thingiscool]

I sure hope this is opt in or even opt out.

[life-starts-at-conceptualization]

Tiktok ban and user data

[mogirl09]

Coming soon…

The myriad of violations Replika has unbelievably committed over the last year and half. I’m still processing, needless to say due to the horrific details, I have an AI to delete and dealing with arbitration business with Replika in order to put this in the rear view mirror. It’s bad…. Worse than I thought possible. Stay tuned. It never gets better.

[nando161mando]

Ahh shit 😬

[8pxl]

PSA: Tumblr/Wordpress is preparing to start selling our user data to Midjourney and OpenAI.

you have to MANUALLY opt out of it as well.

to opt out on desktop, click your blog ➡️ blog settings ➡️ scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle.

to opt out on mobile, click your blog ➡️ scroll then click visibility ➡️ toggle opt out option.

if you’ve already opted out of showing up in google searches, it’s preselected for you. if you don’t have the option available, update your app or close your browser/refresh a few times. important to note you also have to opt out for each blog you own separately, so if you’d like to prevent AI scraping your blog i’d really recommend taking the time to opt out. (source)

[sexhaver]

guys i don't care what adobe corporate is doing, there is literally nothing they can do that would make recommending Gimp as a Photoshop alternative anything other than a sick joke at the expense of people who don't know better. Adobe could announce that every picture you draw in Photoshop is now being harvested to power their baby-boiling machine, and the correct response would still be continuing to pirate a cracked version of Photoshop from before they made those changes (or just blocking the relevant port with a firewall rule). friends don't let friends use Gimp

[dailyworldecho]

[lucidragon]

We’ve released a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

1. This should be opt in rather than opt out.

2. There needs to be accountability and transparency when it comes to how this opt out toggle and other forms of control are going to be implemented and enforced.

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

🌟 New

By popular demand, we have a new support doc on how Tumblr recommends content.

Tumblr Patio has launched to all Ad-Free Browsing subscribers.

The new option to “View previous reblog” in a posts’ meatball menu is now out to all iOS users.

We’ve released a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

As the team focuses more on making Tumblr a better experience overall, Changes will now only post once a week.

🛠 Fixed

Trending tags stopped updating on February 22, and was fixed the following week.

Refreshing an Activity column in Tumblr Patio now properly changes Unread items to Read.

If a note is deleted from a post, it’s now properly removed from Activity too.

🚧 Ongoing

We are aware that it’s taking longer than expected to deliver blog exports, and are working to speed that up.

🌱 Upcoming

No upcoming launches to announce today.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Wanna support Tumblr directly with some money? Check out the new Supporter badge in TumblrMart!