Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin Apple has made a lot of noise around privacy lately they even bought a giant billboard in front of sea yes counting the iPhone is the only secure option and you know what they kind of have a point but before we get started this video is sponsored by LastPass I've use LastPass for years and years at this point before I had just a couple of passwords that used everywhere between Twitter bank account you name it with LastPass you don't have to write remember or reset passwords it keeps all of your passwords safe and secure and a vault and on top of that will even help you generate brand-new super secure ones and if you're using an iOS or Android device LastPass can even autofill your logins and various apps or web browsers now that's all available for free but you can also upgrade to LastPass premium for three dollars a month which unlocks more advanced two-factor authentication options as well as better abilities to be able to share out your logins to other people best of all it works across basically all of your devices including different browsers laptops desktops tablets phones you name it I legitimately use LastPass every single day so if you need to upgrade your password game definitely be sure to check out LastPass at the link in the description and of course huge shout to the LastPass for sponsoring this part of the video now on to the main event so I want to start out by getting something out of the way I've either been sponsored by pretty much every single one of these companies or at least I have a current active relationship with them although based on how this video goes maybe some of those relationships might not last I totally get it right privacy is not the sexiest topic but I do believe that we live in an era where most people don't understand the level of data and privacy that they're giving up now if you choose to do so more power to you but really do you think it's very much in your own interest to at least understand what you're trading off in exchange for all the wonderful things we experience on our phones and tablets and computers every day it is easy to point a finger at Facebook for the general lack of privacy security or well many other things however actually want to start this video by discussing Google it's kind of incredible at just how thoroughly Google has spread across the entire Internet of course there's things like Google search and YouTube but most even other web pages have at least some kind of Google service bolted on if Google decided to just disappear tomorrow the Internet as we know it would largely be broken don't get me wrong I rely on Google for a lot as I'm sure many of you do as well I mean I wrote up this video using Google Docs inside the Google Chrome browser I use Google search to do a lot of my research and of course you wouldn't be able to watch this video without Google's good old YouTube it should be no surprise that all this data is stored to help serve ads to you unless you specifically opted out and that actually brings us to the Google dashboard now there is a lot of stuff in here I mean of course we have our web and app history where at tracks you pretty much everywhere location which we'll get into in a second but there's a lot of other information that they're always collecting now I mean this shouldn't really be a big surprise right we've all noticed that we've searched for say a random thing on Instagram and suddenly we have a deluge of ads all across the internet tracking us but a lot of this is just because of how thoroughly we're being tracked by companies such as Google as well as Facebook their ad networks are absolutely massive combined these companies have a near monopoly on the online ad market which means that every single bit of data they can get is a serious amount of actual cash to these companies can provide I mean for example a Google search ad especially some of the really premium ones on the top they can pay upwards of $10 per click if they get a little bit of information on exactly what you're interested in to kind of make that click just a little bit more enticing it can be really really big bucks nearly every site on the internet has some kind of tracker embedded so whether that's an invisible one pixel by one pixel gift or maybe it's something innocuous like a facebook like button all of these things are absolutely there to help keep analytics and keep data flowing to these giant companies now I know this all sounds kind of paranoid like oh no those sky is falling it's all terrible but this is real stuff and while it might be worth the trip for a lot of people I think there's a ton of people who also just don't even realize that any of this stuff even exists now all this tracking talk brings us straight back to Apple who are doing something that is pretty much undoubtedly good for everyone well at least everyone who uses Apple products inside Safari they have some very strong anti tracking policies intelligent tracking protection does a pretty decent job of blocking unwanted cookies deleting old stuff that you're not using anymore and importantly trying to keep third-party websites from tracking you all across the internet now it is certainly not perfect however it is a good first step toward giving you a little bit more privacy when you're browsing the Internet now Apple are by no means the only company who are heavily investing in privacy Mozilla the makers of Firefox have long had this been one of their major core tenants however Apple has the unique advantage creating not only the software but also the hardware and that gives them a lot more freedom to not have to worry about things like an advertiser pulling out and ruining your entire company unlike its companies such as Google who funds Android as well as Chrome OS through services such as search as well as Gmail Apple primarily makes their money through selling devices and all the things that go along with that such as selling apps as well as subscriptions to things like Apple music and iCloud now might sound like a small thing but this makes all the difference in how these companies work take Maps for example if you enable location history in Google Maps which it is constantly bugging you to do you do get a lot of very legitimately useful features you might give you a notification when it's time to head to the airport maybe when traffic is bad maybe when it's time to go and check out that new waifu convention that Ken's always talking about but the problem is all this information is stored on Google services so I turned off my location history on Google a couple years ago when I first actually started thinking about doing this video but there's still a ton of information that's still saved in here so you can see I used to spend a lot of time in Alabama you still live in Missouri if we actually zoom in to where I am now you'll see there are a ton of different little pop-ups of various places that I've been in the area for example you can actually zoom all the way in and pretty much see where I used to live in Pasadena look at that that's like hope is everywhere so November 20th 2016 you can see that I walked 24-hour Fitness I walked to Whole Foods apparently I drove back and then I went to arc light theaters later that day all this stuff is super super granular and this is just a single day all this data is absolutely searchable for the entire time that you had this turned on and I bet that if you like the majority of people you've had to turn on for a while it's not maybe even realizing it now all this stuff is private to you however it is also of course stored on Google services and there were multiple cases where the police have asked for a copy of this data which Google of course has to provide if you don't save it in the first place you don't have to worry about being tracked the last time you went to the Roxy Hotel in New York City which apparently was October 26 2016 I hate how this video makes me sound paranoid but this is weird right it should I shouldn't be able to look up exactly what I was doing on October 26th of 2016 see from minute to minute when I walked somewhere and I got into a car I got into a plane like that just to me feels like it's a little bit more than I'm comfortable with in comparison actually do leave Apple Maps tracking turned on and that's her a couple of key reasons first of all is that while Google just stores all the stuff behind your password Apple actually doesn't even have access to it so a lot of the heavy lifting is actually being done on your device which is maybe not the fastest way of doing it but it is a whole lot more secure and the other stuff that actually is sent in to Apple servers is sort of all randomized through a process known as differential privacy this is a very very secure way of making sure that no one has access to your data and yet things like sort of location services and everything for traffic is still actually up and running it's some really clever stuff and especially considering how much they do on device I've got to give them props now generally speaking the result with Apple location actually isn't as good as what Google offers but I'm happy to make that compromise because I know that my data is on my device and inside of my control this same concept explains a lot of the differences between Apple and Google for example Syria as we all know is well just not quite as good as what Google offers hell over a big part of that because again you're not keeping all that data stored in the cloud whereas with Google as well as Amazon echo it absolutely is and this is actually kind of creepy part so if you go into your data and personality page you open up voice and audio activity you can pull up an active log of every single time you've ever spoken to your Google home to your phone anything like that so I pull on say last night that's creepy that's creepy I can literally pull up so let's see here every single time you've ever spoken to your Google home it is recorded exactly what you have to say now I understand why they do this right I mean in theory it's to help sort of train the algorithm to better listen for your voice I mean some of the stuff is just creepy now all of these Google assistants and Amazon echoes and even the home pod theoretically only turn on their mics and start sending recordings as soon as they hear their trigger words but you can very easily imagine that the Google says oh I think I heard okay Google and it starts listening in on a very important conversation but I feel like if I search through here now I'll probably see something that's a little sketchy agree like this is creepy man and don't think that Google is the only one who does this as far as I'm aware Amazon does the exact same thing with the Alexa but on the other hand I don't believe that any of the stuff is stored by Apple and the home pod because well first of all no one's ever bought a home pause but also because they don't keep any of this stuff stored it's all differential eyes dand kind of privacy protected and sort of all anonymized if this is not a good example of why privacy is important I don't really know what is right now there's totally reasons to give up this kind of stuff I mean as you can tell even knowing all this stuff I still keep Google home in my house but it is super creepy especially you don't understand what all this stuff is doing there are dozens and dozens of other examples when it comes to privacy but the way I like to think about it is like this if you're using something for free you are not the customer you're the product now I want to be super super clear this is OK tons and tons of services that we use on a daily basis strength would not exist without this core tenant but the thing is you have to be mindful of what you're trading off in exchange well it's mostly focused on Apple and specifically giving Google a pretty hard time this issue applies to a wide range of companies of course Facebook is about the bottom of the barrel when it comes to privacy and companies such as Apple as well as Microsoft have had their fair share of issues as well I really do believe that privacy is important and whether or not Apple is investing in this for marketing purposes or for a legitimate good cause doesn't really matter to me you know I choose to trade some privacy for convenience and I'll bet that the vast majority of you guys do as well but I do think it's worth considering exactly how much you're giving up and when is the time to draw the line