.

[Ice Maiden]

The tech shows I watch all the time seem to think Google is OK actually. The problem is surveillance. There is a difference between you looking at a new graphics card on amazon and then seeing an ad for it somewhere else - thats just a cookie and I suspect if you have a mobile phone that is the biggest surveillance tool there is, as they not only know where you are, they know the routes you take! So if you pass a Starbucks on the way home Starbucks might drop you an ad to remind you - that is scary!

Startpage is bundled with Tor.

As they say the safest way to not be monitored is to unplug from the internet and mobile phone networks. Even then you are on CCTV where ever you go

The NSA and The UK security agencies have been compromised by all the leaks and thats exposed their behaviour - but it was kinda obvious if you think about it - they were tapping phones in the 50s so its obvious there will be a digital version. That said, it is most unlikely you will have human eyes looking at your posts, they will likely be bots looking for trends and strange behaviour likely to alert them to dangerous activity. I mean billions of messages are sent every day most cannot read a letter.

All data is stored somewhere the best way to deal with this is imagine there is a policeman watching everything you do over your shoulder Bung him 50% and he will leave LOL

[Christine]

I dunno, I find Google's snooping to be as intrusive and sinister as anything that GCHQ and NSA are doing, if not more so. That isn't helped by walking PR disaster Eric Schmidt's habitually idiotic remarks, but even if not for that, Google's mission statement does seem to have morphed into "be evil".

I guess I just don't like surveillance, being snooped on and general curtain-twitching-style nosiness, even though I have "nothing to hide". Well, other than being trans: though I'm open about it, plenty of people have reason not to be, and Google isn't going to respect that without a fight.

[ShawBee]

bundled toolbars, sly bogies installed on the quiet, etc, no problem here.
did you know that yahoo and gmail scan your emails for targetted advertising purposes too? dont know about other free, or paid for, email providers, best advice, TRUST NO ONE
as far as i know, microsofts outlook doesnt, but hey, this is microsoft we are talking about

[Christine]

I run my own mail server: it lives under my desk. The snag there is that I can't remember what I'm doing half the time and there's nobody else to blame when it goes wrong!

[ShawBee]

run your own mail server? now theres a thought.
i got so brassed off with the amount of spam on yahoo, fake ebay emails, buy cheap rolex etc, look at it carefully, some ratbag has gotten into yahoo's userbase, i had enough.
Mozilla's excellent Thunderbird email client asks for existing email addy and gives an option to get a new email addy. £4.60(inc VAT) for 1 year, gonna roadtest it, see if there are any hidden costs etc, so far so good, spam free