Web Excursions 2021-09-24
Google keeps records of everything you buy, even if you delete the email receipt
If you use #GMail, #Google keeps records of everything you buy, even if you delete the email receipt, and even if you didn't buy the product from them. Here's metadata from my takeout showing price, delivery address, description, vendor, etc.
Google keeps records of everything you buy, even if you delete the email receipt | Hacker News
kyrra:
You can see the information it has already collected if you use Google, by visiting: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases
Though oddly my list is empty.
I wonder if I disabled this feature at some point?
The help docs: https://support.google.com/accounts?p=orders&hl=en, explain how you can delete this data if you want to.
function_seven:
Amazon's order status emails ("Shipped", "Out for Delivery", etc.) used to show the items in the order and how much I paid for them. They stopped doing that last year presumably because of evil behavior like this.
Some of my friends at Amazon told me, the decision to remove info from the emails was a company-wide campaign that was specifically created as a result of this NYTimes article,
which specifically calls out Google snooping on Amazon shopper data.
I'm sure the advertising PMs were happy to support this decision because it got them more page clicks,
but my understanding is that the underlying motive was privacy.
Inside the iPhone Leather Wallet (second generation) – Six Colors
Best as I can guess, the NFC chip in the new wallets has a unique ID number.
When you pair it with your iPhone, that ID number is associated with your iCloud account.
If you choose to allow someone who finds your wallet to view your phone number, Apple’s essentially allowing their phones to look up the number associated with your iCloud account.
Perhaps the old wallet’s NFC chip doesn’t provide a unique identifier for each wallet,
or perhaps the old wallet just didn’t provide a reliable enough experience
and so Apple shut down the feature until they could do a better job with it.
The NSA and CIA Use Ad Blockers Because Online Advertising Is So Dangerous
The IC, which also includes the parts of the FBI, DEA, and DHS, and various DoD elements, has deployed ad-blocking technology on a wide scale, according to a copy of a letter sent by Congress and shared with Motherboard.
"The IC has implemented network-based ad-blocking technologies and uses information from several layers, including Domain Name System information, to block unwanted and malicious advertising content," the CIO recently told Wyden's office, according to the letter.
Monthly Log: August 2021
When I’m reading an article in Safari for iPadOS 15 and find a passage of text I want to save for future reference,
I can select it on the page, right-click the text, and click the ‘New Quick Note’ button in the copy and paste menu.
Doing this causes the Quick Note window to appear with a special deeplink for the selected text already attached to the newly created note.
If this is the first link I’m saving for a story,
I edit the note by copying the title of the article from Safari,
pasting it at the top of the note, and
formatting it as the note title using ⌘⇧T.
Two things happen once you’ve saved a highlight from Safari into Quick Note:
The saved text gets highlighted in yellow on the original webpage
If you continue selecting more passages of text, the button in the copy and paste menu becomes ‘Add to Quick Note’,
allowing you to append new special deeplinks to the bottom of the existing note
I could probably adapt my Reading List setup to article edits as well.
Plugable TBT4-HUB3C Thunderbolt 4 Hub Capsule Review
All the [currently available] Thunderbolt 4 hubs / docks use the quad-port JHL8440 to full effect,
enabling one upstream Thunderbolt 4 port, and three downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports.
For $230, the CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub tags on additional USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports.
Razer has two docks - a 10-port version with a SD card slot, audio jack, an Ethernet port, and three USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports for $320,
and a RGB version of the same for $330.
The Kensington SD5700T priced at $330 is similar to the Razer dock, but with an additional USB-A charging-only port.