The issue isn't about the present but the future. You don't just assume Google one day won't try to compromise government data.

Even if they don't, it opens up more attack vectors for malicious 3rd parties who want that data. That's why you can't be careless.

> - A web site logs traffic in a sort of defacto way, but no one actually reviews the traffic, and it's not sent to 3rd parties.

Even if this sounds innocent, these must be turned over if you are provided a warrant or subpoena (which ever would be appropriate, IANAL).

They belong in the same category: the end user has zero agency over how their privacy is impacted, and is at the whim of the wishes/agency of whoever is serving content to them.

Whether the one serving the content is exploiting data at the present moment has very little relevance. Because the end user has no means to assert whether it is happening or not.

>A web site logs traffic in a sort of defacto way, but no one actually reviews the traffic, and it's not sent to 3rd parties.

If data exists, it can be subpoenaed by the government.

Personally, I don't understand people's mindless anathema about being profiled by ad companies, as if the worst thing ever in the world is... being served more relevant ads? In fact I love targeted ads, I often get recommended useful things that genuinely improve my life and save me hours in shopping research.

It's the government getting that data that's the problem. Because one day you might do something that pisses off someone in the government, and someone goes on a power trip and decides to ruin your life by misusing the absolute power of the state.

You disagree and yet you agreed 100% and made the change. I thought the point the preceding parent comment is making is that you should have thought of that beforehand. Yet you seemed to already come to a judgement about it yet then quickly agreed to reverse yourself.

Sounds like a clear "lack of a depth of understanding" to me.

From your faq: "We maintain zero logs of your activities. We don't track IP addresses, …"

Front page says "zero logs"

Some logs, including specifically datapoints you have promised not to log, but you mean well (?) is pretty different from zero logs

I have a static IP address; and most connections tend to have long-lived leases anyways. It can easily be used to identify me, even if you don't explicitly tie it to my account.

[flagged]

Your browser knows more about you than you do. When accessing a website, anonymous or not, it sends a fingerprint so to speak to that site and its ad network. It’s there that your anonymity ceases and you are identified, classified, segmented, and fed more “How to stay safe online” ads. There’s no escaping it. Chromium is not to be trusted.

Who gets ddosed on the regular? Spam is a regular problem, but I have never encountered a ddos on a business website.

Baseless fear mongering. I've had webservers raw-dogging the Internet for about 25 years. Nothing of any consequence has happened. Hasn't happened to anyone I know, either. Anecdata yes, but people are making it sound like running a webserver is like connecting a Windows XP machine to the internet - instant pwnage. It isn't.

I've been DDoS'ed exactly once. In 2003 I got into a pointless internet argument on IRC, and my home connection got hammered, which of course made me lose the argument by default. I activated my backup ISDN, so my Diablo 2 game was barely interrupted.

Yes. The whole "you will be ddosd if you are exposed to the world wide web" is fud. (And/or racketeering)

Despite what Cloudflare wants you to think, yes, yes they can.

Also you can sue whoever DDoSes you and put them in jail. It's easier than it used to be, since the internet is heavily surveilled now. The malicious actors with really good anonymity aren't wasting it attacking a nobody.

I think you mean if a court asks for it. And they have to ask for something you actually have

Even user agents are often specific enough to be considered PII.

Indeed, the whole thing reads like it was written by an LLM.