Facebook

[ShinySideUp]

I have finally, after more attempts than I made at giving up smoking, given up on Facebook. It would appear that no matter what you do with your privacy settings you cannot restrict your activities to people you know. I had occasion to post something on a commercial messenger board and soon found that another company knew who I was and also who my friends were despite having all privacy settings turned to 'Friends Only'. It would appear that if you have just one 'friend' who is lax with their privacy settings most of your own settings are rendered almost useless and I'm not having that.

I also took out a subscription to a VPN company as a belt and braces option. I love the internet but it is a minefield and I am from a computer engineering background, how 'Mrs Jones', any random 80-year-old, manages to avoid having all her information stolen I can't imagine.

 

[The Poot in Somerset]

Never touched Facebook. Deleted Flickr account for the same reasons as yours. All the sites will use your data for profit. Don’t do WhatsApp either.
Bought a new car when I retired - it’s “fully connected” at all times, satnav is always active so my movements are totally traceable. Does my head in.

 

[Curly green finger's]

Never touched Facebook. Deleted Flickr account for the same reasons as yours. All the sites will use your data for profit. Don’t do WhatsApp either.
Bought a new car when I retired - it’s “fully connected” at all times, satnav is always active so my movements are totally traceable. Does my head in.

Perhaps sell the new car and buy an old one like a TR5 or TR6 that's what I would like anyway.

Or I was thinking of getting mothers old bubble car back on the road now there's a roadster for you

 

[ShinySideUp]

Perhaps sell the new car and buy an old one like a TR5 or TR6 that's what I would like anyway.

Or I was thinking of getting mothers old bubble car back on the road now there's a roadster for you

When I was in the Air Force in the seventies we played a prank on someone who had a bubble car and three of us lifted it over a low wall into a compound that only had narrow pedestrian access!

 

[ShinySideUp]

Never touched Facebook. Deleted Flickr account for the same reasons as yours. All the sites will use your data for profit. Don’t do WhatsApp either.
Bought a new car when I retired - it’s “fully connected” at all times, satnav is always active so my movements are totally traceable. Does my head in.

I'm afraid I do have to use Whatsapp as it has more features than a text message and it is annoying that it too is owned by Facebook. I use it to keep in touch with my kids during these virus-ridden times but I do wish there was an alternative that was as convenient or have someone else buy it out, Microsoft for example. Yes, I know people don't like MS but considering the alternative all-powerful organisations -- Facebook, Google, Amazon -- I'd rather be spied on by Bill Gates than Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai or Jeff Bezos.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Facebook I can live without though I do use it. Messenger is useful. A friend and I run a mentoring group on WhatsApp for people having cancer treatment and I use it to keep in touch with my daughter who lives in Germany. Twitter I find a waste of time. Google I couldn’t live without. That and my phone. I think I’d get serious withdrawal symptoms if my phone was taken away

 

[user 6127]

I gave up on Facebook years ago. Had some friends who did nothing but 'give me sympathy' and 'moan moan moan' posts. So just deleted the whole lot.

I now have an account to look after the business pages I manage. It has no friends. It likes a couple of pages. Its in a fake name, with fake details.

Yet somehow, in the recommended friends, it recommends people I know, yet have no link to. For example, my eldest sons new girlfriend, my best mates Uncle and so on.

The amount of data they suck up, and render is unreal.

 

[ShinySideUp]

Facebook I can live without though I do use it. Messenger is useful. A friend and I run a mentoring group on WhatsApp for people having cancer treatment and I use it to keep in touch with my daughter who lives in Germany. Twitter I find a waste of time. Google I couldn’t live without. That and my phone. I think I’d get serious withdrawal symptoms if my phone was taken away

A long time ago I had a Windows phone and it was truly awesome; fast, easy to operate, good display...but no apps worth a mention so I very reluctantly had to move to Android as Apple is expensive and manipulative. Plus trying to get photographs from a normal camera onto an iPad via iTunes and a convoluted connection system was just not worth the effort -- perhaps it's better now but too late for me.

I gave up on Facebook years ago. Had some friends who did nothing but 'give me sympathy' and 'moan moan moan' posts. So just deleted the whole lot.

I now have an account to look after the business pages I manage. It has no friends. It likes a couple of pages. Its in a fake name, with fake details.

Yet somehow, in the recommended friends, it recommends people I know, yet have no link to. For example, my eldest sons new girlfriend, my best mates Uncle and so on.

The amount of data they suck up, and render is unreal.

I know, it is so invasive. I recently bought a new PC and there was nothing original on it, but a couple of software updates later and Facebook had information that they really shouldn't have had. As you say, links to people it thinks 'I might know', and I did. Gives me the creeps.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Facebook I can live without though I do use it. Messenger is useful. A friend and I run a mentoring group on WhatsApp for people having cancer treatment and I use it to keep in touch with my daughter who lives in Germany. Twitter I find a waste of time. Google I couldn’t live without. That and my phone. I think I’d get serious withdrawal symptoms if my phone was taken away

I've also been a communications luddite, I didn't get into Facebook for years - it wasn't really secure for us working on the patrol boats, especially in the runup to the 2012 olympics as we were being 'watched' as some of my colleagues ended up in a sticky spot with higher management over pretty innocuous comments, so I steered well clear of it, when I went to Southern Africa my cousin (who lived in Jo'burg) was horrified that not only was I not on facebook but I also did not own a smartphone, she nagged and nagged so when I came back home and a phone upgrade was offered I took the plunge. Facebook followed and I must say was, and still is handy for communications and political campaigning. Our Honey facebook page has also served us well. but to be honest, once the novelty had worn off, I got fed up with scrolling through loads of dross and pictures of cats so I just dip in momentarily now.
Whatsapp is a Godsend for communicating in (and with) Africa, in fact I've spent a large chunk of the weekend and this morning on it communicating with various bodies in Tanzania. some of my friends use it (especially for group messaging etc). so it is pretty handy.
I use twitter almost daily, but the same, after five minutes I get bored. But it does keep me in touch with quite a few bee farmers and others.

 

[Anthony Appleyard]

I can't get into Facebook because its system thinks that I am sockpuppeting or hacking a man called Anthony Appleyard who travels much in the Middle East and writes in Academia.edu . I am not him. I have never met him.

 

[captain666]

blob:https://www.rte.ie/5366781a-3804-4b4e-b33f-43a6aaa8bd9d

 

[captain666]

Sorry, that link doesn't work. It was a wonderful clip of a five year old Irish boy with cystic fibrosis, who is Ireland's youngest beekeeper. Heartwarming!

......................................................................
However;

I just checked. Go to the link and it will get you to RTE 'News' and you'll find it here.

I know it's off topic for this thread but there you go. It's all I can manage this time of night after a few glasses of wine ( darn lock down,) smile.

See how quickly he swats one bee. Grand kid, with wonderful family support.

Work past the ad, it's worth waiting for.

Notice the Amm bees.

Fred.

 

[The Poot in Somerset]

Facebook I can live without though I do use it. Messenger is useful. A friend and I run a mentoring group on WhatsApp for people having cancer treatment and I use it to keep in touch with my daughter who lives in Germany. Twitter I find a waste of time. Google I couldn’t live without. That and my phone. I think I’d get serious withdrawal symptoms if my phone was taken away

I don’t know if there’s any truth in this but apparently DuckDuckGo is less invasive than Google. Just as good as a search engine (it seems to me).

 

[ShinySideUp]

I don’t know if there’s any truth in this but apparently DuckDuckGo is less invasive than Google. Just as good as a search engine (it seems to me).

Duckduckgo is my goto (pun intended) search engine. I have been using it for some time. I also have email via a Swiss company called Proton Mail and I now, as I mentioned about, use NordVPN.

Apart from posting on this Bee Forum I am largely anonymous (I hope).

 

[Suzi]

Duckduckgo is my goto (pun intended) search engine. I have been using it for some time. I also have email via a Swiss company called Proton Mail and I now, as I mentioned about, use NordVPN.

Apart from posting on this Bee Forum I am largely anonymous (I hope).

It's mine too for all of the reasons mentioned in the previous replies. I have the DDG extension for using with Chrome on my work pc, and it really highlights how many websites have snooping practices. I also have it on my android. There's only one thing I don't like about it and that is if you use the back button after following a link, instead of taking you back to the original page you were on it takes you back to the ddg search page, presumably because it's opening all links in a new tab, and I can't find how to turn this off.

Other than that, it's great.