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Loving both Firefox & Brave which are knocking down attempts by Google & Facebook to track me. Dumb question … But how do these ”good guys” make money? I’ll assume there must be a business model - or are they supported fully by donation?
Firefox gets hundreds of millions from Google to be defaulted as their search engine, plus they have some other funding sources/subscription services. Firefox is also part of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation which attracts $$$$ from big players in the internet/software space. (But Firefox isn't w/o fault in sometimes going too far in deploying for-profit items like Pocket by default for users trying to eek a few more bucks ... but thankfully it's easy to turn that stuff off.) Firefox has been my default browser since Netscape in the mid-90s. (and my first-ever internet stock which I got at IPO and did quite nicely on, I might add)
Brave does some crypto/ad-viewing stuff to help offset costs, but I haven't looked into their funding model much.
I like to just let the same familiar old black and white movie play as white noise when I try to fall asleep. All was well. When I woke up, the film had stopped and the laptop (MacBook Air) was dark. No surprise there. I went to look for something, and a bogus, rotten thing called "Search Marquis" had hijacked my searches, and results were coming up from "Bing," which I never wanted nor installed. ...Of course the dirty FILE name was something strange and peculiar, hard to identify. I ran Malwarebytes and it put the thing in quarantine. I uninstalled Chrome, but Google has got tentacles everywhere, so impossible to get rid of all traces of Google completely. There are telltale hints from time to time.
Similar story to @Crash / Warnings started popping up a year ago on my ipad that “Your device is infected by a virus.” Ignored them at first. After a few weeks I could see signs they had ripped into my DejaOffice files on the device and had been trying to export the contents. Will never know how much, if any, they made off with. This is having a modern device updated regularly with Apple’s latest IOS. First known episode in over 20 years using both Apple products and the DejaOffice app. (You can store an awful lot of personal / financial data over that time.)
Anyway, eventually I paid for a basic Norton anti-virus package. No more problems. But the issue did cause me to have to delete all the contents of my ipad and start over. Fortunately, had saved copies of older uncorrupted DejaOffice files I was able to reload - though somewhat out of date.
Footnote: This wasn’t too long after moving from cellular based wi-fi (slow) at home to Starlink’s broad-band service (much faster). I’m thinking the faster internet connection made me more vulnerable to being hacked. Just a guess.
No problems since all that.
Well … a few months later I received a notice from IdentityGuard that someone had tried unsuccessfully to change the password on my account with them. It failed because the person’s identity couldn’t be confirmed. Had the attempt succeeded, they’d have gained access to all my credit reports / files.
Years ago someone in law enforcement told me that when they followed through on identity theft complaints, they found 80-90% of this crap was originating in Russia. (No idea if still true.)
Years ago someone in law enforcement told me that when they followed through on identity theft complaints, they found 80-90% of this crap was originating in Russia. (No idea if still true.)
Would be no surprise. Anne Garrels' book, "Putin Country," was a revelation. Russia's government is not a government; it's a mafia-style-ocracy. A gang-ocracy. Extortion, intimidation, graft, theft, rape, all sorts of violence and blackmail. And the "government," as we already know, is the sponsor for such criminal junk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Garrels
Great movie. All of the Russians I have known ( here in US) are wonderful brilliant and well educated people. Of course this is a very biased sample. But it is one of histories great tragedies their country is such a mess and now so evil
Comments
Brave does some crypto/ad-viewing stuff to help offset costs, but I haven't looked into their funding model much.
Anyway, eventually I paid for a basic Norton anti-virus package. No more problems. But the issue did cause me to have to delete all the contents of my ipad and start over. Fortunately, had saved copies of older uncorrupted DejaOffice files I was able to reload - though somewhat out of date.
Footnote: This wasn’t too long after moving from cellular based wi-fi (slow) at home to Starlink’s broad-band service (much faster). I’m thinking the faster internet connection made me more vulnerable to being hacked. Just a guess.
No problems since all that.
Well … a few months later I received a notice from IdentityGuard that someone had tried unsuccessfully to change the password on my account with them. It failed because the person’s identity couldn’t be confirmed. Had the attempt succeeded, they’d have gained access to all my credit reports / files.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Garrels