For the zillions of years I've been writing the blog I've been able to upload as many images as I like with, really, no preconditions. Blogger is a service that has always been offered free of charge by Google but with any free service there are always strings attached. Somewhere...
Usually, when I upload images here it's a very straightforward process. I hit a little photo icon in the menu bar, a window opens and I have choices of where to source my images. The could be on my computer, in a Google archive or in Google Photos. I usually prep the images in a folder on my desktop computer and then upload to the blog post from there. Easy-Peasy.
Yesterday I decided to photograph a photo of Ben running a race as an illustration for my post about the Sony a77. Once I hit the preference to upload from my computer I got a new window asking me to accept cookies. If I did not accept cookies I could not upload in the way I always have.
Why not accept the cookies? Well, here's the message I get:
"Cookie Icon
Allow cookies
If you disable cookies, this application won't work properly
Close Accept."
If I hit accept I get a warning message from my operating system that says accepting these cookies will allow Google.com to track my activities.
Seems pretty sucky to me. An overnight change. No notice. More restrictions. I'm not sure I want to trade the ability to post my images here for Google having access to all my online activities. Which I am sure they are packaging and selling to endless numbers of vendors. I'm pretty sure I'm firmly against the change but I'm going to try some research and see if there are settings I can change to remediate the issue.
I really like being able to post the images. Not doing that diminishes my interest in blogging here. I'm pretty sure you can understand that since I have uploaded and shown thousands and thousands of images over the years.
I'll get back to you on this. If you are super tech savvy and have some sort of solution, please let me know in the comments.
Thanks, Admin Superior
10 comments:
Kirk: I got a new "uploader" page yesterday as well. Very confusing. But . . . I didn't get an "accept cookies" message. Don't know why. Maybe I've already accepted cookies?
Needless to say, no explanation to be found anywhere, either about the new uploader or the cookies message. I'm wondering how many people at Google are actually working on Blogger. It's probably not a sought-after job . . .
Probably just making Blogger consistent with European law, which requires the disclosure. Before that, they just gave you the cookies without telling you.
Thanks Mike.
John, That makes sense now. Appreciate the thoughts.
And as long as we're talking about Blogger . . .
Backing up. You're supposed to back up your blog, in case it gets erased. However, what is being backed up is just the HTML code for each blog post, so the "backup" just takes a few seconds. No images or anything like that. To be honest, that's not what I'd consider a backup.
I'm just a little bit worried that Google will sooner or later pull a DPReview on us with regards to Blogger.
I completely understand your feelings about blogging if you can't post photos here, Kirk. But, here's a thought. Do you need to be logged into Google in order to post anything in VSL anyway? If so, Google is already tracking you. It's like the saying goes, "If the Web product you are using is free, then it is not the product. YOU are the product."
Well, if I may, I suggest using DuckDuckGo as a browser. You can consent to everything with zero worries. After doing whatever needed, just press the fire icon and all previous data (cache, cookies, passwords, etc) will be erased.
I’ve been using this method on my desktop, iPhone and previous android phone without any problems.
I was going to tell you to set aside one browser just for the blog, but looks like anonymous beat me to it. But that's a sound idea - for e.g. Chrome (which is a Google product and uses cookies to track everything you do online anyways) would be a good browser to use just for blog and related stuff. Let Google track your use of the blog - it already does that anyways since it provides Blogger. No big loss there. Then use another browser, such as Firefox or Safari (in the "private" mode, where you need to), for all other stuff, including shopping for cameras!
And with browsers like Safari or Firefox, you can go to preferences after each session and delete all cookies and history manually, if you like (you would have to sign-in again to regularly visited websites with pay wells, such as newspapers, though).
And I would also second what Valter Coelho said: use DuckDuckGo as your default search engine, regardless of which browser you use - it respects your privacy a lot more than the default Microsoft (on Bing) or Google (on Chrome) search engines.
Personally, I use Chrome for stuff where I don't want to have to re-sign in every time I visit a page - those include a couple of newspaper subscriptions, for e.g. But for nearly everything else, I use safari, and for important stuff like emails and banking, I use Firefox. It sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. Btw, you probably know this but if you use gmail, it also tracks most of what you do online. Hence, another argument for using different browsers for different purposes. I hope this helps.
Ken
That should be pay walls, not pay wells.
Ken
Okay. This isn't new it's just now they have to blatantly disclose it. I can clear the cache of cookies any time in my browser settings. Spent the morning deleting 95% of the crap... Soldiering onward.
You and others here might be interested in "Privacy is Power", by Carissa Veliz (link to WorldCat).
Merle
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