Comcast is US-based popular internet service provider. Comcast does not notify you if the government is requesting data associated with you, likely even if a gag order is not present. They have also received a 1-star privacy rating from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which obviously, is an extremely bad rating. Comcast also fought against Google Chrome & Mozilla Firefox's new encrypted-DNS feature which encrypts DNS traffic that leaves the browser, which makes it harder for Comcast to see what their customers are doing on the internet, but at the same time Comcast also claims that they don't spy on their users. Why would they fight against this privacy-enhancing feature if they don't spy on their users?
Moreover, in the year 2015, a customer of Comcast named Lisa Brown has contacted Comcast's customer service via telephone, requesting for Comcast to downgrade her Comcast service in order to lower her monthly payment. Instead of Comcast doing so immediately, they offered her a service upgrade without extra charge. Lisa, clearly wanting to downgrade her service, refused the offer. Lisa noticed that on the next invoice/monthly bill sent to her, the customer service rep she had contacted had changed her name in the Comcast system from Lisa Brown to “Asshole Brown”. This is a truly horrible company. A similar situation occurred in the year of 2014, where a journalist named Ryan Block called up Comcast to cancel his service. Comcast straight up refused to cancel his service even after 20 minutes of arguing.
Comcast is a company that solely cares about making money, doesn't care one bit about user privacy or service quality, and has god awful and extremely rude customer support. Please avoid this company at all costs.
The Google Pixel Smartphone ironically has surprisingly good user privacy. We say ironically, because the Google Pixel is developed by Google, and Google is known to not respect user privacy, but that may not be the case with the Google Pixel. I, the author of this post, am definitely a huge advocate for online privacy, but my next smartphone may be a Google Pixel.
The Pixel uses Android, the same operating system that Samsung, Moto, OnePlus, LG, and many more all use for their smartphones. Android is open source and is primarily maintained by Google at this time. Because Android is primarily maintained and developed by Google right now, it includes many Google Services by default. This includes Google Play, YouTube, and other hidden Google Applications. This means that you are being tracked by Google on your smartphone. Smartphone companies like Samsung, OnePlus, and more, which all use Android, add their own tracking software on top of Google's.
With the Google Pixel, you're simply just locked to Google Tracking. The Pixel also allows you to disable all Google Services and Apps in the phone's settings app. The Pixel also has very many privacy-enhancing features such as MAC Address randomization and more. It is very ironic, seeing that this is all Google. As for iOS and iPhones, we are not a fan of what they are doing with their new child-abuse scanning garbage, and therefore, we no longer recommend Apple products. Please do note that by purchasing a Google Pixel, you are directly supporting Google by paying them, and you can never be 100% private or 100% secure, but the Pixel is a step in the right direction for Google.
Welcome to the PrivacyNow Blog by Swivro, where we write about things related to online privacy, cybersecurity, and anonymity!