Open Letter to Apple: Why I Hate AppStore and Will Never Use It

If I want to download and install a program free of cost, there is no valid reason for you to ask me who I am. That is to say, no login procedure is excusable in this case. As long as it's none of your business who I am, don't ask!

If I for some reason would want to do something that may motivate giving you my identity, like e.g. should I be willing to pay for some nice application, try to keep your noses to yourselves. That is, don't keep track of my previous passwords, don't have opinions on how I choose them and don't bugger me with stupid "security questions". Giving you security questions paired with "right answers" provides you with information about me that is none of your business. I don't care how "unimportant" or "non-sensitive" you think this information is or how you say you store it or will or won't use it. It's not your call, and not for you to know.

The requirements you impose on your users are rude and disrespectful beyond words. As far as I'm concerned, you're history.

PS. Don't come running with stories about how you want to "improve my experience". If that's what you truly want, start by pulling your hands out of my jar, and then never, ever even think of putting them back.

How to Prevent Some of Googles Tracking You

The EFF has an online article showing how to clear and pause your web search history in a few simple steps.

However, this didn't work for me; when I tried to direct my browser to https://google.com/history, as instructed, I was automatically redirected to my iGoogle page.

What I did instead: I clicked the gear symbol in the upper right corner and selected "Web History". That had the same effect.

The EFF encourages us to do this before March 1st, when Googles new privacy policy takes effect. But if you read this after March 1st, do it anyway; the less they know about your habits, the better.

Hat tip to Beelzebjörn (in Swedish).