Now I know that is not true, you want to know how, my parents told me so.  Seems some religious person took their sins all away.  No quilt or evil in this family tree, not too much smarts either.   Oh well.    

No quilt? How do you keep warm?   And as for the "not too much smarts" part, typos happen to smart people too.  

With all the typos I make on this dinky machine with a cursor that has a mind of its own, going this and that, jumping to the beginning of a sentence like it just did......never mind. Lol  

Never fear, if you have nothing to hide, they will find out eventually.

Of course, they won't believe you at first, after all, everyone has something to hide.

So they will invite you politely to a secret military base somewhere on an undisclosed location for a bit of torture sessions, just a few years really, and they won't bother you with stuff like trials and sentencing, because hey, that's just bureaucracy, right? We all know who are the good guys, and if the good guys say you are a bad guy, then you must be at least a bit bad. Especially, if they say so in TV and newspapers.

It won't even hurt... much, and you could be always comforted that others have endured it, and so you will surely too, especially when you have no choice. Always a comforting thought.

And when those ten, fifteen years pass and the authorities will finally admit you probably really don't know anything, or when there will be demand for your cell, they will finally let you go, you will find out the world has changed. Your friends won't recognize you, some of them because of bad memory, some of them just in case, you know, to be sure that the stain of suspicion won't smear on them by talking to you, for example. 

And maybe you won't recognize them either, who knows, maybe you won't even remember your name, and your past. 

Isn't such a transformation... liberating? It's as if they have given you a whole new life to life. 

Something to be grateful for, for sure...

Jafo, I no longer allow Google on my PC because even if you uninstall their software, their update app (update.exe?) remains on your system in several places.  The only way to get it completely off one's system is via regedit.  To me, that makes Google spyware.  It's rather sad as they make a great browser but It needs to be clean and not so invasive. 

My SIL is a super geek with a major defense company and he doesn't like Google either - and I thought it was just me.  Remember all of those street cameras Google has/had?  That was to develop facial recognition software.  Those self driving vehicles they are working on could also be used to deliver just about any payload one could think of.  Google has an NSA contract along with Microsoft so they're not alone.  Just look at what we had to turn off with Windows 10.  I'm not paranoid but I resent being spied upon and lately, it seems to be getting worse.  I am seriously considering a switch to Linux but will bide my time and see how Windows 10 turns out.

No, it's not just you, I dislike Google and have absolutely no trust for it at all.  I refuse to use any of it's software and most certainly its search engine.... and its browser is a resource hog so is a complete no no.  Yup, Google began this internet data mining and wanting to know the ins and outs of a cat's arse, and with others pretty much following suit, it has a lot to answer for.... particularly now MS has jumped on the same advertising/commercial gain bandwagon.

As for Google listening... and not in a good sense, people, be wary of those people in Google cars milling about snapping photos of shit without consent.  If you see a Google guy get out with a drinking glass in his hand, be very, very careful, cos he might be outside listening to everything you say with the glass up against the wall.  No, it's not very high tech for one of the most advanced tech companies, but that's the whole idea... when questioned as to why he's on your property with glass in hand: "Oh, could you please spare a glass of water."

Don't believe me?  Fine, but if you catch somebody with glass in hand in your yard, just know he/she has a photographic memory and heard everything you said.

I've been looking at ways to ensure that Google does not track but it's pretty trough to do and if you do manage to block update.exe, you can no longer update the Google browser.  I could disable it in the group policy editor but that resource is not available in the home version.  I really dislike the new Edge browser as it lacks features we have always had such as File, Save As, etc. and according to Microsoft, they have no intention of adding those features back in.  I have been messing with Firefox and I've gotten to where it is usable but Firefox will not import the Favorites Bar or any folders there.  The only way to get it to function the way I like it is to bookmark every search again which I may do.  For those so inclined, there's Tor but I was not thrilled with it and the idea of sharing my computer with a bunch of strangers is not an option.  With my luck, they would be terrorists, drug lords or hackers and I don't relish the thought of the FBI on my doorstep.  For now, I will keep playing with Firefox until I get it to where if functions well for me. 

I've used Firefox for years now and have it set up the way I like.  I only occasionally use IE if a page doesn't render well in FF, but that is so rare I can't remember the last time I used it.  As for Google's POS browser.... never in a million years on any of my machines.... and I use various blockers to stop Google Analytics and any other Google spyware.

I finally made the move over to Firefox too.  It's much more finished that it used to be and I am using DuckDuckGo for search.  Life is peaceful and calm without a lot of junk and noise.  There are a couple of things I wish we could in Firefox such as renaming or shortening the name in a shortcut but they are not critical.  I read some reviews on various browsers and they all think Google is wonderful.  But...they only look at speed rather than the blatant privacy issues. Edge came out on the slow side.  It did well in one test but was blah in the others.  I really dislike the whole interface.  There is no way to save or save as a file, etc. Of course, there will probably be apps for that.  Then there's Cortana and some people think it's wonderful.  I don't see the point in it.  By the time I give her a memo I could have typed and saved it. Anyway, I am in Firefox and it is working well.  

I have stopped using Firfox due to the fact that it is giving problems when playing adobe flasher player which is required for you tube videos. I find more comfortable using Chrome, as videos are automatically played and also chrome is fast when compared to Firefox. IE, had stopped using long back and it is not in the race of browsers.

Yes, and look at the resources it uses... not to mention 'phoning home to papa' every time you use it... that's for everything you do.

If you're fine with that then okay... but I'm not.

The current release version of Firefox is now my preference after using Pale Moon for at least the last couple of years, maybe 3.  FF is now seems faster than PM and handles PDF content flawlessly - PM was having chronic issues with properly displaying/opening PDF's that had gotten really annoying.

FF, Disconnect, Adblock Plus and Flashblock & all is good (I figured out how to enable HTML5 video - not sure why Flashblock blocks it by default).