Does anyone have any good alternatives to Walmart, Amazon, or Target? I'm looking for a general store that sells household products and preferably isn't owned by a billionaire or a company that adds to our surveillance state... So does anyone have any online, or physical, alternatives?

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[–] 6 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Look up "hardware store" I looked some up near me and there are a few locally owned small businesses that are pretty helpful.

Aldi has some good stuff for food. Not sure specifically what you need.

For Amazon, I use eBay a ton and find most electronics and other random items from there.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

    Remember, kids. Use Port Authority extension to block eBay's use of LexisNexis port scanning tool so they can't analyze what's installed or running on your computer, what other tabs are open, etc. It's a "security tool" but we all know it's data mining and invasive AF.

    I quit eBay roughly 2 years ago bc of this.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Wait until you discover audible barcodes used specifically for advertising at retailers and food chains.

    No location data? No WiFi scanning? No BT signatures? No app running on the background? No problem.

    Your phone picks up the audio signal through mics and phones home letting a company know a device connected where and when. Through data acquired through data brokers, can link your info to other to continue building data profiles on people in fine detail.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    I'd like to learn more about this. I feel like the vpn I use that blocks trackers and ads can prevent this and additionally I feel graphene is hardened and sandboxed to not have this happen. Feels like a permission issue if you download like Target or Walmart on your phone

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago

    I haven't looked much more into it, but I'm presuming it's relying on Google services end for it to call certain functions for this to happen, which most alt OSes won't have by default. I'm on LineageOS, for example, and sure this doesn't function this way. I can also disable my mic permissions like most Android does.

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