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Google Promises Chrome Changes After Privacy Complaints (cnet.com)
Google, on the defensive from concerns raised about how Chrome tracks its users, has promised changes to its web browser. From a report: Two complaints in recent days involve how Google stores data about browsing activity in files called cookies and how it syncs personal data across different devices. Google representatives said Monday and Tuesday there's nothing to be worried about but that they'll be changing Chrome nevertheless. "We've heard -- and appreciate -- your feedback from the last few days, and we'll be making some product changes," tweeted Parisa Tabriz, a security team leader at Google. Google added in a blog post Tuesday evening that it will add new options and explanations for its interface and reverse one Chrome cookie-hoarding policy that undermined people's attempts to clear those cookies.
Was that bad? Should I not have done that?
The only ones who can trust Google are the Chinese Communists paying them to prop up their totalitarian regime.
NEVER!
Google added in a blog post Tuesday evening that it will add new options and explanations for its interface and reverse one Chrome cookie-hoarding policy that undermined people's attempts to clear those cookies.
They'll just move the info stored in the cookies to internal non-cookie storage and they're still going to log you in when you login to other aspects. They're just going to change the interface to show you they're watching you.
Be nice to have a MS office assistant character appear (like Clippy) and tap on your screen and say "Hey... I'm watching you!"
Memo to Employees: Please disregard our previous motto of "Do No Evil".
It seems to be the current thought process in corporations is that they have very little concern for privacy unless they get caught. Suddenly after they get caught they are all about privacy for a brief period to get some good PR.
Sent from my TARDIS
Too little, too late, Google.
Pathological liars. Trust them, please!
And separated out as an organization separate from Google/Alphabet. All the browsers relying on Blink/Chromium code need to do more to make sure they have contingency plans if Google pulls a Microsoft with Chrome.
When the word about Dragonfly came out, I knew that had to put my principles before my convenience
Google is now, and I believe irrevocably, not a company with whom I want to do business. They took their advantage and have firmly leveraged it against the public interest.
Advertising networks, and Google's specifically, need to be dealt with by the FTC immediately. We have the right to be secure in our correspondence in the USA. "Let me move your correspondence for free, and I will read everything about it, compile it, and sell what I can" is not a contract many people would join if the terms were laid so plainly.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
they will just track you in some other way. It's their entire business, they're not about to give it up just because some customers complain.
If you use Chrome or other Google services, they're all up in your internets.
Google: "We're sorry we got caught doing something evil (yet again). We'll be more careful not to get caught next time."
You can fix this right now. This auto-login actually broke email/sync for a company I consult for, and luckily actually found a way to turn it off right now.
1) Visit: chrome://flags
2) Set to Disabled:
Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar
When enabled, the browser manages signing in and out of Google accounts. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android
#account-consistency
> Google representatives said Monday and Tuesday there's nothing to be worried about but that they'll be changing Chrome nevertheless.
If there was "nothing to be worried about", they wouldn't be making any change, period. They'll never admit it this way, but this is them acknowledging whatever point was being made against them, and them making a concession.
Expect Google to have that "change" taking the form of the same tracking data, but now being encrypted, so users will now have no way to establish they're still being spied.
Use brave on mobile, or Firefox.. It's basically the same thing.
I think the takeaway here is that everyone should limit their use of Google apps
Just fuck 'em. That is all.
I never though I say this :
Microsoft BING! is the most trustworthy search engine.
gasp!
Google and all the other web-tracking companies seem to do so much tracking.
I'm imagining a big argument against better web privacy is fundamentally economics -- tracking, etc, makes business so much more efficient that eliminating it would essentially wind up raising prices as marketers would wind up back in the old days of educated guesses that their ads or messaging was directed at the right people.
My question is -- if you're a marketer, is all this new intelligence and tracking actually making marketing/selling better for the people doing the marketing and selling? Do they have any data to show its better?
My hunch is "not really" and most of the complaining about enhanced privacy will be driven by people collecting/selling this information who are now out a source of revenue or forced to try to sell a much less useful product. I would also expect some kind of complaining by buyers of this information, maybe not because they really know the information makes them more effective but because they just think it does.
It also makes me wonder if tracking-type info is a kind of market in false goods -- lots of money being spent and made trading the information, but its not really useful. It persists because the market is so huge and generates so much profit, but if at the end of the day it went away the only actual loss would be the economic exchange associated with buying and selling information.
So people who turned on the account sync, then logged into chrome on various devices with that account are upset it synced? I mean, hate google all you want but that's a pretty fucking retarded reason. cookie hoarding? THAT'S a legit gripe
In other words, we'll bury it in an obscure setting, mark it as to not be doing something, but will still be doing something LOL.
Just saying :
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.engadget.com/amp/2016/07/18/opera-browser-sold-to-a-chinese-consortium-for-600-million/
There is more than one way to brind down the USA.
" The buyers, led by search and security firm Qihoo 360, are purchasing Opera's browser business, its privacy and performance apps, its tech licensing and, most importantly, its name. The Norwegian company will keep its consumer division, including Opera Apps & Games and Opera TV. The consumer arm has 560 workers, but the company hasn't said what will happen to its other 1,109 employees. "
" It looks like your spreading forbidden western capitalistic dogma. Are you sure you want to visit that slashdot website, Comrade ?"
It also makes me wonder if tracking-type info is a kind of market in false goods -- lots of money being spent and made trading the information, but its not really useful. It persists because the market is so huge and generates so much profit, but if at the end of the day it went away the only actual loss would be the economic exchange associated with buying and selling information.
There are a few things at work. Purchase tracking and prediction is a technique used by many stores to encourage customers to buy more, especially if there is a high margin to the added goods. In physical stores, much of this is rooted in finding what "impulse buys" to put near what popular items to maximize revenue. In online stores, it involves tailoring the "frequently bought with" list and sending out coupons to make the high-margin items look like good deals.
Google does none of that, Google uses reactive advertising. Anything searched for that can be linked to an ad-buyer will plague a user for weeks or months after the purchase. There is a rant/joke bouncing around the cat-tubes of a person's reaction to Google advertising toilet seats for weeks after the person bought one online. Google's AdSense is all hype, and the world would be better off if no one had bought into that trash idea.
"we promise to fix it... honest!"
bull. fucking. shit.
run. don't walk. to your neighborhood firefox mirror.
"I CAN CHANGE!:
I really wonder why people reading slashdot still uses Chrome? I mean we are a bunch of people that are both aware of the issues with corporates seeing all we do online, we understand technology well enough to know how to switch and most of us care about open source. Chromium is a little better, but really what Mozilla is doing to a great extent is needed and should be supported (by for example using Firefox). I mean, we all remember the good old days when many pages only worked in IE6 right? And if all we end up with is a browser from either Google, Microsoft or Apple, it is not a lot better.
So really, why not switch? Performance reasons? All browsers are quick enough. Memory issues? They all use a lot of memory. Fancier ui? For me I see no logical reason at all to use Chrome or Chromium over Firefox, no reason from a technological standpoint and no moral reason either. And still usage of Chrome keeps going up, even among people in the tech industry. It saddens me a bit that people just do not think, or do not care about such an important thing as the web.
A slow progression with Chrome from becoming just a good browser, to now Chrome being a primary tool to monitor you as a internet user. Its transition into a data miner has been so subtle that even the most privacy conscious user is blind to what Google is doing. What's more troubling is the large user base of Chrome browser users feeding the Google data collection pot.
Google will pretend to change things, and more quietly implement what we'll call, for convenience's sake, Plan B. If they get caught, there'll be an excuse for why it's not the same thing as they were doing before, they'll apologize, promise to change, possibly fire someone and/or rearrange bits of the company, and even more quietly implement whatever they will call it, but we may as well call it Plan C. If THAT gets leaked or discovered...
Why do you think they call it ALPHABET?!? They have at least 26 plans for how to screw users over and rip them off and get even richer, and if they exhaust those, they'll either move on to another, perhaps starting with the Greek, (Plan Alpha, Plan Beta, etc.,) or perhaps start incorporating numbers.
Maybe they'll even try to change their name to "Alphanumeric". Shit... I should see if there's already one of those and if not trademark THAT, and buy-up the domain name... nah. OTOH, I don't really care enough to bother looking. But that is kind of a cool name, right?
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Parisa Tabriz is one of Google's foremost grievance mongers and Trump Derangement Syndrome suffers. When she isn't busy weasel wording a blog post about how Google is sorry and will rework Chrome's immortal super cookies until it stops upsetting people she spends her time whinging about the lack of women in tech and displacing as many males from her team as possible.
They'll just move the info stored in the cookies to internal non-cookie storage and they're still going to log you in when you login to other aspects. They're just going to change the interface to show you they're watching you.