For anyone unaware, Google Chrome is currently rolling out an update that track your interests based on browsing history, then share them with 3rd party websites. The notification page makes it sound like they added a new privacy feature, but in actuality they automatically enrolled you into their tracking system and you have to go and manually opt out.
@malwaretech I started searching for those settings and then realized that I don't have them, because my Chrome is not updated anymore (the OS is too old)
Yay for me!
@malwaretech I don't see that setting, and my software is up-tp-date.
Hmmmm, must be because I use Chromium (open source) and not Chrome.
Oh, and I close my browser windows frequently, at which point the all the Chromium settings and cookie and other state files are deleted and replaced with those stored away in a tar file.
I've been doing this for years. Doesn't everybody?
@malwaretech Don't forget to review your "permissions," also in "settings." Don't forget to look at "additional permissions" at the bottom of that section, because there are indeed some "additional permissions" you might like to control.
@malwaretech I switched back to Firefox last month when I saw this being rolled out.
There are some things I'll miss about Chrome from a user experience perspective, but I also discovered some things that Firefox does better, so it ultimately ended up being a fairly neutral tradeoff with added privacy wins.
@Jam123@malwaretech I originally switched to Chrome for performance reasons; Firefox had serious problems with dropped frames during 2160p video playback and really struggled to handle large link history databases in user profiles (imagine waiting 500-1500ms every time you typed in the URL bar) but it does seem like the video issue has been fixed at least. Will be a long time before I can tell if the link history issue is fixed.
@Jam123@malwaretech (this wasn't a shortlived issue; Firefox's compositor had a major issue with how it managed refresh rate cadance on multimonitor, which required a major overhaul of the way they were doing things, and I wasn't willing to suffer for a few years while they fixed it)
@gsuberland@malwaretech Was a longtime Firefox user after…yes, Netscape. Went to Chrome about 10 years ago. Now it’s definitely time to leave and go back to Firefox. Google has abused my trust in them.
@MagicLike@orci@malwaretech can you disable JIT in Firefox? I've always been led to believe the security it a bit more at risk from not being able to disable JIT but admittedly I've not looked in years
@malwaretech Thank you for this. It is something like eight clicks to turn this shit off and it is kind of hidden. The pop up does not tell you how to turn this crap off. Truly a new low for scummy Google.
@malwaretech I switched to Safari today, for this reason. I had a call on Google Meet and for the first two minutes colleagues could no hear me. Their voice was distorted. Everything was slow. Oh.. and I have an M2 with 32 GB eh 🙄 I bet this is intentional from Meet.
@malwaretech We bought a Chrombook cuz we needed a budget laptop. We're not techies here. We toggled everything off. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you. 💻
@malwaretech Also don't forget to check chrome://settings/cookies and select "Block third-party cookies." Third-party cookies support a superset of the tracking that Google's new ad features do. Chrome is the only browser that has them on by default.
Marcus said:
"For people who for some reason still want to use Chrome:
Settings > Privacy >Ad privacy, then just toggle everything off."
When I sent these instructions out to psychotherapists along with a version of the original post (and how to find "Settings" in Chrome) and a suggestion to try and educate clients, they were appreciative.
That said, I got the feedback that THIS instruction would be too hard for elderly clients to implement let alone learning to use a different browser.
Pin. Drop.
Hmmm...
Respectfully there are a few people out there who can barely use a web browser.
That said, I succeeded in getting my 82-year-old mother to use Brave. It's possible.
THIS is what we are up against.
Security is basically impossible in the general population.
You're mistaken: Google Chrome is not a web browser; it's an endpoint for collecting user data and credentials, and delivering advertisements!
In the very same way that Android is not a mobile operating system.
@dascandy42@malwaretech@Kjaerulv Do add additional tracking prevention filtering since a lot (!) of components and apps out there uses #googleapi's to function - it's complicated, I know, but their sh*t is everywhere 😒 #OutBoundFW#LocalContentFiltering
Firefox already blocks the tracking bits, rendering an additional tracker blocker like Privacy Badger unnecessary.
And total Cookie protection is aptly misnamed because it doesn't just block cookies, that'd be stupid, it of course does the same for other state, but state partitioning I guess is a bad marketing term
@cruiser@dascandy42@malwaretech@Kjaerulv so the way it works with the state partitioning, the trackers (that remain after the disconnect filtering applied by enhanced tracking protection, if any) can only track you per-site.
So for each site you visit you are a separate user.
So if you go search for coffee machines on shopping site A, you will get more ads for coffee machines there, but the same ad service won't know you searched for coffee machines when it shows you add on site B. Magic!
@cruiser@dascandy42@malwaretech@Kjaerulv the reason that remain to use uBlock origin are performance, malware protection, and stupid invasive ads that take up half the page and you can't even find the content.
But trackers not so much and this may be enough for most people already. My mum has ublock origin, but basically that means I need to remote desktop in whenever it breaks a website.
@malwaretech I'm in the EU, so I got an opt-in/opt-out screen instead of a notification one. Did take me a few seconds to realize that No, I do not want 'enhanced ad privacy'. And part of me was still slightly second-guessing that decision until I saw your post.
@Zesty@malwaretech@manu I can remember this goomic from Manu. Look at the date, it's from 2019. Who wants to use Google/Alphabet services? Only for the advertising industry, right?
@malwaretech By default, a lot of users doesn't change the factory settings. So, their personal information added in the tracking system. That sound like the start of the total control.
@malwaretech
Isn't this actually a lot better than the current model?
I get that Google is doing it because it cements their control of our data, but having your tracking data only on your device, and having the choice of what to share with what site seems like a massive improvement over "everyone tries to track everything"
@malwaretech Nothing makes sense in this notification page. A browser talking about "tracking user's interest" to display "personnalized ads". Oh gosh....
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