Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome

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UnknownSouljer

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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...tform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/

Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven't been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it's built directly into the Chrome browser.

If you are still using Chrome and needed another reason to leave, to me this is it. Google has firmly planted its flag in the: “we will track and sell everything about you” business.

I suppose there will still be people who “don’t care”. But either way this is a definite loss for consumers.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...tform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/

Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven't been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it's built directly into the Chrome browser.

If you are still using Chrome and needed another reason to leave, to me this is it. Google has firmly planted its flag in the: “we will track and sell everything about you” business.

I suppose there will still be people who “don’t care”. But either way this is a definite loss for consumers.
Click to expand...

Remember when Google's motto was, "Do No Evil." Obviously i'm an old-timer. Between them and Facebook, more privacy on the web. None at all. Greedy, anti-consumer bastards. Corporate double-speak, on a par with George Orwell's book "1984."

Who/what can stop them?
 
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philb2 said:
Who/what can stop them?
Click to expand...
That's simple. Stop using their products. Google and Facebook are service companies. Once enough people stop using their services, they'll have issues and either change direction or go under.

There's a reason I never used Chrome. At no point did I ever expect it to not track each and every thing you do, it also had a terrible UI and was missing features and usability that I already had.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...tform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/

Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven't been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it's built directly into the Chrome browser.

If you are still using Chrome and needed another reason to leave, to me this is it. Google has firmly planted its flag in the: “we will track and sell everything about you” business.

I suppose there will still be people who “don’t care”. But either way this is a definite loss for consumers.
Click to expand...
What about browsers based on the Chromium engine? Are they baking it into the engine itself?
 
UnknownSouljer said:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...tform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/

Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven't been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it's built directly into the Chrome browser.

If you are still using Chrome and needed another reason to leave, to me this is it. Google has firmly planted its flag in the: “we will track and sell everything about you” business.

I suppose there will still be people who “don’t care”. But either way this is a definite loss for consumers.
Click to expand...
"Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an "ad privacy" feature has been rolled out to them and enabled."

I got that about a week ago on my phone and went straight to the "disable personalization as much as possible, which probably isn't much" option, but I also use Samsung Internet on my phone because it allows ad blockers.

Don't know if Edge is adding this crap or not. Probably not because they won't get any of the benefits, I'd imagine.
 
LOL:
1694137139612.png
 
1_rick said:
"Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an "ad privacy" feature has been rolled out to them and enabled."

I got that about a week ago on my phone and went straight to the "disable personalization as much as possible, which probably isn't much" option, but I also use Samsung Internet on my phone because it allows ad blockers.

Don't know if Edge is adding this crap or not. Probably not because they won't get any of the benefits, I'd imagine.
Click to expand...
Microsoft has actually stated their intent to remove things from Edge. Their reasoning being feature creep has steadily pushed users away from edge so they are wanting to roll it back to being as barebones as possible.

So I may make the switch over and give it a go.
 
philb2 said:
Cor
Remember when Google's motto was, "Do No Evil." Obviously i'm an old-timer. Between them and Facebook, more privacy on the web. None at all. Greedy, anti-consumer bastards. Corporate double-speak, on a par with George Orwell's book "1984."

Who/what can stop them?
Click to expand...

That's the price you pay for "free" services.

Many people actually prefer it. It's a mutual agreement.

"Greedy" consumers want free services and they're giving consumers what they want.
Calling them greedy and anti-consumer is an insult to everyone using those services. They don't want it stopped and you're an authoritarian if you won't allow them.
 
1_rick said:
Edge is very nice to use.
Click to expand...
It’s more about finding which sites I use that don’t work correctly. I know that the HP GreenLake consoles don’t load correctly in Edge. And I spend a few hours there a week so it’s more about what other things won’t as well and how I adjust while filling out as many bug reports as I can for my reps.

Home use I can probably switch with no major issues.
 
Lakados said:
It’s more about finding which sites I use that don’t work correctly. I know that the HP GreenLake consoles don’t load correctly in Edge. And I spend a few hours there a week so it’s more about what other things won’t as well and how I adjust while filling out as many bug reports as I can for my reps.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. I can't recall the last time I ran across a site that wouldn't load in Edge, considering it's Chromium underneath. Just for giggles, try going to your HP console with Edge, but with the user agent spoofed to Chrome. More seriously, embrace the idea of using anything but Chrome everywhere except where you have to use Chrome. I use Firefox for Facebook, for example, with their FB fence extension. I may start using it for more sites, too. I actively avoid Chrome; it's not even on the laptop I'm using at the moment, and as I mentioned above, on my phone, I use Samsung's browser.
 
1_rick said:
Fair enough. I can't recall the last time I ran across a site that wouldn't load in Edge, considering it's Chromium underneath. Just for giggles, try going to your HP console with Edge, but with the user agent spoofed to Chrome. More seriously, embrace the idea of using anything but Chrome everywhere except where you have to use Chrome. I use Firefox for Facebook, for example, with their FB fence extension. I may start using it for more sites, too. I actively avoid Chrome; it's not even on the laptop I'm using at the moment, and as I mentioned above, on my phone, I use Samsung's browser.
Click to expand...
Yeah the funniest one is the Microsoft VLSC site does not work in Edge. When you click the button to copy the license key to clipboard, it doesn’t work.
 
I started using Brave on my phone because I found out that Chrome was allowing Google ads to bypass my Pi-Hole setup. I don't like how Brave tries to push crypto shit, but otherwise it's been a good mobile browser.
 
1_rick said:
That's funny because I've done that a bunch lately in Edge (on other sites.) Makes me wonder how the VLSC site screwed it up.
Click to expand...
It is the VLSC site, they recently changed from the old one which worked perfectly in Edge and was bungled in Chrome to the new one which is bungled in everything but Chrome.
 
sharknice said:
Many people actually prefer it. It's a mutual agreement.
Click to expand...
Most people think companies are doing it out of the goodness of their heart. Most people are ignorant.
"Greedy" consumers want free services and they're giving consumers what they want.
Calling them greedy and anti-consumer is an insult to everyone using those services. They don't want it stopped and you're an authoritarian if you won't allow them.
Click to expand...
Through a massive marketing push by Google is the reason why everyone uses Chrome. You can find a lot of web browsers that are free and open, that won't push you into advertising and tracking. We are giving Google and other corporations like Google the information they use to sell, and we're doing this without any compensation. What good are Google's products if we don't freely allow them to collect data on us? Every time you use GPS, or search, or go to a website you're giving Google free information that they sell. You think consumers are the greedy ones?
 
DukenukemX said:
Most people think companies are doing it out of the goodness of their heart. Most people are ignorant.

Through a massive marketing push by Google is the reason why everyone uses Chrome. You can find a lot of web browsers that are free and open, that won't push you into advertising and tracking. We are giving Google and other corporations like Google the information they use to sell, and we're doing this without any compensation. What good are Google's products if we don't freely allow them to collect data on us? Every time you use GPS, or search, or go to a website you're giving Google free information that they sell. You think consumers are the greedy ones?
Click to expand...

No they don't. Most people aren't as stupid as you think they are. Authoritarians think they're smarter than everyone else and that their way of life is the best and that and they know best instead of letting people choose for themselves.

Yes consumers are greedy. They want to use services for free. Yes Google is greedy. They want to make money. Everyone is greedy, it's simply human nature. Allowing people to choose free services in exchange for their data is perfectly fine if that's what they want to do. It's a mutually beneficial situation.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...tform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/

Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven't been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it's built directly into the Chrome browser.

If you are still using Chrome and needed another reason to leave, to me this is it. Google has firmly planted its flag in the: “we will track and sell everything about you” business.

I suppose there will still be people who “don’t care”. But either way this is a definite loss for consumers.
Click to expand...
Dude, Google has had HUMANS read your gmail for years. If people did not leave then this will not do it either.

Yes, Gmail allows developers to read your emails - BGR​

https://bgr.com/tech/gmail-privacy-humans-reading-email/
 
Been using it for years with virtually no issues.

Firefox.png


sharknice said:
They want to use services for free.
Click to expand...

I don't expect anything for free. The bigger issue is I can't afford anything, as cost of living expenses are making the act of simply surviving so expensive that there's no wiggle room in the budget for anything else. As it is I'm culling streaming services while their fees just keep rising.
 
sharknice said:
No they don't. Most people aren't as stupid as you think they are.
Click to expand...
There was a point where a lot of Americans didn't want the vaccine for various reasons, which one of them is Bill Gates putting a chip in their body.
Authoritarians think they're smarter than everyone else and that their way of life is the best and that and they know best instead of letting people choose for themselves.
Click to expand...
There are limits to how far that works out. Like when Jehovah's witness don't allow blood transfusions. Had a cousin die from that.
Yes consumers are greedy. They want to use services for free. Yes Google is greedy. They want to make money. Everyone is greedy, it's simply human nature. Allowing people to choose free services in exchange for their data is perfectly fine if that's what they want to do. It's a mutually beneficial situation.
Click to expand...
The difference is that the free data is not a written agreement, while you using their services has a TOS agreement. My point here is that Google's stock still goes up, so clearly they aren't effected by greedy consumers. They are making more money than ever, with the exception of the COVID situation because everyone banked during that time period. This whole thing is just Google cashing in that their web browser dominates the market. Manifest V3 is also Google cashing in on that market share. You as a consumer don't have to use their web browser. I personally use FireFox.
 
sharknice said:
That's the price you pay for "free" services.

Many people actually prefer it.
Click to expand...

I would question if most users know that they really are the "product." And if they understand the implications of all this data collection.
sharknice said:
It's a mutual agreement.
Click to expand...

Hardly among equals.
sharknice said:
"Greedy" consumers want free services and they're giving consumers what they want.
Calling them greedy and anti-consumer is an insult to everyone using those services.
Click to expand...

Huh? Blaming the victim here.
sharknice said:
They don't want it stopped and you're an authoritarian if you won't allow them.
Click to expand...
I never said I wouldn't "allow them." I'm concerned about the huge imbalance in economic power here. Without getting into my politics overall, I am emphatically NOT authoritarian. I'm NOT trying to impose my will on everyone.
 
This will be discussed for a couple of weeks and then be completely forgotten about. And I do not likely see Firefox as the lord and savior, either.
 
everything is collecting your data....so what is the point of worrying about it.
 
what browsers don’t invade privacy in one way or another? If it’s free it’s probably doing all sorts of nefarious things.

I’d pay for a barebones web browser with modern code to read websites, tabs and that’s it at this point.
 
Bigbacon said:
everything is collecting your data....so what is the point of worrying about it.
Click to expand...
There is a difference between orgs attempting to do that, and then intentionally handing over your data.

I’ll put it another way, if this data collection was “physical” instead of digital, people would have a very different perspective. But because geo-location, e-mail, even your name, age, sex, buying history, browser history, etc can be handed seamlessly digitally people ignore it. But if you gave that info away to everyone who asked you in person, you’d lose your mind.

So while you may not be able to prevent all data collection, or at least attempts at it, there is zero reason to allow that into your proverbial house. It’s your acceptance that makes it possible. Far more than anything else.

next-Jin said:
what browsers don’t invade privacy in one way or another? If it’s free it’s probably doing all sorts of nefarious things.

I’d pay for a barebones web browser with modern code to read websites, tabs and that’s it at this point.
Click to expand...
Is Firefox out? Last time I checked it isn’t.

Apple (which I realize isn’t the brand name most people like on this forum) also has been leading the way on privacy. With them essentially being the impetus for this article in the first place. This article is Google’s direct action, which is the inverse of Apple, to “join them” in blocking all privacy trackers. But then ironically building an ads platform into their browser in order to preserve their ad revenue business. So that said, if you happen to be on a macOS or iOS device, then Safari at the bare minimum doesn’t allow third party tracking of any kind.

However I’m not an idiot, telemetry does make it back to Apple. So far, Apple have never done anything external with said information. Can they be trusted with the loads of data they’ve been accumulating forever? Uncertain, but they don’t make money through ads platforms or through the sale of data (both of which would have to be talked about with shareholders and also a part of their public income statements). So it’s not unreasonable to think they are a reasonable alternative If you’re in a field that has software that works with Apple hardware.

Or alternatively you move to Linux. Windows is becoming an impossible minefield In terms of tracking. However that isn’t viable for most folks that rely on the Windows ecosystem, just apps choice and availability to say the least. But if you’re primarily a programmer, or only need apps that are OS agnostic or are happy to run everything in a virtual machine, then it’s a choice. Just most of us (including myself) don’t have the knowledge, nor want to spend time being an admin on our own machines.

EDIT: just spelling/grammar.
 
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philb2 said:
I would question if most users know that they really are the "product." And if they understand the implications of all this data collection.


Hardly among equals.


Huh? Blaming the victim here.

I never said I wouldn't "allow them." I'm concerned about the huge imbalance in economic power here. Without getting into my politics overall, I am emphatically NOT authoritarian. I'm NOT trying to impose my will on everyone.
Click to expand...

You're assuming they're stupid and you're calling them victims. They aren't stupid and they aren't victims.
People know their data is being sold and they're getting targetted advertisements.
How many times have you heard someone say "I was talking about X then Facebook started showing me ads for X", yet they still continued to use it? They accept it as the cost of using Facebook. Same for all the other free services.

If you truly believe people are ignorant to the fact their data is sold go tell them and see if they still use the products/services.

Assuming you're smarter than someone and you know better than them is what authoritarians use as their justification.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
There is a difference between orgs attempting to do that, and then intentionally handing over your data.

I’ll put it another way, if this data collection was “physical” instead of digital, people would have a very different perspective. But because geo-location, e-mail, even your name, age, sex, buying history, browser history, etc can be handed seamlessly digitally people ignore it. But if you gave that info away to everyone who asked you in person, you’d loose your mind.

So while you may not be able to prevent all data collection, or at least attempts at it, there is zero reason to allow that into your proverbial house. It’s your acceptance that makes it possible. Far more than anything else.


Is Firefox out? Last time I checked it isn’t.

Apple (which I realize isn’t the brand name most people like on this forum) also has been leading the way on privacy. With them essentially being the impetus for this article in the first place. This article is Google’s direct action, which is the inverse of Apple, to “join them” in blocking all privacy trackers. But then ironically building an adds platform into their browser in order to preserve their ad revenue business. So that said, if you happen to be on a macOS or iOS device, then Safari at the bare minimum doesn’t allow third party tracking of any kind.

However I’m not an idiot, telemetry does make it back to Apple. So far, Apple have never done anything external with said information. Can they be trusted with the loads of data they’ve been accumulating forever? Uncertain, but they don’t make money through ads platforms or through the sale of data (both of which would have to be talked about with shareholders and also a part of their public income statements). So it’s not unreasonable to think they are a reasonable alternative If you’re in a field that has software that works with Apple hardware.

Or alternatively you move to Linux. Windows is becoming an impossible minefield In terms of tracking. However that isn’t viable for most folks that rely on the Windows ecosystem, just apps choice and availability to say the least. But if you’re primarily a programmer, or only need apps that are OS agnostic or are happy to run everything in a virtual machine, then it’s a choice. Just most of us (including myself) don’t have the knowledge, nor want to spend time being an admin on our own machines.
Click to expand...
Apple does collect stuff, but they make it a point that they do not share it. They scrub it, randomize it, and distil them down to statistics.

28% of iOS users who identify as male and live in the western US fall into the demographic of users who would pay for your app, based on the criteria you set
Kind of stuff.

But Apple itself has a treasure trove of user data they’ve hoarded. They use it for product refinement, their own advertising, account security, all sorts of things.

But they do collect metric shit tons of it, but they guard it tight, so from a PIA perspective they are a very low risk entity.

Google not so much.

Corporate Linux is tricky, it can be easy if you have the right team for it, but building those teams are hard.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
Or alternatively you move to Linux. Windows is becoming an impossible minefield In terms of tracking. However that isn’t viable for most folks that rely on the Windows ecosystem, just apps choice and availability to say the least.
Click to expand...
I've fiddled with Linux on and off since just before 1.0. Recently I installed a copy of Mint on a mini PC and tried running a few games, and was mostly pleasantly surprised with how well it worked. Starbound, it turns out, has a native version already, and the other game was Guild Wars 2, which works really well, with two exceptions: the instructions I followed say to add a command-line option in Steam to auto-login, which didn't work, so every time I bring up the launcher, I get a warning that Windows XP isn't supported, and the executable won't actually shut down when I do "exit to desktop", and i have to manually kill the process. Actually the hardest part of getting it working was that the instructions are slightly outdated, because Valve made a couple of minor UI changes and the wiki hasn't been updated.

I'm not ready to switch--in particular, one thing I don't like is that mouse movement seems off slightly. I've actually noticed this for the last couple of years and i don't know what's going on, but it's kind of like the mouse response is either slightly faster, or maybe slightly slower, than in Windows, so it feels off somehow (same mouse & PC with Windows vs with Linux, every time I've seen it, and with 2 or 3 different machines and several mice. Not sure what's going on there but I suppose I could eventually get used to it.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
People are definitely addicted to Google apps and their ecosystem.
Click to expand...
Well, they spent close to 20 years slowly raising the water temperature in the pot, what else do you expect?

Last year I started paying for a protonmail account, but I haven't actually done much with it, because most stuff you sign up for these days doesn't really have an option to change email addresses and creating new accounts everywhere is more effort.
 
1_rick said:
Well, they spent close to 20 years slowly raising the water temperature in the pot, what else do you expect?

Last year I started paying for a protonmail account, but I haven't actually done much with it, because most stuff you sign up for these days doesn't really have an option to change email addresses and creating new accounts everywhere is more effort.
Click to expand...
ugh, i have an old yahoo email from 20+ years ago i log into once and a while for that stupid reason lol
 
ManofGod said:
This will be discussed for a couple of weeks and then be completely forgotten about. And I do not likely see Firefox as the lord and savior, either.
Click to expand...
Most likely, but Google isn't just adding an ad tracker to Chrome. Manifest V3 which will effect your daily browsing experience, because Google wants you to see ads. Web Integrity API which is just DRM for the web is Google's method of enforcing web browser integrity. FireFox maybe the path of least resistance to a better web browsing experience. Manifest V3 has been delayed so many times that I'm not even sure it's out. That's how afraid Google is to losing users with Chrome. FireFox isn't the only alternative to Chrome either. You have Brave, Vivaldi, Librewolf, Opera, and the list goes on. They are all either based on Chromium or FireFox.
Bigbacon said:
everything is collecting your data....so what is the point of worrying about it.
Click to expand...
I was involved in a murder trial and had to testify, but the defendants attorney used a lot of info in my phone to discredit me. None of it mattered, but it was used none the less. All because I let the police pull data off my phone. Just because you have nothing to hide, doesn't mean someone won't make use of every little stupid thing against you. There have been situations where people Google'd something that seemed innocent but had police at their door, because it was interprited the wrong way. Like a man who took a naked photo of his son for the doctor and Apple flagged him as a pedo. Trust me, you don't want them collecting data.
next-Jin said:
what browsers don’t invade privacy in one way or another? If it’s free it’s probably doing all sorts of nefarious things.

I’d pay for a barebones web browser with modern code to read websites, tabs and that’s it at this point.
Click to expand...
If you pay for it, you're more likely to have less privacy. Free and open browsers are less likely to go against you, simply because it can and will be forked. That's how Brave exists, because they used the Chromium source code. If Brave doesn't work out, then there's plenty more browsers based on Chromum that will respect your privacy.
 
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1_rick said:
Well, they spent close to 20 years slowly raising the water temperature in the pot, what else do you expect?

Last year I started paying for a protonmail account, but I haven't actually done much with it, because most stuff you sign up for these days doesn't really have an option to change email addresses and creating new accounts everywhere is more effort.
Click to expand...
If you're on Protonmail paid depending on on your tier you may either already have SimpleLogin support which is basically "disposable" true email (and even other stuff like addresses and the like) proxies, and in the last year or two was bought by Proton however so far they maintain their own branding. They have addons for browsers and integrations with Proton and the like. Even without that, you can also just use a native Proton email feature by just looking at aliases/masks, so you can do something like "[email protected]" but it does require you to use your "base" email, but it helps with filtering and also seeing who leaks your stuff. Alternately, besides SimpleLogin - https://simplelogin.io/ - there's also FirefoxRelay - https://relay.firefox.com/ - which is a nice way to support Mozilla with a similar feature set. Also existing Firefox users can get 5 distinct Relay aliases for free (you can reuse them) and I can confirm they work. These are some of the solutions but frankly we shouldn't have to deal with the problem as pervasively if we had what we really need - ground up, human-centric privacy laws built for this century because we'r so, so far behind that any of this stuff is allowed to happen.
 
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