• @[email protected]
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    262 years ago

    Is this just chrome? Or does this affect all chromium browsers? And yes, I already use FF, but I also use Brave for when FF doesn’t work.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years ago

        Which technically speaking makes sense as those are Google-stored data referencing illegal data. You can’t store actual ripped movies in Google drive either. Just no browser has decided to pull the trigger on this policy before since it’s so much work to collect this data unless you’re an actual web browser company as well. (So I guess this might be coming to Edge in the future)

        • JGrffn
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          2 years ago

          Google literally crawls the web and serves piracy pages as search results, complete with keywords and all. How hard is it to just… Leave personal bookmark data alone? Encrypt it for the user and let it be? What the hell does Google have to be moderating personal saved links for?

        • CaptainBasculin
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          12 years ago

          You literally can store ripped movies on Google Drive, (but you cant share them on it)

  • Venus [she/her]
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    672 years ago

    People who still use Google Chrome in 2023 should not be surprised. Firefox gang stays winning

  • @[email protected]
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    752 years ago

    This is misinformation. This has to do with Google collections and how it’s a shared platform, so of course google is going to monitor this.

    Your private bookmarks are fine. Relax.

    Still, you shouldn’t use Chrome or any Google products if you can help it.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      It’s really that simple for much of their products. I really don’t understand why people still insist on using chrome, in particular. Google is a horrible company that would literally sell you into slavery if it was legal and they thought it’d boost their ad business somehow.

    • @[email protected]
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      62 years ago

      I would wager it’s where a copy of your bookmarks are stored with Google. Not the link the user had bookmarked personally.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        Nah, the CEO reports to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, so just swapping the CEO will not impact their overall goals.

        Besides, Firefox end-to-end-encrypts synced data. They’d have to rip out a ton of solid engineering to know what you bookmark.

      • @[email protected]
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        62 years ago

        I see NextCloud being talked about everywhere. I checked their website but still can’t figure out a use case for personnal use.

        What do you use it for?

        • discusseded
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          62 years ago

          It’s a file sync platform. Say you have files you want to access from your desktop, you install next cloud and place the files there. They sync up with the next cloud server, presumably your NAS.

          Now let’s say you want to access those files from another machine. It could be a laptop, an Android phone, your friends, whatever. You just need to install the client and login, and there your files are, ready to sync to the new device.

          Great use case would be syncing your computers user folders, such as my documents, desktop, etc. If you have to wipe your computer and start over, at least those items are preserved and easy to restore.

          Otherwise sharing files with other machines in general is the main use.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 years ago

            I’ve been looking for a FOSS replacement for One drive, it seems like this is it. It seems great, I will definitely install it on my homelab then.

            Thanks for the detailed description.

          • voxel
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            32 years ago

            how is it different from using something like syncthing?

            • @[email protected]
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              22 years ago

              Much more in depth UI similar to Google drive kind of UI. Has a bunch of plugins to do other things too. Bookmarks being one of them. I personally use both they have similar syncing functions but work differently. Syncthing is nice for data just being on multiple devices where nextcloud is nice to have a UI and web site to go to anywhere. Nextcloud get the spousal approval much easier too.

            • @[email protected]
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              32 years ago

              It is much, much easier to setup than syncthing, uses a decent GUI interface that works well with Linux, Mac, Win, iOS & Android. Lots of additional features beyond file sync/sharing.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years ago

          I use it as a backup location for pictures and videos I make with my phone and for bookmark storage. But you can use it to fully replace cloud services like OneDrive, GCloud or iCloud.

        • Kushan
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          82 years ago

          It’s basically Google drive or Dropbox but hosted yourself on your own server. It’s an effort to set up and maintain but means it’s entirely in your control.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          Syncthing just… syncs things. Say you have a folder that you want to automatically get synced between devices, syncthing is exactly for this.

          If you want something like Google Drive, you can run Nextcloud, which is like a self hosted Google Drive, but more powerful. You upload files, which get saved to the server, not just synced between devices. Then you can also sync them, sync calendars, news (RSS feeds), edit documents in it (assuming you install the correct extension), and a lot more things.

          • @[email protected]
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            32 years ago

            That sounds pretty much just like SyncThing. Is the only difference that Nextcloud requires a server, rather than being decentralized?

            • @[email protected]
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              12 years ago

              Nextcloud includes OpenOffice integration, like Google Docs, and loads of plugins, such as kanban project management, notes like Keep, galleries, etc. Very much unlike Syncthing, both are useful for slightly different things.

              • @[email protected]
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                12 years ago

                Ah gotcha; so with NextCloud I could have multiple people editing an OpenOffice file simultaneously, like Google docs? That’s interesting, though not a use case that generally applies to me.

                • @[email protected]
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                  12 years ago

                  Correct. I think it’s unnecessarily complex to setup and maintain if you only need to store files.

            • @[email protected]
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              22 years ago

              Yep, it’s centralized. However, it offers more functionality than just syncing stuff. If you only want to sync files, syncthing is the simpler, more lightweight solution :)

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Google has plenty of skeletons in their closet. OP didn’t have to make up new ones.

      Internet will internet though I guess

    • Arthur Besse
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      72 years ago

      Fake, as that site is brand new and has nothing on it.

      what site is brand new?

      • OverfedRaccoon 🦝
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        72 years ago

        I think they meant the Kickass Torrents (KAT) link. It was taken down in 2016, but it looks like it’s back by the original people that were running it.

  • iAmTheTot
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    3712 years ago

    Nah. If you want to be outraged at Google, at least be correct.

    This has to do with Google “collections”, not synced bookmarks. Afaik, collections are a thing you only access on mobile through the google app, this doesn’t even have anything to do with Chrome.

    If you run chrome on mobile, for example, you don’t have access to the collections. It’s only through the google app.

    Almost certain they monitor collections because they can be shared with public.

    • @[email protected]
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      842 years ago

      They shouldn’t be monitored either way in my opinion as it’s just a bunch of links, but especially not while still private.

      Ultimately I don’t think it quite matters if it technically is bookmarks or “collections”, they seem clearly used in the same manner in this case.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        Eh… the ultimate question, what if it’s a collection of CSAM links?

        Some moderation is fine, especially when it can be shared pretty easily. This isn’t private bookmarks, it’s “private” bookmark collections.

        Edit: For those downvoting, this is the same concept as a private Reddit/facebook community. Just because it’s “invite only” doesn’t mean it’s free from following the rules of the whole site.

          • @[email protected]
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            62 years ago

            Private has various meanings in various contexts. If I take you to the private booth at a club, does it mean I’m allowed to slap around the waiter? No, of course not because rules still apply in private places hosted by a third party.

            If you want privacy in the context you explicitly mean, you shouldn’t be using anyone else’s hardware to begin with. If you expect any third party company to be fine with posting anything on them, you’re gonna have a bad time.

            For example, how many lemmy instances are fine with you direct linking to piracy torrents?

            • @[email protected]
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              82 years ago

              I’d not expect the private booth to have the club’s employee sitting there and waiting for me to do something that is against the rules preemptively.

              We mostly argue about semantics, but in this instance you are trying to excuse some very questionable behaviour by companies by saying something along the lines of “well you better go and live in a forest then”. And I don’t think that’s a good take.

              For example, how many Lemmy instances are fine with you direct linking to piracy torrents?

              Irrelevant, as all content on Lemmy is public in a proper sense of this word.

              • @[email protected]
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                12 years ago

                Yup. As an analogy, we rent apartments but that doesn’t revoke our right to privacy. We’ve decided people deserve privacy even if they’re only renting and not owning. Same should be true when one is renting space online to store things.

              • @[email protected]
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                42 years ago

                Irrelevant, as all content on Lemmy is public in a proper sense of this word.

                /sigh

                How many file hosting services let you share pirated data, publicly?

                Before you start in on “it’s not the same” it absolutely is. It’s private data, which is being shared through a link publicly. Just like bookmark collections.

                And once that file has been identified as piracy, it is very often fingerprinted and blacklisted from not only that instance, but all instances past, present and future.

                That’s essentially what is going on here.

                • @[email protected]
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                  102 years ago

                  Scary illigal content here

                  I guess we test and see whether I get banned.

                  Also, it’s not the same. A link to a website is not “pirated content”. A link to a website in a “collection” not shared with anybody is not publicly available pirated content.

                  Why would Google preemptively ban a set of characters that does not constitute a slur and is perfectly legal to exist?

        • @[email protected]
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          532 years ago

          CSAM is never an excuse to violate everyone’s privacy.

          I hate seeing people implying that it is. It’s no better then Patriot Act B.s that took away privacy in the name of catching terrorists.

          • Piecemakers
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            2 years ago

            The fact that you think “privacy” existed even then is telling. The only thing that changed in that regard with the so-called Patriot BS is whether the gov’t could do it without the guile that otherwise had been SoP for decades. 🤦🏼‍♂️

          • Dojan
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            192 years ago

            This once more reminds me of the guy in Sweden who got assaulted by police, in his bed, because an American institution searched through his Yahoo mail and found pictures and videos of him and his 30 year old boyfriend and incorrectly flagged it as CSAM, and then forwarded it to Swedish authorities.

            There was no justice after that. No repercussions for either the Swedish police or the American government, and no damages paid to the guy.

            Could this sort of surveillance stop abuse of minors? Yeah absolutely, but at what cost?

              • Dojan
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                72 years ago

                Yeah, absolutely. That’s literally what I said. In fact CSAM should come bundled on every single electronic device. Then it won’t be a problem anymore.

                Of course not. My comment was in response to the discussion about companies going through private emails and the like (which I recognise the original post isn’t about, but that’s what this conversation turned into) and how I take issue with that. You might argue that we have no right to privacy when we use products like gmail and whatnot, which would be a fair argument if they didn’t already dominate the market.

          • @[email protected]
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            62 years ago

            When those links are hosted on Google servers, publicly available to anyone handed the link to them?… how is that a private space?

            This isn’t reaching into your phone and checking the information you store on it, this is checking links you added and shared with others using their service. They absolutely have the right to check them.

              • @[email protected]
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                12 years ago

                Except that’s not how it works.

                If I go into a public park, put up a tent, then start breaking the parks rules, I’m not “in the clear” just because I’m in a tent and didn’t invite anyone else in.

      • @[email protected]
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        62 years ago

        Some torrent sites have been ordered to be entirely blocked in some countries so they probably have to check for them to comply with local laws.

      • @[email protected]
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        392 years ago

        They aren’t. They are made from links that appear in Google search results. Google is notifying the person that the link you’ve saved is being removed. Therefore it will be removed from your collection as well.

      • iAmTheTot
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        962 years ago

        I don’t care if you’re mad about it like I said. I just care about accuracy. The person in the screenshot and this thread’s title are both inaccurate.

        • @[email protected]
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          102 years ago

          I didn’t ever indicate I was mad, I simply stated my opinion. We already know it is inaccurate as you shared this in your original comment.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        Beats me, I only use chrome if firefox cannot display the site correctly. And it’s a case to case basis at that, it has to be that I really really need to access that site.

        Also i rarely use the Google apps that came with my phone. The most probably used one is Maps.

        Edit : so yeah, I forgot. I’m on Android. There’s that, no escaping from them on my part. I can’t be bothered with using and installing my own phone OS.

        • Link.wav [he/him]
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          22 years ago

          I’m with you. I’ve disabled some of the more intrusive system apps and Google apps, but there’s no replacement for Maps atm. The best I’ve found is OsmAnd, but it is unusable for me because there’s no way to track movement while observing the convention of north = up.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years ago

        Basically the Google equivalent of Pocket Reader; saves a whole bunch of links from Google News/Articles for you, Google search, and general web links. It’s not the same as your Chrome bookmarks (though at one point they were considering merging them until everyone hated it).

        • @[email protected]
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          22 years ago

          Ok, I just checked. My collections consist almost entirely of saved maps locations of which restaurants and tourist places I want to visit. Interesting.

      • iAmTheTot
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        12 years ago

        That’s not a function of chrome though, I can do that on any browser.

          • iAmTheTot
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            12 years ago

            Okay sure but that’s not a service that google is explicitly providing and hosting on their server. Bookmarks are saved locally.

    • @[email protected]
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      152 years ago

      Crazy that I had to scroll past 9 other comments to reach this one. Maybe I oughta start sorting comments by top.

    • @[email protected]
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      582 years ago

      I’m getting really sick at the amount of misinformation that gets spread here. There’s plenty of stuff to hate Google without making shit up, and resorting to misleading titles.

    • The Barto
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      22 years ago

      Aww man, I was hoping google was gonna clean my bookmark up for me.

      • iAmTheTot
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        42 years ago

        I’m not aware of a way of making your bookmarks public through chrome.

  • @[email protected]
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    472 years ago

    Jesus just stop using Google. I registered my own domains (in plural yes) and nowadays I’m using them with iCloud, but I could easily change my entire emails from provider with a simple dns change.

    For browser I advise using Firefox, but if you don’t like its performance Brave it’s also a good choice. (Though both have some shit going on behind curtains still far better than Google).

    For password management just use either Bitwarden, Proton Pass or 1Password. It’s easy not to use Google to store your data, there’s a lot of competitors for what they do.

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        Modified with loads of privacy features. Just putting the suggestion out there since some people have trouble with Firefox in some sites.

        • @[email protected]
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          182 years ago

          Still gives google a lot of power to decide how the web will function in the future. That some websites don’t work in Firefox is a symptom of exactly that problem

          • @[email protected]
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            52 years ago

            I never understood why these browsers never choose Firefox as a base to their new browsers… Technically you should be able no?

            • @[email protected]
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              22 years ago

              It’s something about how the Gecko engine is built IIRC. I don’t get all the details but TLDR Chromium is a lot easier to abstract into other programs as a plugin and engine and Gecko is harder.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          the trouble isn’t with Firefox, it’s with those sites and the developers of that site that can’t be botheted to do it properly and cross-browser - it’s still a thing and a sane requirement.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 years ago

            I mean with Safari I can understand since Apple can’t be bothered to make a decent engine with all the web standards. But Firefox has all of that so they’re just plain retarded.

        • Link.wav [he/him]
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          42 years ago

          “Some sites give people trouble with Firefox” is more like it. Spoof the user-agent header, and those sites that “work better with Chrome” suddenly work just fine.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Don’t use Brave, it is a mess and sketchy as hell. They have been selling copyrighted material and even injected their own affiliate link when users browsed to Binance.

      I do agree with the other parts! It is not that difficult to move away from Google!

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      I also recommend this.

      Buy your own domain, set auto renew and if possible put money in the account. Make sure to set up a recovery account that does not use this domain, as losing access to the domain means you lose your recovery account.

      Use an independent email provider with your domain, so you can leave any time but also they’ll have real customer support. I don’t recommend hosting your own, it will be hard to build up a non-spam reputation.

      Don’t use a password manager bundled with your os or browser, that just locks you in. It’s convenient, but be wary of our enshitifying world.

      Make sure you have an off-site backup and an on-site backup as well, if you have a house fire you don’t want to lose all your data. iCloud/Dropbox aren’t a full backup solution, but they’re pretty good.

      If your bank supports it, put your 2factor emergency methods in a safe deposit box. If you go passwordless, get an extra yubikey and put it in your safe deposit box.

    • darcy
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      2 years ago

      how did you register them genuinely asking.

      i would also recommend keepass

      • @[email protected]
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        62 years ago

        I use my own domains for email. So basically I can just use whatever mail service that supports custom domains. iCloud Plus, Proton Mail and Tutanota all support it. If I’m done with iCloud I can just switch away from it by changing DNS settings…

        Yeah I also use KeePass.

      • Gyoza Power
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        32 years ago

        It’s as simple as buying them (mind you that it’s a yearly payment) on a domain platform such as Namecheap or Porkbun.

        Then using them requires some setup depending on what you use. I use mine with Protonmail + SimpleLogin and they have a good guide on how to set it up.

  • @[email protected]
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    212 years ago

    the only two things that shock me about this is

    1. That it took until now for it to happen

    2. that people are shocked by it.