Google enables advertisers a look into your browsing history…
I looked up “audiophool” on Chrome and I looked in my ad preferences and it started recommending stuff about speakers
edit: grammar
That isn’t new, that’s how ad networks work. Google owns one of the largest ad networks.
Well that’s what to expect from a web browser created by an advertising company.
That’s what people don’t understand. Google’s actual customers are advertisers, just like with broadcast television. The deal you make with Google is that they’ll give you all sorts of “free” services and software, and in return, you’ll see ads.
And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that model. You get what you want, Google gets what they want, and advertisers pay for it all in the hopes that you’ll like whatever they’re selling and buy it.
You can always stop using free services and pay for them directly instead, cutting the advertisers out. Or use free services from non-profits and open-source software.
But the problem is that it’s also in Google’s best interests to make that as difficult as possible. To make avoiding their data-consumption damn near impossible. Collecting, comparing, collating, and indexing data is literally what they’re the best in the world at. And they have their methods of getting it everywhere.
A broadcaster can’t stop you from turning off the TV or muting it during ads. If they could, they certainly would. (Thanks, laissez-faire capitalism!) But they’re not serving the ads AND providing the TV itself.
Google is both the broadcaster and the TV manufacturer in this analogy. They’re saying, “Here’s a free TV. Isn’t it nice? And it’ll help us give you extremely targeted and personalized ads. Hope you don’t mind that we’ve made it hard to mute, and the TV never actually turns all the way off. And sure, it’s got a camera and microphone, but what did you expect? It’s free!”
It just pop up in front of me few days ago, and then I immediately turned all the options off in the setting without any doubt…
Luckily that it is not my most used web browser now.
every day I’m glad I switched to firefox
My company still demands I use Chrome/Edge at work.
At work I honestly don’t care because I’m to 99% only using company internal websites which don’t have any ads on them anyway.
internal websites which don’t have any ads on them
I’m sure Chrome could serve you some anyway.
Use a user agent spoofer like chameleon
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So use Edge. I don’t think Microsoft is doing this bullshit.
Every day a new article comes out that slowly convinces me to switch. Chrome’s profile switcher was light years ahead of Firefox last I checked, but I’m going to have to check again and see if that’s still the case and if so, what I can do to cope.
Not sure of your use case but Firefox container tabs seem worlds better if you ask me.
I don’t know of any other browser that has the temporary container notion that FF has.
I’ll have to check, a cursory look at the documentation definitely makes them seem viable. Those definitely weren’t a thing last I checked lol. As for the use case, I have a profile for job 1, 2, personal, and personal 2 (2 being a separate Google account for it’s collaborative stuff).
For the most part it should do the trick. I dislike the branding for Mozilla VPN, but I see in the screenshots I can set custom proxy settings which will be nice.
As one of my profiles has a unique set of bookmarks and unique extensions, I’d probably be able to use the containers to substitute what I’m using 3 profiles for right now, and keep a separate profile for the job with unique extensions.
Thanks! Will definitely start migrating stuff over and seeing how it is. If I can still self host the sync backend I’ll do that as well.
DOIT
I may be cursed but I have never experienced any slowdown with Firefox. I never noticed the appeal of Chrome, but have I only used it twice in my life…
Firefox felt pretty bloated for me back in 2005-2010 or so, they have greatly improved it though and I haven’t noticed a difference in performance on either Chrome or Firefox.
It works really well on mobile, that’s just about all the appeal I can find. Some sites are a bit glitchy on Firefox, but it’s really rare. I keep it around for those occasions. On PC it’s just Firefox and Edge (cuz work).
I use a macbook for work. Chrome is ridiculously buggy and sucking every bit of memory. Firefox is almost as bad. Chrome is really bad when using more than 1 tab. Firefox has rendering issues with jira and git. Chrome compelling locks up when using meet, Firefox is slightly better.
In my opinion all browsers have sucked since 2015. Slow, unresponsive, rendering issues, resource hogs. Overall the browser experience has led me to use the internet less and less. It is not the privacy, it is the basic functionality is not working consistently.
Damn, how old is that MacBook? I think you should ask for a hardware upgrade, because both Chromium based browsers and Firefox don’t use too much resources and run smoothly on the newer models. I can’t say that Chrome isn’t buggy, as I barely use it, but I have never encountered a Firefox bug on any of my devices.
Doesn’t every browser on Apple hardware use Safari for rendering?
On iOS and iPadOS they do but not on MacOS to my knowledge
macOS is a desktop OS. It has a terminal, it lets you download that sketchy .app file from a random website, and it allows browsers to use their own engines. So, not too different from Windows or Linux.
You are correct for iOS and iPadOS though. They must use the WebKit rendering engine. All browsers on those are just Safari reskins.
So it’s just an iOS thing, got it.
Still weird, I truly yearn for the Linux Phone
I’ve never left Firefox. Through their redesigns and restructure of available add-ons, Firefox has always been the better option because they’ve always been focused on user options and user privacy.
"I don’t want my browser keeping track of my browsing history to help serve me ads, and I definitely don’t want my browser sharing any function of my browsing history with every random website I visit.”
Then why were you using Chrome in the first place?? This feels very much like “‘I never thought the leopards would eat my face,’ says the head of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
Every single product offered by Google is meant as an ad delivery method to increase their balance sheet. I’m honestly shocked by the people who are shocked when Google takes steps that are meant to increase ad delivery when that’s always been Google’s ultimate goal.
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If you’re frustrated with Firefox you could give Brave Browser a try. The devs forked off of Chromium and removed all of the tracking that Google wants in there. It comes pre-loaded with all of the Ad-blocking features I use in Firefox as well, so no extensions needed for that. Also you’ll still be able to use the Chromecast feature if you really want to go in and re-enable it.
The only thing you’ll want to do is to switch the Homepage off and probably disable the icon at the top for enrolling in their ad rewards program (which handles the problems that a lot of users here have with Brave).
Firefox is the superior browser to all of these by far
Firefox + uBlock Origin is a godsend. Shout outs also go to DuckDuckGo and the Privacy Badger add-on
Fwiw, my experience with Firefox has been so good that I’ve started using Pocket and Thunderbird as well (both also developed by Mozilla). There’s a bit of a learning curve, but resources are easily found online, and the privacy and customization benefits easily outweigh the hiccups, imo
And that’s why I will continue to use Chrome only for work. Yuck.
At least at my workplace they let us choose to use Firefox or Edge. It’s an official ICT policy that Chrome is explicitly banned from the network as it poses a data breach security risk. They pay Microsoft so there’s a legal venue to pounce them if anything goes wrong, but with Alphabet is like dealing with an alien monolith, they take your money, your data, your sanity and don’t even bother to return your mails when you need support.
Alas, we do everything on Google because we’re using Classroom, Drive, and their office suite. Since I’m already having to the use Google for everything, I just use Chrome for everything work-related.
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Very… Brave of you saying that here. For me it’s the best browser out there as well, right now. Be prepared for a cascade of downvotes from Mozilla’s shills.
Brave is a marketing browser masquerading as a privacy browser.
Just use Firefox. Mozilla is a nonprofit and Firefox is open source. It’s really not hard to switch.
Firefox is made by Mozilla Corp., which is for profit. Brave is fully FOSS as well. And Mozilla as a whole is a useless, unless we’re talking about their ability to take Google’s money (money which comes from Google ad businnes, in the end), raising the CEO paycheck and firing devs and making FF shittier with each forced update.
I just checked. Mozilla has both a non-profit and a for profit division.
Both support Firefox.
FF is developed by the for profit Corp.
You should switch to FF rather.
Relevant post: https://lemmy.world/post/2846523
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“Enhanced Ad Privacy.” That’s the technology that, unless switched off, allows websites to target the user with adverts tuned to their online activities
That’s some Orwellian shit right there.
This is how the internet has worked since forever. At least for Chrome it’s opt-in, and they’re very clear about what is shared.
Edit: apparently it’s only opt-in in Europe so I offer my condolences
I doubt this “opt-in” would replace the already existing tracking. It being opt-in is pointless since at very best it doesn’t change anything.
It’s opt-out. It’s on by default in Chrome as they claim it is the safest option, and you have to turn it off so it stops sending some data to Google. I think only in Europe it’s opt-in, because only Europe enforces their citizens rights to not have their privacy raped by US companies in the name of security.
I live in Europe so maybe that’s why it asked me if I wanted to enable it.
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Tracking cookies have been a thing for literally decades.
It’s not opt-in. These settings are automatically set to be turned on unless you intentionally turn them off. So they’re opt-out by definition.
It is most definitely opt-in for me. It popped up and said “would you like to enable this?”, explaining what would be shared and why. It was not enabled automatically. That’s opt-in if you ask me.
I got the pop-up on desktop chrome yesterday and I had to intentionally go to the settings and turn them off.
Maybe it’s different on mobile chrome? I don’t know but it was absolutely opt-out on desktop.
I use Firefox as my main browser but work requires I use chrome for some stupid bullshit. Otherwise I wouldn’t touch the browser at all.
I think they are confusing the terms opt-in and opt-out. It is opt-out with a pop up that notifies you to review the changes.
No… It pops up and asks you very clearly if you want to enable it. It also shows what it is, what’s being tracked, and who the information is shared with.
I’ll have to take a look later but I specifically remember the options being auto selected. So you have to go to the options and uncheck them when that pop up comes up. That would be saying the default option would be for it to be on. So you would have to opt out of the changes. Opt in would be default option set to off.
Were you on a computer, or a phone. Also are you in Europe? I have seen some users say that in the U.S. it is checked by default (where I am at) and some users in Europe claim it is unchecked by default there.
So your region does not have laws prevent them from automatically enabling it.
I’ve been getting it on and off for a couple of weeks and that’s my experience too… you get a ‘we want to enable this exciting new feature’ and you click no. They’ll ask again… which may push me to use firefox more.
On android i got asked if i wanna turn it on upon opening chrome, but since they call it “ad privacy” I can see a lot of people thinking it’s a good thing when in reality it just makes it easier for ads to track you without needing your cookie consent. I do remember though on windows it was a “Hey it’s on now, go to the settings to turn it back off” kind of message
That latter message is exactly what I got on Chrome on my work computer. It said something akin to “Ad privacy is turned on. Go here to edit the settings!” and then you go look and they’re all set to be enabled. I had to turn them all off.
Good article, but for those concerned that don’t have time to read the whole this, here’s the important bit:
“you can switch this functionality off and on by visiting chrome://settings/adPrivacy and/or chrome://settings/privacySandbox – cut’n’paste these URLs into your address bar to jump straight to the controls”
Thank you! I just went and turned them off after seeing your comment.
You’re welcome. Though as dhtseany@lemmy.ml and others suggest, better to move away from Chrome altogether if possible.
FWIW I always delete my browsing history at the end of each session, but maybe it is time to use a different browser.
Sure, you’re forced to decline manually on every single browser you sign into, and the setting doesn’t sync across browsers so you’re inclined to just hit ok to the pop-up by the 4th or 5th time you see it. I finally moved to Firefox recently and I have zero regrets, it’s faster with a nicer UI.
100% The far better option is not to use Chrome.
How would I go about transferring my stored passwords from Chrome to Firefox?
Going to suspect that Arc browser has similar settings. Based on viewing Preferences > General > Manage: [Privacy and Security]
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Uhhh…
“Since your history shows frequent use of
pornhub, we highly recommend websites likexvideosandredtube”Because that’s totally what every 15 year old fellow really needs hey Google?
Why not just use Firefox (while you still can …)
Can’t donate to them considering how much money is wasted on their shit ceo.
Even then, I’m sure there’s a litany of other things that they think they need but they don’t. I notice the bigger corporations become, the more justified they feel in wasting resources.
Why, will you soon not be able to?
Firefox’s user base is apparently been dwindling for a long time now, so the possibility of this browser shutting down due to not having enough funds is getting higher and higher each year. At least, that’s how I interpret it.
I think they’re just referring to FF’s small market share.
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You’ll read html sure, but will you read CSS? shudders
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Gotta have that V8 JS Engine in your head
“don’t be evil” days have been over since forever ago.
Any organization that feels the need to outright claim without being asked that they’re not evil are 100% projecting and are evil.
Nah. In the early days it made sense because Google was doing some really cool things.
I think they honestly weren’t, back in those days, or at least trying not to be.
Now google is a fully fledged advertising and marketing company
I already dumped google search in favor of DuckDuckGo years ago which gives objectively better results. Google search has been overrun with SEO spam since years ago
I’m getting rid of chrome, then of google drive, then what more… Google maps is a big one to drop too but it’s so nice.
It sucks that a company builds good software and then just abuses the crap out of it but this is why we have open source!
Lastly I’ll need to drop google from my Android phone, somehow.
So you’re telling me that Bing provides better search results than Google?
Ever try startpage.com?
I no longer would trust Startpage much as I used to. When System1 got into it, I backed off.
Ik using DuckDuckGo. I do believe they’re using some bing tech, but the results are definitely better than google for me. Whenever I go back to try it again, google gives me only spammy SEO optimized results that are useless
Even worse, the act of removing that from their motto.
“Fuck it everyone already knows we’re evil no point in pretending now.” – Google, probably
don’t be evil