Google enables advertisers a look into your browsing history...
It's disgusting. Users browser history is private, just like their search history. Fuck Google.
Exactly. If Google wants to collect user data and use it for their products, they should be paying users. You can't build and sell cars without paying for the nuts and bolts, yet Google has been taking their materials for free.
Not for free, for a browser. This doesn't make it any less evil.
That's not the deal though. It's not an exchange of data for the use of the product, like you would exchange money for a product or service. The product is offered free of charge, and alongside that they collect whatever they can get away with. There's no consideration, there's no proportionality, it doesn't meet the basic tenets of contract law.
Data companies thrive in this hazy grey zone where regulations haven't been made. However, when you compare what they do to anything else, it's clearly unreasonable. If I invite you into my home, that doesn't mean I give you permission to take the strawberries from my garden. If you invite me into your home, that doesn't mean you get permission to go through my wallet and take photos of everything inside.
It's getting worse, look at Microsoft now. You pay them for the software and they still take your data.
Data needs to be regulated, such that users are fairly compensated and more properly in control of it. Either that, or it must be completely open - Google can collect the data, but their raw database must be freely available to everyone. Lobbying has proven effective for Google et al, however there is some small hope because law makers themselves are also the victims - everyone is. They just need to realise the true value of what's being taken from them.
No disagreement here. It's just unfortunate that the users happily agree to everything you've pointed out. Because their browser is apparently just so nice, and a typical user has no ability to recognize value in their data so it feels free to them.
The problem is that the users truly don’t understand how terrifying the data is.
End, it seems impossible to educate them on it .
Nobody wants to believe that they can be manipulated as easily as they actually can be, especially with a bunch of inside information that you don’t think is relevant.
Everyone wants to believe that they are freethinkers and make decisions themselves without “Google bias” and subtle manipulation.
I honestly have no idea how to fight that and it terrifies me
I don't necessarily disagree, but your analogy of inviting someone into your home is flawed. You did agree to them collecting some anonymous data just by using it, and the browser history usage is opt-in.
Their products are not free, they just don't cost money. If you don't agree with that policy, don't use their products. I would also add that this is their business model for most of their products (which are undeniably extremely popular, because they're good).
Maps, Search, Chrome, YouTube, etc are all really good products that you pay for by letting them use some of your data, but not the more sensitive parts, in my opinion.
I disagree that their "raw database" should be public. That seems like a terrible idea. I would much rather share my clicks and geolocation than pay for the service (I don't, but I would prefer that model).
I do however agree that data needs to be regulated, and that users solely own all their own data.
No amount of regulation would help if the users themselves don't value their data. As far as they are concerned, these products are free. They might be wrong, but that's irrelevant here, the relevant part is that to them their data is worthless so they don't care. We need more education on this, not regulation. Or rather we need both.
Yes, and people are free to choose and think what they want. Everyone knows there can be shady things in ToS, they just don't care, and that's honestly fine.
A more serious issue, in my opinion, is sensitive personal data like government identification, medical and banking records, and of course date of birth, address, etc. that can be used to identify you and in worse cases, steal your identity.
Such data is not being handled well enough, for the vast majority of cases. I'm lucky to live in a country/region that does it well (better than most), with laws protecting individuals.
But honestly idgaf if ad trackers can see on my digital footprint that I just bought a bicycle. I also enjoy services like Google Maps very much, because it works scarily well, and I can choose when I want to be tracked or not.
Problem is, Chrome abused a notion that was set up by mozilla - the idea of software without strings, open source, freely available to all. That was the environment that Chrome first set foot in, and they absolutely took advantage of that preconception, same as fb.
People forget that before google started getting cunty 'if you don't pay for the product you are the product' really wasn't a thing on the 'net.
They conceived of and created predatory practises most users literally had no framework to conceive of - the onus is on them for that shit.
It seems to me that we need some software that intercepts the data being sent to Google, replaces all proper nouns with "Sundar Pichai," all numbers with a 10 followed by 100 zeroes, and randomizes everything else before sending. The data they receive would look like it was smuggled out of a Being John Malkovich parallel universe.
"Enhanced Ad Privacy." That's the technology that, unless switched off, allows websites to target the user with adverts tuned to their online activities
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
This was overwhelming rejected by everyone, including Microsoft, Mozilla, Safari, and others. It's universally disliked, and Google knows this, but they intentionally know they're abusing their monopoly to push anti-consumer bullshit.
It sure would be nice if the US still pretended to care about consumers and breaking up monopolies.
I was born way after that may have ever happened, so sounds more like a fairy tale to me
The solution to breaking up monopolies is nationalization.
All of a sudden, we're paying less money and have way more rights. It's why the USPS can't open your mail without probably cause but fedex and ups can.
Rich people and their dick-suckers will be upset. But who cares about them anyways?
I opened the browser at the library to print a pre employment drug screen form today. The browser had a pop up asking to review settings, it looked like you could tell them not to use ads this way, but damn I wish I would have read it now. Not my computer and it reboots to clear the profile when you "log out" so I didnt spend the time
Why not just use Firefox (while you still can ...)
Why, will you soon not be able to?
I think they're just referring to FF's small market share.
Any organization that feels the need to outright claim without being asked that they're not evil are 100% projecting and are evil.
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.
Google show ad pop-up in my eyes, try to close them, but the ads are projected on the optic nerve.
New ideia
scan anti-ad chip that my friend gave me
It works, I'm free
anyway, try to order food
Error the system is not autenticated please install chrome chiplinx 3.8 to continue.
Receive fine of half my salary, new policy under anti-piracy order
Please drink verification can
Don't forget to scream "I fucking love Amazon!" clearly into the microphone.
Black mirror comming true!
That's fine. I'll continue to use Firefox.
It's crazy to think that this level of intrusion is considered fair game. The way these behaviors are normalized is completely dystopian.
It's absolutely insane that this is legal. This type of spying is explicitly forbidden in the constitution of the United States of America, but since it's a private corporation it's suddenly okay? The FBI has been known to purchase information about consumers from private corporations. This is a back door around the 4th amendment. Actually since corporations are essentially governing by proxy, buying laws and legislatures, this is a constitutional violation.
Incremental changes have muffled the impact to most consumers sadly and as long as that works they'll keep doing it.
They already did this with Youtube. I turned of Youtube history because I didn't want anyone being able to track what I watch. All of a sudden, Youtube's home page for my account was blank with a message that said "Turn on history if you want to see recommendations". I sat with that for a couple days, going to Youtube to check out channels I'd subscribed to. It wasn't the same. When I got to Youtube for some distraction, I want to discover something different from my usual stuff. So I delete my history weekly as part of "routine maintainence".
Same I delete all my history in clean state on youtube. I hate seeng videos thay I've already watched before.
Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don't get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a "You're using an Ad Blocker" overlay on videos. I'd use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn't have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this: "Ad Blockers violate Youtube's Terms of Service"
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can't view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
Mobile has extensions too. Ublock on Firefox mobile is a god send.
I tried Firefox in like 2016 but it was very slow for some reason.
Is it fast now? Been thinking about securing my privacy lately so I might give it another try.
Im going for as much privacy I can while still maintaining as much functionality as possible.
Anyone having any pointers?
Ive used Firefox and chrome for a long time side by side and on a daily use basis there is not any discernable difference that's caused by the browser.
On Firefox, add the extensions ublock origin, privacy badger, and decrentraleyes to start with, and I'd recommend changing default search to duckduckgo or start page as well. Your entire web experience will be massively improved
(Yes ddg and start page look and feel different. Search results are the same but without all the ads and misdirects)
Bro, 2016 in browser terms is ancient history.
Imagine saying in 2003: "I tried such-and-such in 1996. Is it fast now?"
Im getting old. Feels like the first Avatar movie came out a couple of years ago to me.
If you want privacy, you will sacrifice convenience.
Firefox
I assumed this was happening for years
I think it's a new thing where the browser does the profiling locally, and supposedly without allowing sites to track you anymore. But of course the sites can still ask the browser for your personal interests in order to serve you ads, so I couldn't tell you why they think this is any better.
It would no longer be minable from a central server. That’s measurably better.
You can also quickly delete it yourself.
That’s better
Bottom line, your browser should not be part of the ad network.
I’m explaining why it’s “better” , not agreeing or disagreeing with it.
Ultimately I don’t give a fuck because I haven’t trusted Google in a long time and I never left Firefox.
Mozilla ftw.
Who tf used Chrome for years!?
(checks notes)
Oh, the majority :|
Well that's the thing, Google needed something to test with before they started doing this.
I thought this is the way it’s been since 2008.
I think I'll just invite Google to come get my dna, set up cameras everywhere, and install a microchip in my brain. Then I can be done with this slow-walk of privacy invasion.
I feel like people in general give google too big of a pass all the time. I feel like I read apple hate every second while people somehow distinguish android from google.
Ikr?
Google openly became the cartoonishly evil overlord, so much so it basically entered pop culture as such (Meta, Apple, MS, Amazon, etc also all the same).
And installing either Firefox or Chrome is exactly the same for the user, usage too.
But no, let the poor megacorp have some more data so they can sell us some more direct ads and even more indirect ads that aren't even labeled as such (yet Alphabet profits from that) ... and become even more powerful influencing everyones lives, legislation, etc
I hated being the go-to guy for tech support in my family, but at least I get to jam open sauce things everywhere. They are never happy with any changes, but after a few days nobody remembers Microsoft & co, so everyone is really happy with things like Linux, Firefox (mobile too!), LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Signal, FairEmail & other open android apps, etc
Every bit helps. Nicely done friend!
But they have a great excuse tho! Something about vertical tabs! Fuck privacy when vertical tabs are at stake!!
And yet Firefox marketshare will keep dwindling. Drives me mad!
it's crazy how many people just use whatever is most popular and never question it. the number of people who don't use even a basic adblocker is mind-blowing.
People usually don't respond well with threats they don't perceive as harmful, or can't perceive physically at all. Targeted ads and privacy in general is abstract to many people, and the only time they'll start responding is if their emails or social medias get hacked due to their infos being sold on the dark web or something like that.
Chrome is like Facebook, zero respect for privacy. Anything you do with Chrome can and will be used. From day one Chrome has fed all your browsing activity to their index bot. After your browsed a URL, shortly after googlebot crawled that site.
*Google
Call the evil by its proper name :)
Not my browser history. I use private browsing... and Firefox!
A few years ago, I switched from Firefox to Chrome. A few months ago, I switched back to Firefox. Chrome is rolling out changes which are completely unacceptable, such as making adblockers impossible, and using my private browsing history for their own ads.
Got this today, I have to use chrome for a couple things every month, and they conveniently turned on all their tracking and ads and bullshit. Had to turn all that crap off again. Not that they'd glean any useful information from my paltry chrome usage, but it still pisses me off.
Firefox
Try Ungoogled Chromium!
Better yet, firefox
Doesn't help if they absolutely need to access something that "requires" Chromium. Which from their comment seems to be the case.
Unless you want to mess with user agent switcher but even that doesn't always work if it's relying on Chromium's nonstandard APIs, or if they fingerprint your browser and use that to block non-Chromium clients (which some websites actually do for some asinine reason).
In Chrome, start at the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. (Or just type
chrome://settings/adPrivacy into your address field.) The ad privacy page lets you turn off Chrome's targeted ads.
I am the only person out of my friends group who doesn't use chrome. One of my friends even fully understands the issues with chrome and still won't stop using it!
I can't understand this there's got to be some kind of psychological phenomenon happening here I'm completely unaware of.
I feel like they have some sort of unwarranted loyalty to chrome...
At a personal level I use waterfox I just like the way it looks.
I never really understood the appeal all that much to begin with. I mostly stuck with FF.
There was a brief period of time when chrome launched it seemed faster to me. I also liked the way it had a clean ui compared to others at the time. Used it for years, and it just got worse and worse.
I switched to Firefox a few years ago and it's much better imo. But I remember feeling like chrome was really good for a little while.
It's inertia, at least in my own experience. I've had a bunch of things I've been meaning to do but was lazy and stuck in my habits until some new event made me say "enough is enough" and then I try the new thing and a lot of the time I end up thinking I should have just done that sooner. But before that, it's "I know there's problems with this but it's what I know".
Doing the jump to Linux is the current one I'm procrastinating on. I use it already, just not on my main machine, so it's not even like I don't know how it is. I've just had a Windows main machine all my life and installing a new OS is a pain. But I do want to feel amusement instead of annoyance when hearing about the latest BS MS is trying to push.
Ya. I feel you on Linux. My media center PC is Linux and it works perfectly.
The issue for my main rig is that the main games I play don't support it. Which sucks.
Until now, Google and other advertisers stored cookies on your device and tracked your browsing history on their servers.
Know, everything happens locally and this is somewhat worse then the old way to do it?
How?
No. Now Google straight up monopolizes your browser history instead of trying to guess your interests.
At least here in Germany it is opt in. As the algorithm runs locally, I don't see a big issue with this.
I didn't opt in to this feature to be clear, and ghostery should help for tracking.
But if I wouldn't have this option, I would be more willing to have my history evaluated locally, instead of having my history evaluated for 90% of the sides on some third party advertisers owned system.
Hm. I was going to write "because I could have been visiting sites that don't sell my data to Google or other advertisers. And now those fuckers will have this information." But then, if I use Google Chrome to visit those sites, then it serves me right.
Firefox for the win.
How people threw Firefox aside for Google Chrome, at a time when google was known for shitty practices, will boggle my fucking mind.
At the time chrome was slightly faster and more efficient... Chrome actually forced Firefox to modernize its browser to stay competitive.
People keep telling me that, but everytime I tried Chrome my computer would lag and the fan felt like it was getting ready to take off. On multiple conputers
When it first took big bites out of Firefox, it wasn't slight at all. I have only my hazy human memory on this, but some pals and I ran a test script at the time. Iirc, Chome would routinely load enough to start reading in 2 seconds while Firefox was more like 6 on average with our site list and went over 10 way too often to ignore.
It had been very easy before that to blame the sites for all the crud they were larding in. But it was like Google's clean, fast search page compared to Yahoo's "junk you don't need" frontpage all over again. Chrome won on speed fair and square.
Thus ends this yarn by one internet fogey.
Another answer: Netflix
While the Mozilla foundation had designed browser DRM that worked on Linux, Chrome has the first implementation. And that enabled Linux users to watch Netflix.
Next one: forced fucking cloudflare DNS over HTTPS. I dipped Firefox because of that.
As shitty as google behaved, that was a nono
Could you give me an eli5 on the DNS part?
Sure, Firefox introduced a security feature: DNS over HTTPs. So instead if asking some DNS server that is configured on the local system, for the IP that belongs to a Domain name, am external service is asked via HTTPs.
While this is in theory a good idea, and has some benefits, the Firefox implementation was bad:
the external partner was cloudflare. There where no additional informations out at that time.
there where no opt out option
Users, that where forced into DNS over HTTPS could no longer resolve internal hostnames. This was a killer in office environments. And after the fix for that, everything was first submitted to cloudflare and only if cloudflare could not resolve the hostname, the local DNS server was asked, leading to potential information leaks. Also a no go for companies.
Firefox has fixed these issues by providing privacy policies, the option to choose other DNS over HTTPS providers and the option to define what domains should never be resolved externally.
But they lost trust in many professional environments because of that move.
Thank you. Yeah that sounds like a really bad move on their part.
I totally forgot one essential fact: the reason for DNS over HTTPS itself was perfectly valid: ISP's in the US are using DNS lookups of their customers for advertising. The idea is to prevent this kind of privacy breach. And it is very effective against it.
Just rye ideological driven implementation was bs
Good point.
I guess that most advertisers cannot track you everywhere, while your history has the full information.
Anyway, happy Firefox user here, I am just shocked how the Google monopoly on browsers is playing out, especially since I am forced to use Chrome for some websites.
I figured they did this already just without saying it out loud
They been doing it for years now, they just formally announced it lol
I'm glad I stopped using chrome / chromium a long time ago.
What do you use?
firefox based browsers, ublock, and I avoid using google accounts.
What other Firefox-based browsers do you use besides Firefox?
Firefox-based browsers
probably meant Gecko browsers (Firefox use Gecko rendering engine). Other browsers that use this is like Pale Moon, K-Meleon, and Waterfox
That's what I thought. I'm still curious about which ones OP uses..
I just use one browser actually, Floorp.
What I like about it it's the 'Profiles' feature, before Floorp I used Firefox, Librewolf, etc.
With Floorp I can just create another profile that it's like another browser.
It's probably the best Firefox based browser but it's not very known.
But you can already do this with Firefox.
Unless Floorp makes it easier? (Because on Firefox you have to bring the about:profiles tab first.)
I could not find it on Firefox without the: "about:profiles" that you mentioned, probably it's not easy to find, it's the first time I see it on Firefox.
In Floorp is:
Settings -> Profiles ->
-Create, switch, config...
Oh, are you talking about mobile or desktop? I don't think it's possible on mobile...
Interesting tidbit: I've been watching "the big bang theory" a lot these past few weeks on my own hosted jellyfin install.
I don't use google search anywhere, I don't type tbbt anywhere. Yet, on my Android phone I have this obligatory Google news thing when I swipe left (HATE that) and all of the sudden that thing got chock full of chatgpt written TBBT articles... I don't really go there (usually end up there by accident swiping left once too many) and I don't read those articles but it really obviously switched to TBBT articles when I switched to watching TBBT.
This really kinda freaks me out and makes me wonder WTF more google is monitoring. I use a Google Chromecast, I guess google monitors that?
That and your phone's microphone and other sensors.
Not using Google Assistant here
No they don't. Unless you talking to Google assistant.
Nope, google home assistant thingy still listens and saves things you talk about. My wife and I occasionally have conversations, and the next time she uses her android phone, it shows her ads for whatever it ismwenwere talking about. When this happens, her phone isn't in the room, though I'm sure that may also listen.
The smart speakers are a privacy nightmare, but on your phone, random apps cannot access your microphone without your knowledge or control, excluding straight up malware. There's a million anecdotes like yours on social media and none of them have held up to rigorous testing.
The fact is, most people don't realize how much of their thoughts one way or another are reflected in their digital lives, nor how good google's algorithms are. And there's also things like the frequency illusion etc.
Which phone do you have? I've been able to disable that "swipe left to access Google" thing on every Google Pixel I've ever owned. Just long-press your home screen and go to home settings and disable it.
OnePlus 8T. One day they pushed an update that removed the option to disable it. Obviously they have a contract with Google so that they profit from this, and it sucks .
When I have some time I might reinstall some new OS on it that removes all that crap
Damn advertisers are finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am is keeping me from being a better consumer and has me resenting capitalism and they'll work to change my sad life, right?
Privatize the profits, socialize the losses, isolate the losers. Got it.
finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am
I don't know, have you tried checking out the hot singles in your area? /s
pay $49.99 a month and you're guaranteed to speak to at least 1 bot as soon as your subscription expires.
It should always be opt in, not opt out. Leave chrome in favor of a non-chrome browser, such as firefox.
Try librewolf , its just hardened FF
Even better a non chromium browser aka Firefox
It's opt in, just not in America
Pihole goes brrrrrrrrrr.
It's not hard to get around PiHole. If enough adopt it, they'll just use technical workarounds to make Pihole pretty useless.
Pihole already can't block YouTube ads last I checked.
Yup because pi-hole is a domain-based blocker and youtube serves ads from their own domain
That's ok.
I use revanced for YouTube on my Android phone.
I use Smarttube Next for YouTube on my Android TV.
It works wonderfully.
Pi-hole works by giving clients non-routable addresses in response to DNS queries of known ad-serving domains. If the client (web browser, phone, smart device, etc) doesn't let you set its DNS server (as many no longer do) and doesn't obey DHCP, then you can't feed them those addresses. You could block outbound DNS traffic from all clients except your Pi-hole, but in response some clients will just refuse to work entirely. And if they require DNSSEC (or DoT/DoH with a pinned certificate), there's nothing you can do.
Everyone talks about Firefox. And that's cause Firefox is good and hands down the best. But I've been using Vivaldi which is chromium based for years. Anyone have any opinion on Vivaldi?
Vivaldi is based on Chromium. So it basically gets placed in the same field as Chrome and Edge.
Basically except they dumped the parts they didn't like and built it out to be better than anything else based on chromium.
I use it for work stuff, so it's not my daily driver and I wish Firefox just copied some of the stuff.
Tiling and Grouping is just neat.
or if Vivaldi switched to the firefox engine it would be perfect.
Vivaldi has some amazing features that I wish other browsers would catch up on. Unfortunately it's really buggy. Crashes with no recourse to recover your tabs. That's a deal breaker and I dealt with that a fair number of times. Then I decided I'd use their workspaces feature to try and avoid losing all my tabs. Great plan, worked until all my fucking workspaces got deleted too. For every good feature Vivaldi has, it has several game breaking bugs.
I love Vivaldi, if Firefox could do side bar and tab grouping id use it but V just does it better and with built in ad blocking.
I use Edge and can’t switch to Firefox for the same reasons. There’s stuff I use on Edge that is not available on Firefox. Unfortunately, those are dealbreakers for me.
There is an extension for tab grouping (simple tab groups). It and ublock origin are the two main ones I install first when I install FF fresh.
Side tabs I'm not sure of, but I'd be more surprised if there isn't an extension for that, too.
It's well done, but there's a big flaw. It doesn't make clear that Google isn't selling your data. In fact, Google's entire business model would be obliterated if it actually sold your data.
What they're selling is use of their ad network, which they can tout as having these huge profiles on everyone to advertise to. So if you're an advertiser and want to sell bee-keeping equipment, Google can say, "We'll show your ads to people who've expressed interest in keeping bees or related topics."
If they sold the data itself, no one would need the ad network, and their ads revenue would dry up after the initial data sales.
So it's in their best interests to keep your data secure. The problem is that it's also in their best interests to give you minimal control over that data, and - as the comic eloquently makes clear - harvest as much of it as they possibly can.
That link deserves to be its own post
My ad " you like thick women, Stoicism and band tees? well get you a goth girl for you, limited item sold, not responsible for broken car windows or torched house, all purchases are final.
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.
How would I go about transferring my stored passwords from Chrome to Firefox?
When you first install Firefox, it offers it during the initial setup
Switch to a dedicated password manager - Bitwarden for example.
Then you can try any browser. Firefox definitely wouldn't be my choice but it is better than Chrome.
What browser would you recommend then?
I will always shill for Bitwarden and will die on this hill. Free for most features and for $10 a year you get TOTP generation and the integration is so bloody well thought-through. Insane value and two thumbs up (or three, if I move to Fukushima).
Cross device, works with biometrics… da bomb.
It's a good idea to stop storing your passwords in your browser and use a password manager instead.
When your browser is chrome, I totally understand. Otherwise, why?
Because it's more secure, and portable. A password manager can fill information on programs and apps as well as the browser. It's also separate from the browser, so you don't have a single point of failure. Idk about now, but several years ago when I did use the Chrome password storage, a malicious user could retrieve passwords from the browser as long as they had physical access to the computer.
You can export from Chrome as a CSV file then import to Firefox.
Someone needs to make an extension that googles random stuff all the time and floods ones history with so much background noise that the history becomes useless.
Time to move most of my browsing to FF. It's already somewhere around 80% FF.
FYI, while this is a terrible move, it does not allow advertisers to see your browsing history like you said. Google looks into your history, the advertiser gives them ads and Google serves the ads to the users they think will like it. The advertiser never sees any of your data. Ironically, Google's advertising system is the safest compared to systems like Meta's.
But the advertisers do see the demographics and effectiveness of their ads being served. That's a pretty good peek into browser histories, even though it's not as minute as the statement leads you to believe.
Still, it's too much.
Glad I'm not using Chrome.
But the point being that there is no way for an advertiser to see an individual's browsing history, nor estimate it with the demographics. You can see what the wide majority is searching for but not an individual.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Google. I use Google services but I opted out of everything I could. I don't even have an advertising ID on their servers.
Thanks for clarification.
Interesting tradeoff - I have more trust in Googles security teams than 99,9% of the real time bidders around.
Sounds like a great and exciting innovation. I can’t wait to see more relevant ads based on my own personal interests!
Seems that 5 people can't read sarcasm and is prolly part of the /s gang
Oh wow, it's the shoes I just bought! How does it know? That's incredible! Okay, google, I'm ready for the next relevant ad. Oh wow, it's the shoes I already have again. Ha ha, but I'm not interested in those anymore.
Fucking hell I am sick of having to switch browsers every few years.
Why would you need to? Did you ever trust chrome? And google?
The joke being, that all browsers by now depend on ad money directly (or indirectly aka Firefox) - this means browsers can by definition never favor protection of your privacy over their money stream.
(I am using Firefox, but even they try to upsell their VPN solution with in-browser advertisement :-/)
Great, can't wait to see ads for take out food, and small appliance repair.
Nothing made me happier than seeing ads for a new washing machine for months after I bought a new washing machine. Those ads were definitely still relevant and it wasn't annoying at all.
Jokes on you Google! I delete my browser history every 30 seconds!
Do you delete their copy?
No worries, Google has your backup... :-P
But it was always Chrome 'feature' its google my activity feature.
I see a lot of people mentioning that you should just switch to Firefox, but if you're doing that because of privacy, you will not be off that much better by doing just that - unless you fiddle with the settings and get a custom user.js, such as this one, that properly hardens it and a few extenstions, such as Decentraleyes, Cookie Auto Delete or ClearURLs.
But it can get annoying, so instead I'd recommend giving LibreWolf a try. From my experience it works pretty much out of the box, and for the few settings that may be annoying to you they have a quick guide about how to disable them.
But even better than that, I'd recommend giving Mullvad Browser a try. It's basically a clear-net version of Tor Browser, and so far I haven't heard anything negative about them. I also really like their idea about pairing a VPN service (that's optional) with a browser, so now you have exactly the same browser fingerprint as any other user using the same VPN (as long as you don't add any extensions), which will make you more resistant even to the more advanced fingerprinting techniques, since there's basically no way how to tell all of the users of the VPN apart. Some more info and reasoning, along with more recommendations, can be found at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/#mullvad-browser
I've recently started using Mullvad, and was using LibreWolf as my daily browser, so now I'm switching between them randomly. I do run into issued from time to time, mostly because of 3rd party requests or auto-deleted cookies when leaving a domain, which can break some kind of cross-site flows. But whenever there's an issue, I just quickly fire up Brave to do that one task. But all things considered it's an amazing experience, so I do recommend giving some of them a try.
Literally 1984
?
On my next phone, Google Chrome will be permanently disabled. Will install Firefox first thing.
You can use this to permanently delete chrome. I have done the same since I don't trust the disabled option.
FF is one of a few browsers on Monroe l mobile that support plugins (the list is too small, but you can I install plugins outside of there curated list). So, that's even better.
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.
I don't need anymore hot singles/mamas in my area ads thank you
No, your area, you live here right? The hot singles are in "Yourcity, TheState, Unites Steaks of Examples, 12345". We know because we saw your activity. /s
Going to suspect that Arc browser has similar settings. Based on viewing Preferences > General > Manage: [Privacy and Security]
I'm assuming the same happens with google (search engine) as well (?)
It's disgusting. Users browser history is private, just like their search history. Fuck Google.
Exactly. If Google wants to collect user data and use it for their products, they should be paying users. You can't build and sell cars without paying for the nuts and bolts, yet Google has been taking their materials for free.
Not for free, for a browser. This doesn't make it any less evil.
That's not the deal though. It's not an exchange of data for the use of the product, like you would exchange money for a product or service. The product is offered free of charge, and alongside that they collect whatever they can get away with. There's no consideration, there's no proportionality, it doesn't meet the basic tenets of contract law.
Data companies thrive in this hazy grey zone where regulations haven't been made. However, when you compare what they do to anything else, it's clearly unreasonable. If I invite you into my home, that doesn't mean I give you permission to take the strawberries from my garden. If you invite me into your home, that doesn't mean you get permission to go through my wallet and take photos of everything inside.
It's getting worse, look at Microsoft now. You pay them for the software and they still take your data.
Data needs to be regulated, such that users are fairly compensated and more properly in control of it. Either that, or it must be completely open - Google can collect the data, but their raw database must be freely available to everyone. Lobbying has proven effective for Google et al, however there is some small hope because law makers themselves are also the victims - everyone is. They just need to realise the true value of what's being taken from them.
No disagreement here. It's just unfortunate that the users happily agree to everything you've pointed out. Because their browser is apparently just so nice, and a typical user has no ability to recognize value in their data so it feels free to them.
The problem is that the users truly don’t understand how terrifying the data is.
End, it seems impossible to educate them on it .
Nobody wants to believe that they can be manipulated as easily as they actually can be, especially with a bunch of inside information that you don’t think is relevant.
Everyone wants to believe that they are freethinkers and make decisions themselves without “Google bias” and subtle manipulation.
I honestly have no idea how to fight that and it terrifies me
I don't necessarily disagree, but your analogy of inviting someone into your home is flawed. You did agree to them collecting some anonymous data just by using it, and the browser history usage is opt-in.
Their products are not free, they just don't cost money. If you don't agree with that policy, don't use their products. I would also add that this is their business model for most of their products (which are undeniably extremely popular, because they're good).
Maps, Search, Chrome, YouTube, etc are all really good products that you pay for by letting them use some of your data, but not the more sensitive parts, in my opinion.
I disagree that their "raw database" should be public. That seems like a terrible idea. I would much rather share my clicks and geolocation than pay for the service (I don't, but I would prefer that model).
I do however agree that data needs to be regulated, and that users solely own all their own data.
No amount of regulation would help if the users themselves don't value their data. As far as they are concerned, these products are free. They might be wrong, but that's irrelevant here, the relevant part is that to them their data is worthless so they don't care. We need more education on this, not regulation. Or rather we need both.
Yes, and people are free to choose and think what they want. Everyone knows there can be shady things in ToS, they just don't care, and that's honestly fine.
A more serious issue, in my opinion, is sensitive personal data like government identification, medical and banking records, and of course date of birth, address, etc. that can be used to identify you and in worse cases, steal your identity.
Such data is not being handled well enough, for the vast majority of cases. I'm lucky to live in a country/region that does it well (better than most), with laws protecting individuals.
But honestly idgaf if ad trackers can see on my digital footprint that I just bought a bicycle. I also enjoy services like Google Maps very much, because it works scarily well, and I can choose when I want to be tracked or not.
Problem is, Chrome abused a notion that was set up by mozilla - the idea of software without strings, open source, freely available to all. That was the environment that Chrome first set foot in, and they absolutely took advantage of that preconception, same as fb.
People forget that before google started getting cunty 'if you don't pay for the product you are the product' really wasn't a thing on the 'net.
They conceived of and created predatory practises most users literally had no framework to conceive of - the onus is on them for that shit.
I think you mean "tenets of contract law", rather than tenants. Not trying to be "that" guy, I had to look it up myself.
Nice one.
A few posts up, there’s an article about how basically all cars manufacturers are a privacy nightmare
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/
Funny you should mention cars. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/
It seems to me that we need some software that intercepts the data being sent to Google, replaces all proper nouns with "Sundar Pichai," all numbers with a 10 followed by 100 zeroes, and randomizes everything else before sending. The data they receive would look like it was smuggled out of a Being John Malkovich parallel universe.
Or we could just use Firefox. Or Lynx.
That's some Orwellian shit right there.
every day I'm glad I switched to firefox
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.
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
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).
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.
DOIT
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
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.
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.
This was overwhelming rejected by everyone, including Microsoft, Mozilla, Safari, and others. It's universally disliked, and Google knows this, but they intentionally know they're abusing their monopoly to push anti-consumer bullshit.
It sure would be nice if the US still pretended to care about consumers and breaking up monopolies.
I was born way after that may have ever happened, so sounds more like a fairy tale to me
The solution to breaking up monopolies is nationalization.
All of a sudden, we're paying less money and have way more rights. It's why the USPS can't open your mail without probably cause but fedex and ups can.
Rich people and their dick-suckers will be upset. But who cares about them anyways?
I opened the browser at the library to print a pre employment drug screen form today. The browser had a pop up asking to review settings, it looked like you could tell them not to use ads this way, but damn I wish I would have read it now. Not my computer and it reboots to clear the profile when you "log out" so I didnt spend the time
Why not just use Firefox (while you still can ...)
Why, will you soon not be able to?
I think they're just referring to FF's small market share.
"don't be evil" days have been over since forever ago.
ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
Any organization that feels the need to outright claim without being asked that they're not evil are 100% projecting and are evil.
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.
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
Nah. In the early days it made sense because Google was doing some really cool things.
2056
Plug DNA access into pc
Google sync my brain chip with my browser page
Start searching new brain plague of 2043
Google show ad pop-up in my eyes, try to close them, but the ads are projected on the optic nerve.
New ideia
scan anti-ad chip that my friend gave me
It works, I'm free
anyway, try to order food
Error the system is not autenticated please install chrome chiplinx 3.8 to continue.
Receive fine of half my salary, new policy under anti-piracy order
Please drink verification can
Don't forget to scream "I fucking love Amazon!" clearly into the microphone.
Black mirror comming true!
That's fine. I'll continue to use Firefox.
It's crazy to think that this level of intrusion is considered fair game. The way these behaviors are normalized is completely dystopian.
It's absolutely insane that this is legal. This type of spying is explicitly forbidden in the constitution of the United States of America, but since it's a private corporation it's suddenly okay? The FBI has been known to purchase information about consumers from private corporations. This is a back door around the 4th amendment. Actually since corporations are essentially governing by proxy, buying laws and legislatures, this is a constitutional violation.
Incremental changes have muffled the impact to most consumers sadly and as long as that works they'll keep doing it.
They already did this with Youtube. I turned of Youtube history because I didn't want anyone being able to track what I watch. All of a sudden, Youtube's home page for my account was blank with a message that said "Turn on history if you want to see recommendations". I sat with that for a couple days, going to Youtube to check out channels I'd subscribed to. It wasn't the same. When I got to Youtube for some distraction, I want to discover something different from my usual stuff. So I delete my history weekly as part of "routine maintainence".
Same I delete all my history in clean state on youtube. I hate seeng videos thay I've already watched before.
Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don't get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a "You're using an Ad Blocker" overlay on videos. I'd use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn't have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this: "Ad Blockers violate Youtube's Terms of Service"
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can't view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
That deletion strategy is useless. They can still retain that information indefinitely.
Just use the search bar.
So glad I moved to Firefox, fu Google
Mobile has extensions too. Ublock on Firefox mobile is a god send.
I tried Firefox in like 2016 but it was very slow for some reason.
Is it fast now? Been thinking about securing my privacy lately so I might give it another try.
Im going for as much privacy I can while still maintaining as much functionality as possible.
Anyone having any pointers?
Ive used Firefox and chrome for a long time side by side and on a daily use basis there is not any discernable difference that's caused by the browser. On Firefox, add the extensions ublock origin, privacy badger, and decrentraleyes to start with, and I'd recommend changing default search to duckduckgo or start page as well. Your entire web experience will be massively improved (Yes ddg and start page look and feel different. Search results are the same but without all the ads and misdirects)
Bro, 2016 in browser terms is ancient history.
Imagine saying in 2003: "I tried such-and-such in 1996. Is it fast now?"
Im getting old. Feels like the first Avatar movie came out a couple of years ago to me.
If you want privacy, you will sacrifice convenience.
Firefox
I assumed this was happening for years
I think it's a new thing where the browser does the profiling locally, and supposedly without allowing sites to track you anymore. But of course the sites can still ask the browser for your personal interests in order to serve you ads, so I couldn't tell you why they think this is any better.
It would no longer be minable from a central server. That’s measurably better.
You can also quickly delete it yourself. That’s better
Bottom line, your browser should not be part of the ad network.
I’m explaining why it’s “better” , not agreeing or disagreeing with it.
Ultimately I don’t give a fuck because I haven’t trusted Google in a long time and I never left Firefox.
Mozilla ftw.
Who tf used Chrome for years!?
(checks notes)
Oh, the majority :|
Well that's the thing, Google needed something to test with before they started doing this.
I thought this is the way it’s been since 2008.
I think I'll just invite Google to come get my dna, set up cameras everywhere, and install a microchip in my brain. Then I can be done with this slow-walk of privacy invasion.
Yet the simps still won’t use Firefox
I feel like people in general give google too big of a pass all the time. I feel like I read apple hate every second while people somehow distinguish android from google.
Ikr? Google openly became the cartoonishly evil overlord, so much so it basically entered pop culture as such (Meta, Apple, MS, Amazon, etc also all the same).
And installing either Firefox or Chrome is exactly the same for the user, usage too. But no, let the poor megacorp have some more data so they can sell us some more direct ads and even more indirect ads that aren't even labeled as such (yet Alphabet profits from that) ... and become even more powerful influencing everyones lives, legislation, etc
I hated being the go-to guy for tech support in my family, but at least I get to jam open sauce things everywhere. They are never happy with any changes, but after a few days nobody remembers Microsoft & co, so everyone is really happy with things like Linux, Firefox (mobile too!), LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Signal, FairEmail & other open android apps, etc
Every bit helps. Nicely done friend!
But they have a great excuse tho! Something about vertical tabs! Fuck privacy when vertical tabs are at stake!!
Well that's what to expect from a web browser created by an advertising company.
And yet Firefox marketshare will keep dwindling. Drives me mad!
it's crazy how many people just use whatever is most popular and never question it. the number of people who don't use even a basic adblocker is mind-blowing.
People usually don't respond well with threats they don't perceive as harmful, or can't perceive physically at all. Targeted ads and privacy in general is abstract to many people, and the only time they'll start responding is if their emails or social medias get hacked due to their infos being sold on the dark web or something like that.
Chrome is like Facebook, zero respect for privacy. Anything you do with Chrome can and will be used. From day one Chrome has fed all your browsing activity to their index bot. After your browsed a URL, shortly after googlebot crawled that site.
*Google
Call the evil by its proper name :)
Not my browser history. I use private browsing... and Firefox!
A few years ago, I switched from Firefox to Chrome. A few months ago, I switched back to Firefox. Chrome is rolling out changes which are completely unacceptable, such as making adblockers impossible, and using my private browsing history for their own ads.
Got this today, I have to use chrome for a couple things every month, and they conveniently turned on all their tracking and ads and bullshit. Had to turn all that crap off again. Not that they'd glean any useful information from my paltry chrome usage, but it still pisses me off.
Firefox
Try Ungoogled Chromium!
Better yet, firefox
Doesn't help if they absolutely need to access something that "requires" Chromium. Which from their comment seems to be the case.
Unless you want to mess with user agent switcher but even that doesn't always work if it's relying on Chromium's nonstandard APIs, or if they fingerprint your browser and use that to block non-Chromium clients (which some websites actually do for some asinine reason).
Yeah I know, I'm just pushing.
In Chrome, start at the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. (Or just type chrome://settings/adPrivacy into your address field.) The ad privacy page lets you turn off Chrome's targeted ads.
As per The Verge
How about not using Chrome? Firefox Gang!
I am the only person out of my friends group who doesn't use chrome. One of my friends even fully understands the issues with chrome and still won't stop using it!
I can't understand this there's got to be some kind of psychological phenomenon happening here I'm completely unaware of.
I feel like they have some sort of unwarranted loyalty to chrome...
At a personal level I use waterfox I just like the way it looks.
I never really understood the appeal all that much to begin with. I mostly stuck with FF.
There was a brief period of time when chrome launched it seemed faster to me. I also liked the way it had a clean ui compared to others at the time. Used it for years, and it just got worse and worse.
I switched to Firefox a few years ago and it's much better imo. But I remember feeling like chrome was really good for a little while.
It's inertia, at least in my own experience. I've had a bunch of things I've been meaning to do but was lazy and stuck in my habits until some new event made me say "enough is enough" and then I try the new thing and a lot of the time I end up thinking I should have just done that sooner. But before that, it's "I know there's problems with this but it's what I know".
Doing the jump to Linux is the current one I'm procrastinating on. I use it already, just not on my main machine, so it's not even like I don't know how it is. I've just had a Windows main machine all my life and installing a new OS is a pain. But I do want to feel amusement instead of annoyance when hearing about the latest BS MS is trying to push.
Ya. I feel you on Linux. My media center PC is Linux and it works perfectly.
The issue for my main rig is that the main games I play don't support it. Which sucks.
Let me get this straight:
Until now, Google and other advertisers stored cookies on your device and tracked your browsing history on their servers.
Know, everything happens locally and this is somewhat worse then the old way to do it?
How?
No. Now Google straight up monopolizes your browser history instead of trying to guess your interests.
At least here in Germany it is opt in. As the algorithm runs locally, I don't see a big issue with this.
I didn't opt in to this feature to be clear, and ghostery should help for tracking.
But if I wouldn't have this option, I would be more willing to have my history evaluated locally, instead of having my history evaluated for 90% of the sides on some third party advertisers owned system.
Hm. I was going to write "because I could have been visiting sites that don't sell my data to Google or other advertisers. And now those fuckers will have this information." But then, if I use Google Chrome to visit those sites, then it serves me right.
Firefox for the win.
How people threw Firefox aside for Google Chrome, at a time when google was known for shitty practices, will boggle my fucking mind.
At the time chrome was slightly faster and more efficient... Chrome actually forced Firefox to modernize its browser to stay competitive.
People keep telling me that, but everytime I tried Chrome my computer would lag and the fan felt like it was getting ready to take off. On multiple conputers
When it first took big bites out of Firefox, it wasn't slight at all. I have only my hazy human memory on this, but some pals and I ran a test script at the time. Iirc, Chome would routinely load enough to start reading in 2 seconds while Firefox was more like 6 on average with our site list and went over 10 way too often to ignore.
It had been very easy before that to blame the sites for all the crud they were larding in. But it was like Google's clean, fast search page compared to Yahoo's "junk you don't need" frontpage all over again. Chrome won on speed fair and square.
Thus ends this yarn by one internet fogey.
Another answer: Netflix
While the Mozilla foundation had designed browser DRM that worked on Linux, Chrome has the first implementation. And that enabled Linux users to watch Netflix.
Next one: forced fucking cloudflare DNS over HTTPS. I dipped Firefox because of that.
As shitty as google behaved, that was a nono
Could you give me an eli5 on the DNS part?
Sure, Firefox introduced a security feature: DNS over HTTPs. So instead if asking some DNS server that is configured on the local system, for the IP that belongs to a Domain name, am external service is asked via HTTPs.
While this is in theory a good idea, and has some benefits, the Firefox implementation was bad:
Users, that where forced into DNS over HTTPS could no longer resolve internal hostnames. This was a killer in office environments. And after the fix for that, everything was first submitted to cloudflare and only if cloudflare could not resolve the hostname, the local DNS server was asked, leading to potential information leaks. Also a no go for companies.
Firefox has fixed these issues by providing privacy policies, the option to choose other DNS over HTTPS providers and the option to define what domains should never be resolved externally.
But they lost trust in many professional environments because of that move.
Thank you. Yeah that sounds like a really bad move on their part.
I totally forgot one essential fact: the reason for DNS over HTTPS itself was perfectly valid: ISP's in the US are using DNS lookups of their customers for advertising. The idea is to prevent this kind of privacy breach. And it is very effective against it.
Just rye ideological driven implementation was bs
Good point.
I guess that most advertisers cannot track you everywhere, while your history has the full information. Anyway, happy Firefox user here, I am just shocked how the Google monopoly on browsers is playing out, especially since I am forced to use Chrome for some websites.
I figured they did this already just without saying it out loud
They been doing it for years now, they just formally announced it lol
I'm glad I stopped using chrome / chromium a long time ago.
What do you use?
firefox based browsers, ublock, and I avoid using google accounts.
What other Firefox-based browsers do you use besides Firefox?
probably meant Gecko browsers (Firefox use Gecko rendering engine). Other browsers that use this is like Pale Moon, K-Meleon, and Waterfox
That's what I thought. I'm still curious about which ones OP uses..
I just use one browser actually, Floorp. What I like about it it's the 'Profiles' feature, before Floorp I used Firefox, Librewolf, etc.
With Floorp I can just create another profile that it's like another browser. It's probably the best Firefox based browser but it's not very known.
But you can already do this with Firefox.
Unless Floorp makes it easier? (Because on Firefox you have to bring the about:profiles tab first.)
I could not find it on Firefox without the: "about:profiles" that you mentioned, probably it's not easy to find, it's the first time I see it on Firefox. In Floorp is: Settings -> Profiles -> -Create, switch, config...
Oh, are you talking about mobile or desktop? I don't think it's possible on mobile...
Interesting tidbit: I've been watching "the big bang theory" a lot these past few weeks on my own hosted jellyfin install.
I don't use google search anywhere, I don't type tbbt anywhere. Yet, on my Android phone I have this obligatory Google news thing when I swipe left (HATE that) and all of the sudden that thing got chock full of chatgpt written TBBT articles... I don't really go there (usually end up there by accident swiping left once too many) and I don't read those articles but it really obviously switched to TBBT articles when I switched to watching TBBT.
This really kinda freaks me out and makes me wonder WTF more google is monitoring. I use a Google Chromecast, I guess google monitors that?
That and your phone's microphone and other sensors.
Not using Google Assistant here
No they don't. Unless you talking to Google assistant.
Nope, google home assistant thingy still listens and saves things you talk about. My wife and I occasionally have conversations, and the next time she uses her android phone, it shows her ads for whatever it ismwenwere talking about. When this happens, her phone isn't in the room, though I'm sure that may also listen.
The smart speakers are a privacy nightmare, but on your phone, random apps cannot access your microphone without your knowledge or control, excluding straight up malware. There's a million anecdotes like yours on social media and none of them have held up to rigorous testing.
The fact is, most people don't realize how much of their thoughts one way or another are reflected in their digital lives, nor how good google's algorithms are. And there's also things like the frequency illusion etc.
Play Services track you.
i suggest block play services in your main profile and let it be enabled for some apps in your work profile. via shelter app.
Or disable/remove them. Don't even need root for that. There's always microg if an app really needs them.
Use GrapheneOS without Play Spyware services.
Can I still install all software? I need my banks software, for example. If I can't install that's then my phone is useless
Which phone do you have? I've been able to disable that "swipe left to access Google" thing on every Google Pixel I've ever owned. Just long-press your home screen and go to home settings and disable it.
OnePlus 8T. One day they pushed an update that removed the option to disable it. Obviously they have a contract with Google so that they profit from this, and it sucks .
When I have some time I might reinstall some new OS on it that removes all that crap
Damn advertisers are finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am is keeping me from being a better consumer and has me resenting capitalism and they'll work to change my sad life, right? Privatize the profits, socialize the losses, isolate the losers. Got it.
I don't know, have you tried checking out the hot singles in your area? /s
pay $49.99 a month and you're guaranteed to speak to at least 1 bot as soon as your subscription expires.
It should always be opt in, not opt out. Leave chrome in favor of a non-chrome browser, such as firefox.
Try librewolf , its just hardened FF
Even better a non chromium browser aka Firefox
It's opt in, just not in America
Pihole goes brrrrrrrrrr.
It's not hard to get around PiHole. If enough adopt it, they'll just use technical workarounds to make Pihole pretty useless.
Pihole already can't block YouTube ads last I checked.
Yup because pi-hole is a domain-based blocker and youtube serves ads from their own domain
That's ok.
I use revanced for YouTube on my Android phone.
I use Smarttube Next for YouTube on my Android TV.
It works wonderfully.
Pi-hole works by giving clients non-routable addresses in response to DNS queries of known ad-serving domains. If the client (web browser, phone, smart device, etc) doesn't let you set its DNS server (as many no longer do) and doesn't obey DHCP, then you can't feed them those addresses. You could block outbound DNS traffic from all clients except your Pi-hole, but in response some clients will just refuse to work entirely. And if they require DNSSEC (or DoT/DoH with a pinned certificate), there's nothing you can do.
Everyone talks about Firefox. And that's cause Firefox is good and hands down the best. But I've been using Vivaldi which is chromium based for years. Anyone have any opinion on Vivaldi?
Vivaldi is based on Chromium. So it basically gets placed in the same field as Chrome and Edge.
Basically except they dumped the parts they didn't like and built it out to be better than anything else based on chromium.
So it's leagues above both of those browsers.
I use it for work stuff, so it's not my daily driver and I wish Firefox just copied some of the stuff.
Tiling and Grouping is just neat.
or if Vivaldi switched to the firefox engine it would be perfect.
Vivaldi has some amazing features that I wish other browsers would catch up on. Unfortunately it's really buggy. Crashes with no recourse to recover your tabs. That's a deal breaker and I dealt with that a fair number of times. Then I decided I'd use their workspaces feature to try and avoid losing all my tabs. Great plan, worked until all my fucking workspaces got deleted too. For every good feature Vivaldi has, it has several game breaking bugs.
I love Vivaldi, if Firefox could do side bar and tab grouping id use it but V just does it better and with built in ad blocking.
I use Edge and can’t switch to Firefox for the same reasons. There’s stuff I use on Edge that is not available on Firefox. Unfortunately, those are dealbreakers for me.
There is an extension for tab grouping (simple tab groups). It and ublock origin are the two main ones I install first when I install FF fresh.
Side tabs I'm not sure of, but I'd be more surprised if there isn't an extension for that, too.
Glad I switched to firefox when it became apparent google wants to take away control to shove more ads in our faces.
I thought they already did that.
Fun fact, 86% of the revenue for these big tech (Twitter/Meta/Google/YT) are from ads. 😀
Funner fact, social media apps collect more data than anybody else.
As always: If it's free, you're the product.
You're also the product is you pay for it. Source: Smart TV ads.
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?
I now understand late stage capitalism
I thought they did already.
https://contrachrome.com/
It's well done, but there's a big flaw. It doesn't make clear that Google isn't selling your data. In fact, Google's entire business model would be obliterated if it actually sold your data.
What they're selling is use of their ad network, which they can tout as having these huge profiles on everyone to advertise to. So if you're an advertiser and want to sell bee-keeping equipment, Google can say, "We'll show your ads to people who've expressed interest in keeping bees or related topics."
If they sold the data itself, no one would need the ad network, and their ads revenue would dry up after the initial data sales.
So it's in their best interests to keep your data secure. The problem is that it's also in their best interests to give you minimal control over that data, and - as the comic eloquently makes clear - harvest as much of it as they possibly can.
That link deserves to be its own post
My ad " you like thick women, Stoicism and band tees? well get you a goth girl for you, limited item sold, not responsible for broken car windows or torched house, all purchases are final.
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.
How would I go about transferring my stored passwords from Chrome to Firefox?
When you first install Firefox, it offers it during the initial setup
Switch to a dedicated password manager - Bitwarden for example.
Then you can try any browser. Firefox definitely wouldn't be my choice but it is better than Chrome.
What browser would you recommend then?
I will always shill for Bitwarden and will die on this hill. Free for most features and for $10 a year you get TOTP generation and the integration is so bloody well thought-through. Insane value and two thumbs up (or three, if I move to Fukushima).
Cross device, works with biometrics… da bomb.
It's a good idea to stop storing your passwords in your browser and use a password manager instead.
When your browser is chrome, I totally understand. Otherwise, why?
Because it's more secure, and portable. A password manager can fill information on programs and apps as well as the browser. It's also separate from the browser, so you don't have a single point of failure. Idk about now, but several years ago when I did use the Chrome password storage, a malicious user could retrieve passwords from the browser as long as they had physical access to the computer.
You can export from Chrome as a CSV file then import to Firefox.
Someone needs to make an extension that googles random stuff all the time and floods ones history with so much background noise that the history becomes useless.
This already exists btw
Or, you know, just don't use Chrome or Google!
(uses a different browser)
Have fun with that
Time to move most of my browsing to FF. It's already somewhere around 80% FF.
FYI, while this is a terrible move, it does not allow advertisers to see your browsing history like you said. Google looks into your history, the advertiser gives them ads and Google serves the ads to the users they think will like it. The advertiser never sees any of your data. Ironically, Google's advertising system is the safest compared to systems like Meta's.
But the advertisers do see the demographics and effectiveness of their ads being served. That's a pretty good peek into browser histories, even though it's not as minute as the statement leads you to believe.
Still, it's too much.
Glad I'm not using Chrome.
But the point being that there is no way for an advertiser to see an individual's browsing history, nor estimate it with the demographics. You can see what the wide majority is searching for but not an individual.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Google. I use Google services but I opted out of everything I could. I don't even have an advertising ID on their servers.
Thanks for clarification.
Interesting tradeoff - I have more trust in Googles security teams than 99,9% of the real time bidders around.
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.
These sneaky foxes should be fired.
EDIT: it seems nobody wants to fire a fox. That almost drives me to the edge but I guess I'll just try to be brave and think of it as a safari.
Oh ffs, take my upvote, but know that I'm not happy my brainhole had to endure such punnery
Sounds like a great and exciting innovation. I can’t wait to see more relevant ads based on my own personal interests!
Seems that 5 people can't read sarcasm and is prolly part of the
/sgangOh wow, it's the shoes I just bought! How does it know? That's incredible! Okay, google, I'm ready for the next relevant ad. Oh wow, it's the shoes I already have again. Ha ha, but I'm not interested in those anymore.
Fucking hell I am sick of having to switch browsers every few years.
Why would you need to? Did you ever trust chrome? And google?
The joke being, that all browsers by now depend on ad money directly (or indirectly aka Firefox) - this means browsers can by definition never favor protection of your privacy over their money stream.
(I am using Firefox, but even they try to upsell their VPN solution with in-browser advertisement :-/)
Great, can't wait to see ads for take out food, and small appliance repair.
Nothing made me happier than seeing ads for a new washing machine for months after I bought a new washing machine. Those ads were definitely still relevant and it wasn't annoying at all.
Jokes on you Google! I delete my browser history every 30 seconds!
Do you delete their copy?
No worries, Google has your backup... :-P
But it was always Chrome 'feature' its google my activity feature.
I see a lot of people mentioning that you should just switch to Firefox, but if you're doing that because of privacy, you will not be off that much better by doing just that - unless you fiddle with the settings and get a custom user.js, such as this one, that properly hardens it and a few extenstions, such as Decentraleyes, Cookie Auto Delete or ClearURLs.
But it can get annoying, so instead I'd recommend giving LibreWolf a try. From my experience it works pretty much out of the box, and for the few settings that may be annoying to you they have a quick guide about how to disable them.
But even better than that, I'd recommend giving Mullvad Browser a try. It's basically a clear-net version of Tor Browser, and so far I haven't heard anything negative about them. I also really like their idea about pairing a VPN service (that's optional) with a browser, so now you have exactly the same browser fingerprint as any other user using the same VPN (as long as you don't add any extensions), which will make you more resistant even to the more advanced fingerprinting techniques, since there's basically no way how to tell all of the users of the VPN apart. Some more info and reasoning, along with more recommendations, can be found at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/#mullvad-browser
I've recently started using Mullvad, and was using LibreWolf as my daily browser, so now I'm switching between them randomly. I do run into issued from time to time, mostly because of 3rd party requests or auto-deleted cookies when leaving a domain, which can break some kind of cross-site flows. But whenever there's an issue, I just quickly fire up Brave to do that one task. But all things considered it's an amazing experience, so I do recommend giving some of them a try.
Literally 1984
?
On my next phone, Google Chrome will be permanently disabled. Will install Firefox first thing.
You can use this to permanently delete chrome. I have done the same since I don't trust the disabled option.
FF is one of a few browsers on Monroe l mobile that support plugins (the list is too small, but you can I install plugins outside of there curated list). So, that's even better.
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.
I don't need anymore hot singles/mamas in my area ads thank you
No, your area, you live here right? The hot singles are in "Yourcity, TheState, Unites Steaks of Examples, 12345". We know because we saw your activity. /s
Going to suspect that Arc browser has similar settings. Based on viewing Preferences > General > Manage: [Privacy and Security]
I'm assuming the same happens with google (search engine) as well (?)