Google enables advertisers a look into your browsing history…
Glad I switched to firefox when it became apparent google wants to take away control to shove more ads in our faces.
Firefox is a great browser to switch to, it has a vast variety of customizability in configuration. It is a very flexible browser and it has helped me a lot in the past few years.
As a further suggestion on top of it, do use a custom user.js to harden your browser even more, set up your DNS Resolver to use Quad9 or any other private DNS Server like Scaleway, NextDNS, etc.
I also recommend using Oblivious DNS over HTTPS for added security.
I am on a Freedesktop Linux system hence I refered to the Archlinux Wiki in setting the beforementioned configurations up.
The only issue I got with FF is sometimes cloudflare page won’t load while any chromium one can load effortlessly. Otherwise FF is very good
It should always be opt in, not opt out. Leave chrome in favor of a non-chrome browser, such as firefox.
It’s opt in, just not in America
Try librewolf , its just hardened FF
Even better a non chromium browser aka Firefox
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.
I think you mean “tenets of contract law”, rather than tenants. Not trying to be “that” guy, I had to look it up myself.
It’s opt-in and they’re very clear about that.
For now
No… Even if that was true, what you’re saying is “you’re right, but you might not be in a month, sooo Google bad”.
It won’t be opt-out because first of all, that’s against the law. And second you’re literally opting in by accepting their terms…
I’m glad you live in the EU because it’s opt-out for everyone else.
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.
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”.
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?
“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.
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
I’m assuming the same happens with google (search engine) as well (?)
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.
2056
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Plug DNA access into pc
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Google sync my brain chip with my browser page
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Start searching new brain plague of 2043
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Google show ad pop-up in my eyes, try to close them, but the ads are projected on the optic nerve.
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New ideia
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scan anti-ad chip that my friend gave me
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It works, I’m free
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anyway, try to order food
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Error the system is not autenticated please install chrome chiplinx 3.8 to continue.
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Receive fine of half my salary, new policy under anti-piracy order
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This is replacing tracking cookies and browser fingerprinting, which let advertisers see your history with a system that objectively doesn’t. The goal is to discourage advertisers from using trackers. Google does some shit. I don’t understand the anger about this.
Google and others experimented with pay-per-view models, but it turns out people hate having to pay for what turns out to be clickbait or ideologically disagreeable content and most will not pay in any case, so the Internet runs on ads. Click through rates for untargeted ads are abysmal. This technology isn’t great, but the alternatives, tracking or web sites shutting down, are worse. Anyone who doesn’t want targeted ads can opt-out forever in a few clicks.
And yet Firefox marketshare will keep dwindling. Drives me mad!
deleted by creator
Part of Mozilla’s funding comes from Google. I adore their browser and other software however the corporate itself has a questionable history as it is with many corporates usually anyway.
Seems like a waste of money.
If people want to use garbage, let them. It’s not like telling them firefox is better is going to change anything.
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.
Well that’s what to expect from a web browser created by an advertising company.
