Google actually listens to users, hands back cookies and rethinks Chrome auto sign-in

Re: Google still know everything about almost everyone, regardless of a switch.

Google and Facebook both got caught buying bank-transaction / credit-card info plus hospital / medical / patient data. That tells you everything you need to know about where this is going. Adblockers don't stop server-side analytics. The chrome cookie switch is the low hanging fruit of tracking, its not the complete picture!

What you have to look at is how and why both industrial surveillance complexes want into china. Its not just about the numbers, they also have the best infrastructure to monitor and track every citizen and score them. That's the end game and its coming West. Book a flight on Musk's rocket or there's no escape!

Re: Google still know everything about almost everyone, regardless of a switch.

Basically, all our base are belong to Google already.

That may be true, but it is not inevitable that we the people, whether citizens or subjects, will roll over and accept this. To maintain some vestige of what it means to be human, we must continue to resist, making life as hard for data collectors as possible.

Re: Google still know everything about almost everyone, regardless of a switch.

"I installed one recently and have noticed that about seventy to ninety per cent of websites load assets from one Google domain"

And it's wanker devs, no doubt some hang around on here, that pull these assets and scripts from 3rd party sites with no checks as to whether the file is what it's supposed to be or what data might be leaked from visitors and expose risk to everyone. Put the effing files on your server where you can check them first and not have third parties gatecrash your shit.

Re: Google still know everything about almost everyone, regardless of a switch.

All of that is why I don't allow websites to run code on my machines, I firewall off all internet communications by default, both incoming and outgoing, don't use Google services or programs, buy things with cash as much as possible, and so forth.

The major companies that insist on spying on us are engaging in what amounts to a wholesale assault on the public. I can't stop all of the incoming punches, of course, but I can stop a lot of them -- and every little bit helps.

Re: Google still know everything about almost everyone, regardless of a switch.

I think you are referring to a new economy - its called 'surveillance economics' where if you didn't pay for the product you are the product ... its an implied bargain (sort of) since if you use gmail you [should] expect Google to index all of your email, if you use Chrome or Edge you should expect (Google, Microsoft) command line completion and spelling mistake correction convenience tools to work using the URLs that you access. If you use public DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, 1.1.1.1 and soon 9.9.9.9) you should expect your source IP to be matched against your hostname queries.

I have put in place some mitigations since I saw much of this coming...

1. I run my own DNS servers for both my own DNS zones and as recursive resolvers. I do not use public DNS or my ISP's DNS

2. I run my own Email servers with Exim 4 and Dovecot. I ensure that SSL with AES-256-GCM over IPv6 is used everywhere possible. My email clients (Windows and Android) use SSL with my servers.

3. I use different email addresses like mike.facebook@ mike.ebay@ mike.paypal@ mike.amazon@ ... and alias them on my incoming server so that big data slurpers cannot easily join things together - this also significantly reduces the attack surface for hackers that steal back-end databases

4. I web browse with Chrome, Firefox or Brave and use AdBlock and use several different machines. I don't 'sign in' to services such as Chrome

5. For things like Google services such as Play Store, Webmaster tools, etc. I use a Gmail 'burn' account - nobody else knows it or uses it, hence nothing lost if I throw it away.

6. I don't put my mobile phone number, name, address, date of birth on anything I can avoid and where I do my DOB is deliberately wrong (and different). For suspicious/dodgy websites I use throwaway aliases.

People should think InfoSec and minimise what information about themselves they give away.

Mike

Re: The increaste in non-techy people....

How to get off Google services? ... A pair of wire clippers will do the job.

Re: The increaste in non-techy people....

First... don't use Chrome. I do though only for one website.

Second use something along the of https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ for IE which blocks almost all ads, cookies, etc. from sites other . I believe there's a similar blocker for Firefox, but again, I only use it for one or two sites.

When I'm running IE, it's my choice to unblock websites and accept their ads and those damn cookies. The cookies get deleted nightly via a script.

Re: For how long

You can trust Google about a far as you can thrown the MS CEO from the shore into Puget Sound. i.e. not very far.

They got caught

With their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. They'll try again, and hope people aren't paying attention next time.

Re: Options

How many users have I been browsing the interwebs?

How is it I only discovered 'backspace' today?

Re: Options

backspace to go back

I'm sure these things used to be far easier to get at in the past

Firefox did dumbed down cookie management recently, making more difficult to selectively delete cookies. Don't know if because the money the get from Google.

Re: "tucked away in the Privacy and Security settings"

Shift Ctrl Delete gets you to the Clear Browsing Data settings page in Chrome/ium.

Didn't find this out til yesterday meself :{

Re: "tucked away in the Privacy and Security settings"

If you're building or testing a website, I would recommend opening the developer console, clicking the Application tab and you can see all the site's cookies and then delete them all or individually.

Also, you can search settings in Chrome, which helps find what you're after.

Re: "tucked away in the Privacy and Security settings"

"I'm sure these things used to be far easier to get at in the past"

In the case of Firefox, that was the very recent past. Then Mozilla decided that people didn't really need to know any of that stuff.

Re: Sure, they listened....

GDPR Fines?

Zero!

They'll find some way to make sure that none of their European Operations actually earns even one Cent.

Then they'll hope that their friends in the US Courts block any attempt to get the money out of the US operation.

TBH, they simply don't care. They need your data more and more and are apparently prepared to go to pretty well any length to get it.

Re: Chrome is the best

NoooooOOOoooo!

He loves ME best!

Re: Would there be a market...

no, because the code/behaviour would be analysed by your well resourced adversary and the cruft nicely filtered out.

Also it's the wrong solution. The correct solution is to remove the problem (slurp slurp behaviour), but this is a societal issue and unlikely to be easy or fast. Historically, we tend to go down these mental roads every now and again, but inevitably end up back at equilibrium. Hopefully the same is true here and we'll eventually end up in a sensible middle ground.

Digital records won't last forever, but they'll last a lifetime or so - I reckon we'll need a couple of those time periods as a society to recognise the downsides.

Re: Would there be a market...

Wouldn't it be a better idea to use a different browser entirely?

Re: Would there be a market...

TrackMeNot

Over the last few minutes I had the tab open it searched for 'beef recall' browsersoxx dorothy provine, southwest airines, hugh hefner, ipadcases....

you get my drift

Re: Would there be a market...

"Something that quietly runs, visiting random webpages (SFW) and following links, patterned on human habits. That wouldn't stop the Google slurp, but it would bury your real connections in a smoke-screen of cruff."

It would work as intended (technically) but might not work as you had intended. It's because on the internet random webpages and "SFW" will still end up with pretty awkward results.

Internal Stasi to monitor Google's own people

Anyone still in denial about Chrome & Google practices? Wake up:

_____________________

Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/

_____________________

"The memo was shared earlier this month among a group of Google employees who have been organizing internal protests over the censored search system, which has been designed to remove content that China’s authoritarian Communist Party regime views as sensitive, such as information about democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest."

According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined."

"The memo was first posted on an internal messaging list set up for Google employees to raise ethical concerns. But the memo was soon scrubbed from the list and individuals who had opened or saved the document were contacted by Google’s human resources department to discuss the matter. The employees were instructed not to share the memo."

"Google reportedly maintains an aggressive security and investigation team known as “stopleaks,” which is dedicated to preventing unauthorized disclosures. The team is also said to monitor internal discussions."

"The “stopleaks” team, which coordinates with the internal Google communications department, even began monitoring an internal image board used to post messages based on internet memes, according to one former Google employee, for signs of employee sentiment around the Project Maven contract."