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Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

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Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#111

Post by radmuzom »

dylan604 wrote: post #108
reacharavindh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add one more to your side note. Please tell your particularly non technical friends and relatives to avoid Google like plague if they care about privacy. Show them how - give a link to Firefox, Privacy badger. A relative of mine who paid $7/month for a VPN service because he cared about his privacy from ISP, but was using Google Chrome and Gmail for sensitive personal Email. Fewer people from the non-engineering…

>Please tell your particularly non technical friends and relatives to avoid Google like plague For anyone that has never had a conversation like this, you really have to be careful with this and pick your battles wisely. Some people are so non-technical, that they will not understand what you are explaining to them, or why you are even bothering them. You will be perceived as a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist…

Exactly. I regularly argue about this with my colleagues who are all mostly trained statisticians with some programming experience. Generally, what happens is that people are in awe of the "innovation" coming from Google and my protests are generally laughed off.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#113

Post by flossyspeaker »

jasonkester wrote: post #56

Keep in mind that while everybody here is all outraged about this, nobody else is. Because the experience is so nice. It's the reason why I can search for "prefecture Melun" on my laptop, then jump in the car, open up maps on my phone, Start typing "1" and watch it suggest "12 rue de Gambas, Melun 77320", which happens to be the address of the Melun prefecture. That sort of thing happens for me every day, and i think…

This is an old as time debate of "Security vs Convenience".

It's a lot easier to maintain web servers if they are only using the http protocol and not https. Does that mean I should not enable https? Same thing with letting Google start to categorize and selling your profile to organizations. It might be nice now, but in 5-10 years what will the landscape look like?

It's ultimately your choice to determine how much of your information you are willing to give up for the sake of convenience but you should think a little more about what the future could look like and start putting in some safeguards to protect yourself in the future.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#114

Post by thinkingemote »

Linux users.

Put:

  {
  "SyncDisabled": true,
  "RestrictSigninToPattern": ".*@example.com"
  }
in a file called disable_sync.json (for example)

and place in the following location:

Chrome: /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/disable_sync.json

Chromium: /etc/chromium-browser/policies/managed/disable_sync.json

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#115

Post by [deleted] »

thinkingemote wrote: post #114

Linux users. Put: { "SyncDisabled": true, "RestrictSigninToPattern": ".*@example.com" } in a file called disable_sync.json (for example) and place in the following location: Chrome: /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/disable_sync.json Chromium: /etc/chromium-browser/policies/managed/disable_sync.json

[deleted]

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#116

Post by ben_jones »

reacharavindh wrote: post #71
jasonkester wrote: post #56

Keep in mind that while everybody here is all outraged about this, nobody else is. Because the experience is so nice. It's the reason why I can search for "prefecture Melun" on my laptop, then jump in the car, open up maps on my phone, Start typing "1" and watch it suggest "12 rue de Gambas, Melun 77320", which happens to be the address of the Melun prefecture. That sort of thing happens for me every day, and i think…

The day is not that far, when you look to buy say car insurance, and you get $XYZ as a quote. Your ur friend gets $ABC where $ABC Is there a way you could prevent this? Yes, if you care about privacy and not let someone build that database in the first place. It's not only/always the NSA that we need to worry about.. You can already see this in some sense. A flight ticket could cost more if you look for it using a Ma…

You missed the part where the algorithm is written and improperly maintained by underpayed and underqualified developers and routinely spits out wrong answers.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#119

Post by graedus »

Tallain wrote: post #99
reacharavindh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add one more to your side note. Please tell your particularly non technical friends and relatives to avoid Google like plague if they care about privacy. Show them how - give a link to Firefox, Privacy badger. A relative of mine who paid $7/month for a VPN service because he cared about his privacy from ISP, but was using Google Chrome and Gmail for sensitive personal Email. Fewer people from the non-engineering…

Do you have any recommendations for a good alternative to Gmail? I've already made the switch away from Chrome, but for some reason my mind blanks on email -- I can only think of Yahoo or Hotmail

Here's a 15 hour old HN thread asking this exact question and getting over 500 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#120

Post by partiallypro »

lallysingh wrote: post #91
partiallypro wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that you opted into the services you gave examples of, you aren't opting into the Chrome sign-in, it's forced upon you. No one had a problem with Facebook collecting tons of meta data, until one day, it mattered. One more link in the chain that ties users down, everyone is complacent while slowly becoming a product.

Well, kinda. Now the choice is made at what browser you use.

How long before Google forces you to have a Google Account to even search? I think we all know it's probably going that direction eventually.
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