Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

blog.lukaszolejnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 507 posts

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#371

Post by cm2012 »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #361
cm2012 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like content producing companies are these super profitable behemoths that are just greedy for $1 more. Not using ad trackers would your reduce your revenue by 50% at the minimum - it's how scaled advertisers spend money, if you're not doing it, you're not getting those advertisers. It is indeed a Hobson's choice - do it or stop providing whatever content it is the reader wants.

Am I the only person who liked the web a lot better before it encountered its own Eternal September? I'm not trying to be snarky! It's just that I'm not actually sure I like the direction the web took, and I'm not sure these "content producing companies" are indeed a net positive. Perhaps forcing a lot of (the more shady) commercial activity off of the web is actually the best thing that could happen. (Though they pr…

If you don't like the new direction the web took and don't think any of the content with ads is valuable, then by all means don't use. But don't force me to stop reading the NYT or Twitter.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#372

Post by eudora »

Tracist wrote: post #337
quickben wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use checkboxes?

When you have a checkbox for every possible customisation option, you end up with a commercial airliner cockpit - hundreds of flashing lights and switches, that you need a comprehensive manual and years of experience to properly operate.

So make an advanced options screen divided into categories.

It's not hard.

And you don't have to do every possible customisation options, just the ones that people are enraged about.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#373

Post by flukus »

tedivm wrote: post #3

I don't understand why the Chrome team is picking this hill to die on- their team (managers and developers) are all over twitter and reddit trying to explain the privacy violations away as if the people upset about this are just not understanding what's going on. I really expect this change to push a lot of people away from Chrome, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it started opening up more antitrust possibilit…

> I don't understand why the Chrome team is picking this hill to die on- their team

Really? That one is easy to understand. Google is a malware company and anyone that cares about privacy wouldn't work there in the first place.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#374

Post by i2shar »

tedivm wrote: post #3

I don't understand why the Chrome team is picking this hill to die on- their team (managers and developers) are all over twitter and reddit trying to explain the privacy violations away as if the people upset about this are just not understanding what's going on. I really expect this change to push a lot of people away from Chrome, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it started opening up more antitrust possibilit…

It's about privacy and also about taking away functionality that worked all these years for me. At work we use Google Apps and I sign in as with my work address for Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, etc. and am used to one click access to all these apps. But I like to sync my bookmarks, extensions and settings to my personal account - and that's it - I don't want to sign in to my personal Gmail, Docs, Drive in the browser. The new Chrome not only forces me to, but it now makes my personal account the primary one (/u/0 for Gmail) and forces me to go through several clicks for other apps to change accounts. And they didn't even ask before pushing this - one fine day Chrome auto updated and forced this feature on me and it took several days and a lot of signing out/in deleting cookies, posting on groups, etc. to figure out the flags workaround.

I know the following is not welcome on HN, but I have to vent somewhere folks that think this was a good idea are reading, so here it is: A big fuck you to Chrome for forcing this feature on us!

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#375

Post by amluto »

ewjordan wrote: post #369
bigiain wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It raises a question for both users and browser vendors: What does it mean to be logged into a web browser? And who - exactly - ever asked for the ability to "log into a web browser"? And what benefits are there for the user? There would be zero confusion about "Am I logged in to Google or logged in to Chrome?" without the unwanted and unexpected existence of a "logged in to a web browser" status. This is privacy d…

I use several different computers and operating systems regularly, and it's really useful to have my browser history, bookmarks, extensions and other configuration synced up. That's not to say I'd be miserable without it, but it's a nice convenience that almost immediately upon starting up a new machine, my browser is set up exactly the way I like just logging in.

This illustrates what may be the real problem. Chrome’s sync is a genuinely useful feature. There is no reason at all it needs to be conflated with being signed in to websites.

For that matter, sync is a fantastic use of E2E encryption, and it will be interesting to see if using sync data for any purpose other than syncing it is a GDPR violation.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#376

Post by Kim_Bruning »

cm2012 wrote: post #371
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person who liked the web a lot better before it encountered its own Eternal September? I'm not trying to be snarky! It's just that I'm not actually sure I like the direction the web took, and I'm not sure these "content producing companies" are indeed a net positive. Perhaps forcing a lot of (the more shady) commercial activity off of the web is actually the best thing that could happen. (Though they pr…

If you don't like the new direction the web took and don't think any of the content with ads is valuable, then by all means don't use. But don't force me to stop reading the NYT or Twitter.

No one is stopping you from reading the NYT or twitter.

But let them compete without the distortion of (ab)using quite so much Personally Identifying Information, and see if you'd still be happy to!

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#377

Post by tptacek »

macintux wrote: post #364
bigiain wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet...

You’re being downvoted, but this is exactly the concern that a sweeping change like this provokes. Who’s to say Google won’t decide that a lack of sync is a problem they can silently fix too?

Who's to say they aren't going to backdoor Chrome to pop a shell on your box next time you search Google? Who's to say Mozilla won't do the same?

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#378

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

manigandham wrote: post #162

https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1044109898013765632 > My teammates made this change to prevent surprises in a shared device scenario. In the past, people would sometimes sign out of the content area and think that meant they were no longer signed into Chrome, which could cause problems on a shared device I can see why there is pushback against this, but the issue described above is also understandable. There are v…

They could have simply put a note on the logout page. "You are now logged out. If this is a shared computer, don't forget to log out of your browser profile and any other sites too."

Their excuse sounds like parallel construction, as I refuse to believe one of the top IT companies in the world can't see why this solution is so bass ackwards.

They know exactly what they're doing, and it's the reason I went from a huge fan of Google products and early-adopter/beta-tester of everything possible, to scrubbing their existence from my and my family's life.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#379

Post by DennisP »

I'm currently logged into Gmail. When I click the little upper-right icon in Chrome I see a button saying "Sign in to Chrome", implying I'm not currently signed in. "About Google Chrome" tells me I'm on version 69.0.3497.100 (on OSX). So I don't appear to be experiencing this issue. What am I missing?

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#380

Post by manigandham »

mulmen wrote: post #355
manigandham wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad example. In technical progress, Chrome is the complete opposite of IE (which seems to be replaced by Safari these days) and way better than the rest in pushing forward new features. Also 99% of the time Firefox and Edge work just fine. EDIT: Yes, IE was great in the beginning, but then it stagnated and earned the wide reputation of being terrible obsolete anchor that it is now known for. It's with this l…

"Being on the cutting edge" is exactly how Embrace, Extend, Extinguish [1] works. The "cutting edge" is the "extend" part. When Google uses their market position to make their desired functionality, service or standard the new hotness other vendors have to either adopt that standard or be left behind. When those standards are something Google themselves created that benefits them directly (and harms competitors) they…

What standards of Chrome are harming competitors? We have a lot of major progress in web standards because of Chrome going first and getting it done. Even Firefox has built novel new rendering with a brand new language.

Meanwhile Safari and Edge continue to lag behind with basic features. Either way extinguish only works if there's no ready competition, which is not the case here for the majority of users.

Post reply on HN