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

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

#411

Post by [deleted] »

dantheman wrote: post #89
mehrdadn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect this is the case... I know I myself was thinking a few months ago why Chrome doesn't have the ability to keep the logins in sync. However, why in the world did they enable this by default for people who didn't want their browser to do anything with their Google accounts? It would make sense to keep them in sync when users request to connect their browsers to their accounts, but not when people don't want the…

Because almost every user in the world wants it connected.

[deleted]

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

#412

Post by 0x54D5 »

bhauer wrote: post #335

Imagine if Google open-sourced their sync server as Mozilla has [1]. If you could simply specify your own sync server, I suspect a lot of the louder privacy complaints related to sync would disappear. (Obviously Google would never do this.) [1] https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver/

Thank you! I didn't know this was a thing but I sure as hell want to run my own sync server. Perfect.

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

#413

Post by snaky »

edoceo wrote: post #406
snaky wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows have a registry, Firefox - about:config, Linux - kconfig and sysfs. You don't need to make it Boeing way, but you need it.

Airplane control are complex and require training for many valid reasons. The cluster is actually a great study in UX design. Also, it's Boeing or I'm not going.

> The cluster is actually a great study in UX design.

Agreed. But it's UX design for power users clearly.

But I was talking about the way to combine 'a regular users UX' with a ton of options you need for power users. The vast majority of the people who have Ubuntu on their laptops never recompile the kernel or even know about sysfs, the vast majority of the Windows and Office users never touch the registry editor - but removing them would be a huge mistake.

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

#414

Post by pilif »

screaminghawk wrote: post #358
Tracist wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or you end up with `about:config`. Doesn't solve the impossible to comprehend everything problem, but it still gives people to option.

And then you end up with people complaining about bloat because the browser contains code for every possible state of all these settings.

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

#415

Post by _cs2017_ »

I understand the general concern, but a bit confused about the details. Could someone do me a favor and write down a simple example of how this can violate privacy?

Something like "User logs into Chrome, this automatically logs the user into ???. The user then visits ???. As a result Google learns ??? about the user. This was impossible before this Chrome change, and this sharing of information isn't clearly agreed to by the user."

If there are several materially different scenarios that can result in privacy violation, would be great to know.

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

#416

Post by eudora »

Zarel wrote: post #393
eudora wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, this always Madden's me when a company takes away some option in the name of simplifying for the majority of users. Put it on a screen called advanced options or something, even about:config, and let us decide! That is, if you're really not just manipulating your users.

I mean, this _is_ on the advanced options screen. It's in chrome://flags/#account-consistency

So it is

But will it be there forever?

Some other post on HN on this topic implied these options tend to vanish over time. (I'm not sure if they so or don't)

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

#417

Post by pvorb »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #392
rifung wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Google; opinions are my own. > 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. My impression is that this is the new norm at Google. It happens with everything, internal or external. The sad rea…

> ...people externally often think Google is on some evil plan... The real bad guys don't ever think they are evil. (consider Al Capone, hero of the people)

Yes. Acting evil is what makes you evil.

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

#418

Post by pvorb »

eudora wrote: post #372
Tracist wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is hard to do as an afterthought. I bet Firefox had it from the start.

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

#419

Post by snaky »

pilif wrote: post #414
screaminghawk wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you end up with `about:config`. Doesn't solve the impossible to comprehend everything problem, but it still gives people to option.

And then you end up with people complaining about bloat because the browser contains code for every possible state of all these settings.

It's clearly not the case when the checkbox you adding is an option to turn off some feature enabled by default.

No, not the feature all other components do need so much you have to work around by adding another zillion lines of code in other places of your program to deal with the case it turned off.

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

#420

Post by kbenson »

tokyodude wrote: post #410
adrianrocamora wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF with Multi Account Containers is heaven

so you can be logged into 2 google accounts at the same time? two facebook accounts? two twitter accounts? IIRC multi-account containers work by domain name so they don't handle this case. Multiple profiles do, something which Chrome handles well and Firefox handles poorly

Yes, you can. It's not as smooth as could be, but I am continuously logged into three separate Google accounts (one vanilla Gmail, two for separate G Suite businesses), and it works fine.

Each container can load any page. If you want to toggle the current domain to load in the current container, you can opt for that. Then, it will prompt you to switch to that container when you browse to that domain, and at that point you can opt to make it automatic. If you don't make it completely automatic, you can just choose to use the default container for that domain, or stick with the current container (or source container, if opening a new tab from some other container).

What would make this better would be to be able to flag a domain as openable in multiple containers, but have one be default, so I wouldn't have to decline switching to my personal Google container every time I clicked a link on an email in one of the G Suite accounts, as they redirect to a google landing page).

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