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

461–470 of 507 posts

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

#461

Post by remus »

jonbronson wrote: post #245

What I find troubling about this incident is not so much the change itself, or even how quietly they did it. It's the doubling down when users became critical. Rather than a "Okay wow, we clearly misunderstood the impact of this change and regret pushing the change without proper announcement or informed consent. We'll work to fix this." the messaging feels much more like "You're wrong to be upset. Trust us."

I think it's worth remembering that the userbase of chrome is huge and largely non-technical (i.e. they're not going to be on hn, twitter, reddit etc. voicing their opinion on the privacy implications of this change). What if for that big proportion of people the change is a net gain? Should it be reversed because the change is a net loss for a small subset of people?

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

#462

Post by Semaphor »

munchbunny wrote: post #139

I can see why they thought this was a good change. It makes the UX for G-suite apps much more pleasant, almost like you get the full functionality of G-suite productivity stuff as part of installing Chrome. For most people, that's a good thing. I think as tech people we systematically tend to under-think the second-order effects of the systems we build. Case in point, Chrome and G-suite being that closely integrated…

> your account will get automatically downgraded to single factor authentication going forward.

*your device

If someone has access to my desktop PC, they also have access to my yubikey anyway.

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

#463

Post by wickedwiesel »

rifung wrote: post #295
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 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…

As you probably know, Google does have quite clear policies on the matter.[0]

You and your colleagues could raise that these are there for a reason, approved by senior management, and there to help you respect your users' rights.

I like the sound of "Applications that affect or change your user experience should make clear they are the reason for those changes." or "It should be clear to you when you are installing or enabling software on your computer and you should have the ability to say no." or "We believe you should be asked explicitly for your permission in a manner that is obvious and clearly states what information will be collected or transmitted."

All of these sound relevant to the grievance of the OP.

[0]: https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/software-principles.htm...

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

#464

Post by thirdsun »

adrianrocamora wrote: post #343
james_pm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had been using Chrome only for G Suite stuff (forced by my employer to maintain this account) and FF for everything else. This change resulted in the deletion of Chrome from my computer and a move to FF with Multi Account Containers set to segregate various services from each other. I'm half thankful for the Chrome team doing this because it was just the push I needed to finally rid myself of Chrome once and for al…

FF with Multi Account Containers is heaven

It is. One feature I'd like to see added is a separate history for every container.

Currently the global history is shared between all containers.

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

#465

Post by giancarlostoro »

fandango wrote: post #460
i2shar wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 browse…

Just. use. Firefox.

I'll never understand this hesitation to Firefox, some people will bring out why Firefox is evil yet Chrome is clearly not the lesser evil product. I started using Chrome when it first came out, and then I stopped using it when it didn't have adblocking. Then when it did have adblocking it was extremely limited (I kept seeing popups and other nuisances), this was when I got dispelled then about Google being an ad focused company and never went back. I only use Chrome / Chromium (on Linux) to test web dev projects across major browsers, and sometimes Stack Overflow if I'm testing on Chrome might as well, but it's nothing all that special.

My main browsing has always been done on Firefox which has sync much like Chrome does, but oh look it's encrypted, forgot my password? Too bad, they're going to nuke my data since they don't even know my password. As it should be. My browsing data being synched is cool but it's not that precious to me, and if it was I would just not forget my password.

Also if I need to use Google services I have a Google container, if I need to use Firefox, I have a Firefox container. Good luck containing Google or Firefox on Chrome that way, and the multiple account containers are amazing for testing multiple user roles on web development projects all on one browser with multiple taps opened.

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

#466

Post by giancarlostoro »

thirdsun wrote: post #464
adrianrocamora wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF with Multi Account Containers is heaven

It is. One feature I'd like to see added is a separate history for every container. Currently the global history is shared between all containers.

This has been the one thing I've wanted since it was announced. It would make it a really powerful concept and maybe more plugins supporting container specifics. Like disabling / enabling features depending on the container you're under. I know some do, but if more did it would be amazing.

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

#467

Post by romanovcode »

justtopost wrote: post #258
ngngngng wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to be done with Google products. But some of them are just so damn good. (Typed on my Pixel 2 XL)

Yeah, I hate cancer, but these ciggerettes are delicious!

Ha! That's a great analogy

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

#468

Post by stedaniels »

krisgenre wrote: post #17
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 personally know people who think they are signing into Chrome when they sign into google.com. Maybe the Chrome team is right about their larger user base?

Most people have no idea you can even log into Chrome.

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

#469

Post by tjoff »

hoffs wrote: post #431
hrktb wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It becomes a game of “guess what user I’ll be logged in the next new window ?” Chrome also doesn’t respect window order in the menu, so it’s just a pain to track when switching. My solution to that was to switch to Safari for personal use.

I have like 3 accounts added and it always used default account

What's a default account?

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

#470

Post by Nitramp »

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)

> >...people externally often think Google is on some evil plan...

> The real bad guys don't ever think they are evil.

At least seen from the inside, it's often funny (and sad) to see all kinds of crazy speculation about the greater evil goal of nefarious decisions made, all the while whatever is happening is usually a mixture of software bugs and incompetence on our side.

It's like a clown show, where the evil mastermind turns out to just be me incorrectly checking for a null value in some if condition, or my PM having no idea how to rationalize two features together.

I guess that comes with large corporation status, and a certain failure to communicate. Not sure if it's avoidable at all. It does teach you something about perception vs intent, I guess.

Post reply on HN