Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID • Hacker News Board

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#151

Post by morley » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

eitland wrote: post #27

I haven't read this carefully enough to decide exactly how bad it is, but one thing seems clear to me: From what I see many techies are now aware and upset, and hardly anyone seems to want to defend Google anymore. I consider it more likely than not that Google will take some real beatings in the years to come. Kind of like Microsoft was fined by the US and EU, forced to advertise for competing browsers and ridiculed…

> From what I see many techies are now aware and upset, and hardly anyone seems to want to defend Google anymore.

To me, the explanation is simpler: people don't want to defend Google on HN because they'll get downvoted or shouted down because of it.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#152

Post by lordnacho » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #125

falcolas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is a conspiracy. I'm not a Mozilla employee, have never been one (probably never will be one). Firefox is awesome, fast, and extensible. It's my daily driver for all of my machines.

Side question: I've been trying to switch to firefox as my main browser but one thing is holding me up. When I'm using a private window, cookies are not shared between private tabs. I can see the advantage to that behavior, but is there a way to share them so that I can be logged into the same site in multiple private tabs? Unironically, I haven't had any luck googling this problem.

You can make as many separate containers as you like, where each tab shares the cookies with all the other tabs in that container. For example, I have a Facebook container that only shares with Messenger and none of the other tabs. I can see it works because sites that are logged in on one container are not logged in on others. It's easy to right-click and reopen a tab in one of your other containers.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#153

Post by VWWHFSfQ » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

Ohn0 wrote: post #102

marriedWpt wrote: post #38

Ahh the good ol HN "stop using Google and start using Firefox" advertisement. It's a bit odd to see this in every Google thread. Btw, Firefox is too slow.

Isn't moz pretty much funded by google?

as a defense against antitrust accusations. microsoft once funded apple too

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#154

Post by K0SM0S » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #117

tigroferoce wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But luckily you actually have a choice. Many opt for DuckDuckGo on Firefox, for instance.

You are right, but they also know most people won't switch. They have an entire generation of folks that don't even think about privacy.

There's also the subset of all of us who must use Chrome because needed for work requires said browser. Google's dominance through Chrome extends to the whole ecosystem. Same thing with Apple inside their own (which is nowhere near a monopoly at 10-15% market share worldwide, thus totally fair game by comparison).

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#155

Post by Ygg2 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #117

tigroferoce wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But luckily you actually have a choice. Many opt for DuckDuckGo on Firefox, for instance.

You are right, but they also know most people won't switch. They have an entire generation of folks that don't even think about privacy.

On the other hand, people hate ads, so going to Firefox might actually be better option for new users.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#156

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

scoutt wrote: post #71

PII concept is not the same for everyone/everywhere. For GDPR we have: > Article 4(1): ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly , in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or…

This is why I consider the GDPR to be unrealistically broad in its definition of PII; it denies even innocuous feature-mode-distinguishing headers intended to allow for bug-identification of massively-distributed software installs.

If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "better software quality" I'm going to lean towards "better software quality."

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#157

Post by forgotmypw38 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #94

janpot wrote: post #4

Not endorsing this, but according to https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#variat... > We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations he…

This is impressive doublespeak. > This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable information > a seed number which is randomly selected on first run ... chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy) They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy probably isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined wit…

Don't forget that just about any registration requires recaptcha these days

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#158

Post by scoutt » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #142

scoutt wrote: post #71

PII concept is not the same for everyone/everywhere. For GDPR we have: > Article 4(1): ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly , in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or…

Who's going to raise this issue though? And what if they put this in the browser's T&C?

> Who's going to raise this issue though?

I'm sure there is someone out there who takes these kind of things seriously. Not me. I use firefox for that matter.

> And what if they put this in the browser's T&C?

Then the rest of GDPR applies: a clear message about the browser sending this info has to be shown, explaining why, with who they'll share it, the time they will keep this info, plus no auto opt-ins, the possibility of asking Google (or whatever) all the info relative to this ID and the option to cancel all the data, etc.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#159

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #15

If you haven't used Firefox in a while you should really give it another chance. It has vastly improved in terms of CPU and battery usage. It also has a lot of great privacy-enhancing features like tracking protection enabled by default and extensions like Facebook Container make it trivial to prevent tracking even further.

Given the purpose of the x-client-data header, I'll be shocked if Mozilla doesn't have a similar header for feature-enable-identification to do its own tracking of bugs at scale.

... and if it doesn't, they're developing their browser with one hand tied behind their back on quality assurance relative to alternatives.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#160

Post by wayneftw » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #15

If you haven't used Firefox in a while you should really give it another chance. It has vastly improved in terms of CPU and battery usage. It also has a lot of great privacy-enhancing features like tracking protection enabled by default and extensions like Facebook Container make it trivial to prevent tracking even further.

The days of Firefox are over. Every site I work on has less than a few percent of Firefox users. We don't even test with Firefox, because fuck 'em - I never liked the way Mozilla did anything anyway and their painfully obviously false, preachy holier-than-thou brainwashing campaign that they're constantly running in order to keep getting daddy Google's money has always been annoying.

I'd rather use MS Edge. It's actually even faster and lighter than Chrome. So, I've already started using it on my Windows and Mac machines and I'm just waiting for it to be released on Linux so I can use it on my main workstations.

I bet Edge exceeds Firefox market share any day now. Maybe Google should start giving Microsoft money too! But even if Edge market share doesn't grow I'll be quite comfortable since it's the WebKit/Chrome/Blink lineage and compatibility that I care about.

Fuck that piece of shit Gecko. I'm tired of hearing about it from the extremely tiny but loud minority of Mozillatroids. Now do your duty and fade my comment in your petty attempt at censoring my words. You can't change the truth.