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Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

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Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#151

Post by coronadisaster »

shadowgovt wrote: post #101
oefrha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that the user uses a private window or other means to indicates they don't want to be tracked probably makes this a more clear case. That’s a very confusing statement. My server logs don’t filter incoming log entries based on user agent, and certainly not on whether you’re using a “private window” or not. In addition, the goal of a private/incognito session is to be indistinguishable from regular sessions,…

> Wow the number of people on this thread claiming websites should be able to opt people out of logging based on whether they’re using a “private window” (which websites should have absolutely no idea about) makes me question if I’m even on Hacker News. Especially since "Websites shouldn't be able to tell if you're in incognito mode" has been highlighted in the past as a privacy ask, yes. People can at least agree "w…

obviously you don't now what the current incognito mode means (it has nothing to do with what you tell remove servers)

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#152

Post by crazygringo »

wegs wrote: post #133
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which there is a warning of every time you open an incognito window. It's not fine print either, it's one of about six bullet points. "Your activity might still be visible to ... Websites you visit." This one is going nowhere I suspect. Just because a lawsuit asks for big damages does not mean the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claims.

That's not quite how the law works. If I tell you to get off of my property, and you stand on my lawn, you're trespassing, even if I didn't put up a military-grade wall. Or if I have a basic chain link fence, and you climb over it, you're clearly trespassing in situations where without the fence, if you were to incidentally walk across my lawn, you'd be okay. The point of digital trespass laws is very similar. Just b…

> What's damaging in this case is that Google created the signalling mechanism, gave it to users, and then intentionally chose to circumvent it.

Absolutely not.

Incognito mode, as in every browser, means you're history isn't recorded on your machine. And as GP said, Chrome even explicitly explains your ISP or websites may still track you.

And Chrome isn't doing anything to circumvent it.

Intent and reasonableness here is perfectly fine on Google's part. Incognito mode successfully prevents storing history on your machine. Analytics successfully track you. And nobody's being misled. Incognito mode has never been advertised or marketed as anti-tracking, because it's not supposed to be. It's just a convenience to clear cookies and history, nothing more.

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#153

Post by bgwhn »

metroholografix wrote: post #142
jedberg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox containers does the same thing with a lot less work. If you get the multi-account-containers extension and the temporary containers extension, you won't have to log back into everything all the time but will still get isolation. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... Edit: See below with a warning about using this with pr…

Well, there are definite benefits to being in full control of profile segmentation. You have no idea what the extension is doing unless you audit it. And even then, there are second-order effects that could surprise you [1]. Plus, the extension writer has to maximally cover the set of possibilities where a site can store/retrieve data. These are a lot of unknowns you're trusting and assumptions you're making. It's fa…

Sure, there's probably less exposure from nuking the profiles directory, but I don't think you're being fair to containers:

- Containers are a feature built into Firefox, these extensions just expose a UI for it. The Multi-Account Containers plugin [1] is published by Mozilla. You don't need to trust anyone but Mozilla to use that base set of functionality.

- The container functionality in Firefox is the result of some work from the Tor Browser being upstreamed into Firefox [2]. It seems reasonable to assume that it's well-implemented.

- The limitations of the extension that you linked to don't seem any worse than your profile-segmentation approach. It's just saying that it's possible for multiple websites to get opened in the same container, which is similar to how you could end up opening multiple websites in the same profile.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... [2]: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-firefox

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#154

Post by heavyset_go »

jedberg wrote: post #137
metroholografix wrote: post #102

Getting some semblance of control over my browsing habits and enabling the implementation of multiple-proxy-based browsing strategies is one reason why I wrote chrome-private.sh [1]. I go through hundreds of disposable browsing profiles every day. [1] https://github.com/atomontage/chrome-private

Firefox containers does the same thing with a lot less work. If you get the multi-account-containers extension and the temporary containers extension, you won't have to log back into everything all the time but will still get isolation. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... Edit: See below with a warning about using this with pr…

Not only that, you can effortlessly launch Firefox with temporary profiles to emulate what the script in the OP is doing. I think that Firefox's strict privacy setting + containers are all that are needed, though.

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#155

Post by jason0597 »

metroholografix wrote: post #102

Getting some semblance of control over my browsing habits and enabling the implementation of multiple-proxy-based browsing strategies is one reason why I wrote chrome-private.sh [1]. I go through hundreds of disposable browsing profiles every day. [1] https://github.com/atomontage/chrome-private

Why not use ungoogled-chromium?

https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#156

Post by [deleted] »

bgwhn wrote: post #153
metroholografix wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are definite benefits to being in full control of profile segmentation. You have no idea what the extension is doing unless you audit it. And even then, there are second-order effects that could surprise you [1]. Plus, the extension writer has to maximally cover the set of possibilities where a site can store/retrieve data. These are a lot of unknowns you're trusting and assumptions you're making. It's fa…

Sure, there's probably less exposure from nuking the profiles directory, but I don't think you're being fair to containers: - Containers are a feature built into Firefox, these extensions just expose a UI for it. The Multi-Account Containers plugin [1] is published by Mozilla. You don't need to trust anyone but Mozilla to use that base set of functionality. - The container functionality in Firefox is the result of so…

[deleted]

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#157

Post by jedberg »

metroholografix wrote: post #150
jedberg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, all security is a trade off between convenience and privacy. But the hassle of a new profile all the time seems like a lot of extra inconvenience for little extra privacy. So far in practice I've never seen the isolation fail. The combination of the two plugins seems to counteract each one's failures. And Mozilla makes the multi-account-container plugin. I trust them a lot more than I trust Google to make…

I can say that I would prefer to use Firefox instead of Chrome, except that Firefox has no OSA scripting endpoints on macOS (a real shame) and I've written a lot of code that depends on Chrome APIs over the years. Even if I did move to Firefox however, I would still implement a directory-based profile segmentation strategy.

What is OSA? Google fails me.

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#158

Post by fauigerzigerk »

utkarsh_apoorva wrote: post #84
dr_kiszonka wrote: post #43

(Disclaimer: I have a big personal gripe with Google, but I don't hate the company in general) Something has been on mind for a while. I see lawsuits against Google collecting / selling personal data and ideas to combat its monopoly in search. What I don't see is a discussion about regulating companies that have data on the majority of the population. I know for a fact that Google used search insights to inform strat…

Regulations, a lot of times, tend to have the opposite of the intended effect. In this case, you'd need to define what is meant by "having data". Is having an email or phone enough to qualify? Maybe yes. In that case, think of a rapidly growing startup, which breaches that mark (50% or whatever the law says) - and now has to comply with the law. But the startup is not capable of compliance, because the law was made f…

That doesn't sound very realistic to me. A startup doesn't just capture 50% of any significant market over night. It will have plenty of time to hire some compliance staff as it grows.

Regulation and civil lawsuits don't serve the same purpose. Regulation is making the rules. Courts interpret the rules in light of a specific situation.

I agree that regulation can be counter productive. It can create a level playing field or cement dominant positions of encumbants. So let's have good regulation.

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#159

Post by metroholografix »

jedberg wrote: post #157
metroholografix wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say that I would prefer to use Firefox instead of Chrome, except that Firefox has no OSA scripting endpoints on macOS (a real shame) and I've written a lot of code that depends on Chrome APIs over the years. Even if I did move to Firefox however, I would still implement a directory-based profile segmentation strategy.

What is OSA? Google fails me.

It's an OS-wide scripting framework, that a lot of (most) applications running on macOS support. The beauty of it is that it works on top of Apple Events and is layered. An application may inherit a standard set of exposed scripting endpoints and may also implement its own specific set of behaviors. Even the standard inherited set of endpoints can be extremely powerful due to accessibility functions that are baked into the entire operating system.

Chrome offers both. Firefox offers nothing. Of course applications can additionally offer their own scripting APIs (Chrome has DevTools, I'm sure Firefox has something equivalent) but a major advantage of OSA is its stability and uniformity. It's a hidden treasure for power users and obsessive feedback loop minimizers. Alas, when it comes to regular users, the most Apple managed to do with it was Automator.app, a very constrained experience that did not really take advantage of the underlying power.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

Re: Google sued for secretly amassing vast trove of user data

#160

Post by jedberg »

metroholografix wrote: post #159
jedberg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is OSA? Google fails me.

It's an OS-wide scripting framework, that a lot of (most) applications running on macOS support. The beauty of it is that it works on top of Apple Events and is layered. An application may inherit a standard set of exposed scripting endpoints and may also implement its own specific set of behaviors. Even the standard inherited set of endpoints can be extremely powerful due to accessibility functions that are baked in…

Fascinating, thanks! I can see why you'd be reluctant to switch to Firefox if you depend on this.
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