71–80 of 249 posts
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Seems hard to make the argument to make that browsing history is harmless, given how often it is used in police investigations and court cases.
All any investigation on me would find is I can't for the life of me remember the order of in_array and google it way more often than I should.
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Half the data Chrome collects is harmless If true, that still doesn't negate the other half that is not harmless. More importantly, how about I get to choose what I consider harmless, rather than having a Silicon Valley advertising agency do that for me? Also, there's no way of knowing what Google shoves into the "other" category. Sunlight disinfects, even in Mountain View.
Fair enough. But beware, Chrome's lead on render speed is most likely thanks to the performance data they collect. Any other browser you may choose might not collect that data, but don't be surprised if it halves your battery life and takes twice the time to render stuff (such as Firefox in macOS about 6 months ago, don't know how it performs now). There are reasons for data collection, and I don't think everything i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Half the data Chrome collects is harmless Until it's not. Meaning, we don't know if there's a way yet to harm users, or we don't know if anyone is actually using it to harm users. If it's harmless, don't collect it.
Chrome's the fastest browser on the market. That, along with some nice marketing strategy is what makes it the absolute market leader. The reason Chrome is so fast, is most likely thanks to the performance (harmless) data it collects. Firefox may be proud of not collecting as much data, but (at least on macOS) they spend twice the battery to render twice as slow. Not saying you shouldn't be able to choose what data y…
The browser itself is trivial to separate from Google, which is why (completely ungoogled) Chromium exists, but to get yourself out of the Google services web is very, very, hard.
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If you chose to allow Chrome to know your location, so it can show you on the map, do you consent to have your location tracked continuously and associated with your Google account?
No, that's a setting in your Google account and not in the browser. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/13/google-lo...
Why would you use a proprietary browser when Firefox is around?
Performance problems on macOS/Linux, Firefox seems fine on Windows but that's where I spend the least of my time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Half the data Chrome collects is harmless If true, that still doesn't negate the other half that is not harmless. More importantly, how about I get to choose what I consider harmless, rather than having a Silicon Valley advertising agency do that for me? Also, there's no way of knowing what Google shoves into the "other" category. Sunlight disinfects, even in Mountain View.
Fair enough. But beware, Chrome's lead on render speed is most likely thanks to the performance data they collect. Any other browser you may choose might not collect that data, but don't be surprised if it halves your battery life and takes twice the time to render stuff (such as Firefox in macOS about 6 months ago, don't know how it performs now). There are reasons for data collection, and I don't think everything i…
Controversial opinion: Half the data Chrome collects is harmless, and the other half is up to the user to give up: - Location data: you are asked and must approve for Chrome to use (at least on macOS) - Financial data: you must enter it manually and click "save for future use". Could it be better? Sure! But I think DDG is exaggerating here. We're not _that_ bad.
Also, none of that data is harmless.
> I think DDG is exaggerating here
Google shouldn't be basing advertising off of individualized browser histories in the first place, I don't think it's an exaggeration to call that a massive privacy issue. It's a single category, but one that encompasses basically everything you do online.
And while you can technically turn this off in Google settings, doing so will break a large number of Google products and features in other apps because Google ties access to browser histories and app data into other products in a way that is impossible to disentangle from normal functionality.
Back when I used to use Google Maps, turning off location-based advertising disabled my ability to save locations. Like, I couldn't mark a place on the map as my home on my local device unless I gave Google permission to advertise to me based on my location. Every time I wanted to navigate there, I needed to type in the full address. Even weirder, turning off web history took away my ability to use voice commands with my contact list on Android phones. I couldn't tell my phone "call mom", because that feature required access to my search history.
So this phrase "we're not that bad" creates this impression that Google isn't perfect but is still basically respecting privacy choices everywhere, and that any violations are just accidental -- when in reality trying to opt out of these systems is met with outright hostility from Google products, and giving an inch in any area is often interpreted by Google as permission to use that data in any way they see fit.
The system is a lot deeper and more deliberate than the parent comment suggests.
Controversial opinion: Half the data Chrome collects is harmless, and the other half is up to the user to give up: - Location data: you are asked and must approve for Chrome to use (at least on macOS) - Financial data: you must enter it manually and click "save for future use". Could it be better? Sure! But I think DDG is exaggerating here. We're not _that_ bad.