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How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

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Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#121

Post by lelandbatey »

insanitybit wrote: post #32
cool_dude85 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You set up a false equivalence. Why is the choice between these kinds of features, which lock Google in as the sole controller of online advertising, and no advertising?

I don't think I'm setting that up, but maybe I'm not understanding. Because to me what Google is doing is a clear attempt at maintaining the status quo of an ad-funded internet while removing the ability for fine-grained 3rd party tracking. So when people say this is a threat to the "free internet" I'm asking what that means - because right now the status quo has a lot of upsides, a few of which I listed. I want to h…

It's a threat to the "free" (as in freedom) internet in that with this as the tracking mechanism, Google via Chrome is directly tracking your interests. It effectively makes "serves you ads and tracks your interests" a core part of what it means for a browser (Chrome) to be a browser.

Many folks feel like this is a capitalism-flavored move on par with "all phones should track the bad behavior of their owners and report it to the government." The point is that it hands over a lot of control.

What if Google decides to expand the topics to include things like "seeking reproductive care" in a state like Texas? Could that be used to try to target folks seeking abortions, potentially with legal action? All of these are hypotheticals, but they're all potential destinations if we continue in this direction.

Hence the EFFs warning.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#122

Post by no_wizard »

contravariant wrote: post #22
urbandw311er wrote: post #12

If you care at all about privacy and the future of a free Internet, this really should be that watershed moment that makes you take your head out of the sand. Seriously. Uninstall Chrome today and switch to something else. It’s only if enough people do it that they lose their grip and influence.

Also, switch to something non-Chromium if at all possible. Which brings us in the paradoxical situation that if you want there to be any choice left at all in browsers then you're pretty much forced to choose firefox.

Or Safari / WebKit (like Orion)

I get everyone hates on Safari but it is legitimately also a different engine and they have shown to be privacy conscious.

Orion in particular is very good IMO

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#123

Post by bongodongobob »

cebert wrote: post #53

> “If you just clicked the big blue button that said “Got it” to make the pop-up go away, you opted yourself in.” The screenshots in the article clearly illustrate a concerning trend: users are often subtly coerced into opting into certain features or settings without full awareness. This usually happens when they hurriedly click a prominent button like 'Got it' just to dismiss an annoying pop-up. It highlights a sig…

People would still opt in anyway. You have to realize that the only people who care about this are the subset of the population who know who Stallman is. Avg Joe couldn't care less. I think that's the real problem.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#124

Post by fumar »

Third party cookies were used without your opt in consent to create profiles based on your behavior by companies like LiveRamp or Oracle. Apple and Google have eliminated or will eliminate the covert tracking based on 3p cookies and mobile ad ids. I don’t support dark UI patterns but privacy sandbox and Apple AppTrackingTransparency hurt advertisers, publishers, and ad platforms but improve consumers privacy. It is not a black and white situation given the monopolistic size of these two tech titans but their privacy solutions are based on aggregated and locally stored data vs cloud based covert 1:1 identifiers - which you couldn’t control.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#125

Post by skybrian »

I checked “ad topics” (I do this occasionally) and there are more topics, but they are still really generic and seem entirely harmless in my case. Yes, it’s personalization, but only barely.

On the other hand, website domain names are often very specialized, which means that “Site suggested ads” can be very specific. These are the ads that follow you around. So far I’ve just deleted one that annoyed me.

It seems pretty controllable.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#127

Post by autoexec »

urbandw311er wrote: post #12

If you care at all about privacy and the future of a free Internet, this really should be that watershed moment that makes you take your head out of the sand. Seriously. Uninstall Chrome today and switch to something else. It’s only if enough people do it that they lose their grip and influence.

You're absolutely right. Google has no respect at all for people's privacy and it's pointless to endlessly change settings in their adversarial browser to keep some (but not all) of our data from leaking.

Google is just going to keep coming up with new options we'll have to change, or silently change our settings following an update to allow more data collection, or even just ignore our settings and do whatever they want anyway.

You can't use untrustworthy user-hostile software and expect to not be constantly taken advantage of. Taking people's private data and handing it over to Google is what chrome was designed to do from day one.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#128

Post by Terr_ »

hnburnsy wrote: post #114

Its BS that Google makes these settings per browser and not per account, so you have to make these changes on each computer\phone you use. Anyone know if these settings apply to a private browser session.

On the flip side, isn't the "track and categorize" data also per-browser? If so, then it seems like a natural extension.

The opposite--tying it to a persistent widespread account--seems creepier overall.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#129

Post by kccqzy »

dangus wrote: post #36
charcircuit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is better for privacy than third party cookies which they are getting rid of.

Getting rid of third party cookies is basically the status quo. IIRC if you use Safari or Firefox with default settings, third-party cookies are turned off. This feature compared to that status quo is worse for privacy. I think this might be the first time I’ve seen something that promises enhanced privacy instead doing directly the opposite, outside of the realm of malware and scam apps. Imagine if there was a “save…

Google's dominant position in the online advertising business makes them legally impossible* to do what Firefox and Safari do. It's better for privacy compared to older versions of Chrome; though certainly as good as Firefox or Safari.

The enhanced privacy claim is honest and true; the benchmark is older versions of chrome.

*: See the UK CMA https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62052c52e90e0...

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#130

Post by jorvi »

lolinder wrote: post #118
jorvi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If tomorrow Google turns next-level evil in terms of privacy / steering the web, Microsoft will have forked Chromium within a week, and everyone (Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, etc) will swap their upstream immediately. People have this illusion that Google has an ironclad grip on Chromium, but they don’t. It’s maximally permissively licensed, the only reason they get to decide much is because they put in (pay) the dev h…

> If tomorrow Google turns next-level evil in terms of privacy / steering the web My fear isn't that tomorrow Google will start doing the browser-monopoly equivalent of kicking puppies and twirling a black mustache. My fear is that Google has gradually accustomed everyone to their monopolistic dominance over the web, to the point where they can engage in blatant monopolistic privacy-destroying activities like privacy…

I’m not defending Google. I completely excised them from my life almost a decade ago already.

I’m simply freeing people from the illusion that Google has “won the web” or whatever. Google is effectively giving everyone a free ride with Chromium. They aren’t forcing anyone onto Chrome (where the real tracking happens), and if they did by making Chromium private from now on, again, forks and upstream swaps would happen at lightspeed.

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