Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

brave.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 329 posts

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#131

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #130
codedokode wrote: post #85

Have been using Firefox for a long time, no issues, though long ago when I had little memory, Chrome was using less of it. Firefox also has HTTPS-only mode, encrypted DNS without fallbacks, supports SOCKS and Encrypted Client Hello (although almost no website support it). However, it is better to just buy more memory (unless you are lucky to use Apple products). Regarding analytics, I believe browsers should take use…

> Have been using Firefox for a long time It allows long lived first party cookies so isn't that much better. Only Safari clears them after 7 days to prevent tracking.

[deleted]

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#132

Post by Prickle »

reaperducer wrote: post #69
JohnFen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or your favorite websites won't work If my favorite websites stop working with Firefox, they won't be my favorite websites anymore. I'll just stop using them instead.

I'll just stop using them instead. Easily said, until it's your bank, or a government entity, or the electric company, or any of the thousands of other entities that have started blocking Firefox. Firefox should really camouflage its user agent, or make it trivial to do so.

Internet banking is so ridiculously insecure, I always go do it myself in person.

Although, I rarely have to do anything with the bank that would require any online or offline process beyond using an ATM.

So no, that wouldn't really be a reason for me to stop using Firefox.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#133

Post by Terr_ »

threeseed wrote: post #130
codedokode wrote: post #85

Have been using Firefox for a long time, no issues, though long ago when I had little memory, Chrome was using less of it. Firefox also has HTTPS-only mode, encrypted DNS without fallbacks, supports SOCKS and Encrypted Client Hello (although almost no website support it). However, it is better to just buy more memory (unless you are lucky to use Apple products). Regarding analytics, I believe browsers should take use…

> Have been using Firefox for a long time It allows long lived first party cookies so isn't that much better. Only Safari clears them after 7 days to prevent tracking.

As far as I can tell from some quick searching around, that limit only applies to cookies set through JavaScript code, as opposed to through server headers.

I assume it's because of situations where websites include JavaScript from a third party, and then that JS uses first party cookies as a state-keeping workaround while synchronizing tracking information in some other way.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#134

Post by dialup_sounds »

malfist wrote: post #58
arktos_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the only two browsers, Chrome and Brave

That doesn't make a bit of sense. There's plenty of browsers, there's chrome, brave, firefox, opera, edge and safari, those are the big ones. There's also a ton of spinoffs like ice weasel or that browser Kagi is developing that I can't remember the name of. Way more than just two chromium browsers in existence.

Vivaldi users: ::autistic screeching::

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#135

Post by asadotzler »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #105
radlad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brave has received negative press for diverting ad revenue from websites to itself,[30] collecting unsolicited donations for content creators without their consent,[43] suggesting affiliate links in the address bar[49] and installing a paid VPN service without the user's consent.[58] These are the primary issues I hear about regarding Brave on this forum. It's also founded by Brendan Eich who was forced out of Mozi…

Not that it makes him any less opposed to same-sex marriage, but I think 'vocal' is very much not the right word here. The only quotes I can find from him on the subject are him saying he's not going to talk about it.

"Unrepentant financial supporter of opposition to same-sex marriage" is a more accurate description.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#136

Post by [deleted] »

nine_k wrote: post #122
mbb70 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about ${INCOME}, ${SEXUAL_PREFERENCE}, ${RACE}, ${WEIGHT}, ${RELIGION}? Those categories are at least as broad as the ones you mentioned and are absolutely profiled.

Fine enough, if the ranges for each value are wide enough. Compare: - $120-140k, hetero, white, 190-220 lb, broadly Christian. - $137,500/y, prefers tall redhead females, Irishman originally from Cork, 197 lb, observant Catholic. The first one is too unspecific, while the second could suffice to identify a particular person in a neighborhood. What makes a butter knife safe is not that it's completely devoid of an edg…

[deleted]

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#137

Post by yohhaan »

aftbit wrote: post #27

I know this isn't quite the right place, but can anyone point to some research or writeups on the Chrome ad topics stuff? How does that impact user privacy? What is shared with third parties? I know next to nothing about it at the moment.

Hi!

I am the main author of 2 papers evaluating the Topics API from Google: [1] and [2] and working on more research in that space.

I have also started compiling different papers and analyses on projects like the Privacy Sandbox initiative from Google (https://privacysandstorm.com/proposals/) as well as releasing other resources (datasets, tools, etc.), contributions welcome if you are interested!

Best,

Yohan (https://yohan.beugin.org/)

[1] Interest-disclosing Mechanisms for Advertising are Privacy-Exposing (not Preserving) https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0004.php

[2] A Public and Reproducible Assessment of the Topics API on Real Data - https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19577

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#138

Post by throwaway937474 »

nine_k wrote: post #122
mbb70 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about ${INCOME}, ${SEXUAL_PREFERENCE}, ${RACE}, ${WEIGHT}, ${RELIGION}? Those categories are at least as broad as the ones you mentioned and are absolutely profiled.

Fine enough, if the ranges for each value are wide enough. Compare: - $120-140k, hetero, white, 190-220 lb, broadly Christian. - $137,500/y, prefers tall redhead females, Irishman originally from Cork, 197 lb, observant Catholic. The first one is too unspecific, while the second could suffice to identify a particular person in a neighborhood. What makes a butter knife safe is not that it's completely devoid of an edg…

Now substitute the first one for "gay", and you might get a death sentence in several parts of the world. Why does almost nobody on this site thinks about the wider world bedsides their own extremely privileged position?

I would very much prefer for advertisers to not even be able to determine my city, for personal safety. Throwaway account for obvious reasons.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#139

Post by greiskul »

autoexec wrote: post #126
paulryanrogers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that fake data, like from AdNausium, just becomes noise as the advertisers know the patterns to filter them out. Assuming that's true, it seems to waste everyone's time and bits to fake it instead of just not answering or a minimal denial.

> I've heard that fake data, like from AdNausium, just becomes noise as the advertisers know the patterns to filter them out. It's actually much worse. That fake data is dangerous because data brokers don't really care how accurate their data is. Even the fake data AdNausium stuffs into your dossier will be used against you eventually, just like the real data will be. If you get turned down for a job, or your health…

> If you get turned down for a job, or your health insurance rates go up, or you have to pay more for something than you would have otherwise

It must suck to live in a capitalist dystopia. Dunno why Americans put up with it.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#140

Post by klabb3 »

jahewson wrote: post #82
JohnFen wrote: post #42

That seems the obvious result of this sort of thing. > Related Website Sets (RWS) is a way for a company to declare relationships among sites, so that browsers allow limited third-party cookie access for specific purposes. So the website itself gets to declare other "blessed" domains that can bypass third party cookie blocks? Big websites are constantly looking for ways to abuse users by bypassing their attempts at p…

No, the website itself does not get to declare this. There’s a master list that they have to submit their site to and go through an approval process. But as the article details, the contents of that preliminary list is already disconcerting. The whole “Google as the arbiter of all things ads” concept is a bust. But the alternative isn’t great either - today’s system of third party cookies allows for far worse. We nee…

> There’s a master list that they have to submit their site to and go through an approval process.

Wtf, seriously? I skimmed the post and honestly didn’t think RWS was so bad, assuming that obviously it would be decentralized. A centralized list that Google (or some shell consortium) controls is the biggest no-no. Decades of erosion of web principles have clearly made us complacent.

Post reply on HN