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Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

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Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#141

Post by TheDong »

jonbronson wrote: post #137
jasonkester wrote: post #56

Keep in mind that while everybody here is all outraged about this, nobody else is. Because the experience is so nice. It's the reason why I can search for "prefecture Melun" on my laptop, then jump in the car, open up maps on my phone, Start typing "1" and watch it suggest "12 rue de Gambas, Melun 77320", which happens to be the address of the Melun prefecture. That sort of thing happens for me every day, and i think…

"Because the experience is so nice." If the experience is "so nice" why are so many people outraged? The data suggests this is a terrible experience to look up and suddenly see you've been auto-logged into a browser without your consent. Terrible UX.

> why are so many people outraged?

Whenever you think that many people are outraged and someone else claims that it's not the case, the logical conclusion is that you or both of you are in bubbles.

Is it possible that you, a hacker news poster, are in a bubble whereby you've heard the opinion of tech-savy people, but not the opinion of the average mom who doesn't even realize the auto-login is the reason her android phone is now suggesting browser history from her desktop?

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#142

Post by jonbronson »

sneak wrote: post #124
jasonkester wrote: post #56

Keep in mind that while everybody here is all outraged about this, nobody else is. Because the experience is so nice. It's the reason why I can search for "prefecture Melun" on my laptop, then jump in the car, open up maps on my phone, Start typing "1" and watch it suggest "12 rue de Gambas, Melun 77320", which happens to be the address of the Melun prefecture. That sort of thing happens for me every day, and i think…

Also, even those of us who care about privacy are not all outraged about this. I have been using Chrome Sync (with a clientside encryption passphrase) for years. It always surprised me that there were separate login states for gmail and the browser. This change saves me a step, and reduces user confusion too.

Users who already sign into Chrome are not affected by this issue. But for people who do not already sign in, we have now been force-logged in without consent. That is the problem everyone is outraged about.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#143

Post by JoshMnem »

sneak wrote: post #122
flossyspeaker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an old as time debate of "Security vs Convenience". It's a lot easier to maintain web servers if they are only using the http protocol and not https. Does that mean I should not enable https? Same thing with letting Google start to categorize and selling your profile to organizations. It might be nice now, but in 5-10 years what will the landscape look like? It's ultimately your choice to determine how much o…

Giving up privacy for most people is not a security reduction. Privacy is extremely important, but it is relevant only to a tiny minority of people who care about it or otherwise require it. Most people neither care nor use their rights to privacy, so in practice, losing it, for them, is no real loss. It is an increase in convenience—at no cost. The cost is a societal one, borne only when “no privacy” becomes a wides…

Privacy is related to security. The ability for anyone with a little technical knowledge to gain large amounts of data about you is a big security risk for individuals and society.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#144

Post by JoshMnem »

sneak wrote: post #125
JoshMnem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every feature you've listed works without forced log-in. Taking away the choice to share everything about one's life with an ad company is what people are angry about.

There is no forced login. You can still use Chrome without logging in to anything. You can also disable Chrome Sync even if Chrome is logged in after logging in to gmail, so “forced” is the wrong term.

You can't use Google Chrome without logging into the browser itself if you use any Google service.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#145

Post by JoshMnem »

nolok wrote: post #104
daveFNbuck wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give one example of a convenience you got from being signed in to the Chrome browser? All of your examples would work without that.

Having the same settings/history/bookmarks/extensions shared between my main laptop, my cheapo 10" notebook I use when in on the beach or in a plane etc ..., and my phone. Being able, in three clicks, to re-open on my computer a tab I closed on my phone a couple hours ago. For me that's it.

All of that works without forced log-in.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#146

Post by jonbronson »

TheDong wrote: post #141
jonbronson wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because the experience is so nice." If the experience is "so nice" why are so many people outraged? The data suggests this is a terrible experience to look up and suddenly see you've been auto-logged into a browser without your consent. Terrible UX.

> why are so many people outraged? Whenever you think that many people are outraged and someone else claims that it's not the case, the logical conclusion is that you or both of you are in bubbles. Is it possible that you, a hacker news poster, are in a bubble whereby you've heard the opinion of tech-savy people, but not the opinion of the average mom who doesn't even realize the auto-login is the reason her android…

I agree it's worth acknowledging that it is the tech crowd that is concerned, and that's exactly what we should expect. This was a stealth-release feature that doesn't really explain itself and has no clear way to disable. It seems completely reasonable that it is tech experts who are the ones to first notice this problem, and rightly criticize it.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#147

Post by partiallypro »

lallysingh wrote: post #121
partiallypro wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long before Google forces you to have a Google Account to even search? I think we all know it's probably going that direction eventually.

I think that's backwards. Google without Search has very little to most of the Internet, and Google knows it. Search is the basis of Google's Ad money, and they won't do anything to restrict that. Other search engines are good enough to work if a user's unhappy, and Google hopes that users never have a reason to notice that.

If Google can do what Amazon is doing with product searches in a "one click" purchase model the trade will pay off in forcing people to sign in. A huge huge portion of Google income is from direct purchases, which is why Amazon is arguably its biggest competitor, not Bing. At the very least searches are much less relevant if you aren't signed in, and that gap is only going to continue to grow imo.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#148

Post by munk-a »

jrockway wrote: post #106
reacharavindh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day is not that far, when you look to buy say car insurance, and you get $XYZ as a quote. Your ur friend gets $ABC where $ABC Is there a way you could prevent this? Yes, if you care about privacy and not let someone build that database in the first place. It's not only/always the NSA that we need to worry about.. You can already see this in some sense. A flight ticket could cost more if you look for it using a Ma…

I feel like insurance companies are already doing this in a more transparent way: https://www.joinroot.com/ If you want the lower rate, you let them track you with the app. If you don't, you call up Geico or whatever and let them decide based on your age and zip code. Chrome Sync has nothing to do with this.

I disagree. I think this is indeed a known exchange of your privacy for value, but when people not using the app also find their life insurance rates going up it'll be a different story.

I also think all of us are terrible at determining the value of our privacy and it's an asset we don't miss until it's gone. It's for that reason that I think the sale of privacy is something we can't leave up to unregulated industry because not all parties have good information on the goods they are exchanging.

Re: Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync

#149

Post by sandov »

jonbronson wrote: post #139
sandov wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, who needs freedom anyway? Your solution is worse than the problem.

How is regulation to protect people from being taken advantage of by malicious data-mining practices "worse" than the actual practice of maliciously mining data to rip people off?

Limiting freedom is bad unless you have a very good reason to do so.

Does it make sense to ask "Why is fascism bad?". At a philosophical level it makes sense to ask this, but most of us would agree that freedom is desirable, because it allows people to develop their life project and be happy, while allowing other people to be happy (or at least try to be). Fascism is the totally opposite of freedom, therefore most of agree that fascism is bad.

Is there a good reason to undermine freedom in this case? I don't think so.

Some people may find that giving up their privacy for convenience is worth it, others, like me, would think the opposite, but we individually make the decision to use or not use Google, Facebook, etc. "Being taken advantage" is subjective.

Even if it was generally considered to be "malicious" and "being taken advantage of", you're arbitrarily twisting the rules of the game, to favor one group of people (the "users") and impair others (those that create the service). You may say: Yeah, but those being impaired already have millions of dollars and those being "protected" are good people. So, you decide who is "good people" and whose freedom doesn't matter? Should millionaires have less rights than poor people? Laws should correct for the amount of money/power people have, is that fair? I don't think so.

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