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

Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

tech.slashdot.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 346 posts

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#151

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #143
alkonaut wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting privacy advice from an adtech funded outlet sounds like reading democracy advice from the Chinese ruling party or vegetarianism advice from lions to be honest. It might be correct-and-incomplete but they just have no credibility on the topic.

Many HN commenters work for "adtech funded outlets". Do they have any credibility on the issue of privacy.

Is it true that, individually, Washington Post "tech" journalists might be credibie but their employers would not be credible.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#153

Post by Larrikin »

mmooss wrote: post #139
xnx wrote: post #6

Without the suggestion to install an adblocker, this is not credible advice.

That may not be viable for many non-technical users, which is their audience. On HN, it would be an error to omit ad blockers; the Washington Post has a different audience. I expect that most would find installing and learning a new browser to be too much effort and too hard to understand.

This is provably wrong since Google has been pushing Chrome installs for over a decade.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#154

Post by zzleeper »

macNchz wrote: post #131
bink wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound fantastical. A piece of code that can violate the same origin policy would be a huge vulnerability. Meta could be working with other sites to share data on users via code running on both sites, but snooping on tax data without the IRS helping? Unlikely. I can only assume they're suggesting that companies like Intuit and H&R Block are sharing this data with Meta, but that seems like a huge violation of p…

It's effectively malware—this article has some more detail: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are... Basically, they created a channel between the browser and a localhost webserver running in their native apps, by abusing the ability to set arbitrary metadata on WebRTC connections. That way, they were able to exfiltrate tracking cookies out of the browser's sandbox to the native app, where they…

Is there any way to fix it within Android? damn...

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#155

Post by dartharva »

mrweasel wrote: post #33
arresin wrote: post #7

What is the alternative to chrome that doesn’t crash or is not noticeably slower?

Firefox? Weird question. I haven't even installed Chrome in the past 7 years. Firefox is fast (but I obviously don't know if Chrome is faster) and it never crashes.

Chrome does feel faster to me; I remember someone here saying that was because of some kind of procedural loading shenanigans or something.

But the main hook for me is how websites look. I do a lot of reading on the browser, and fonts on Chrome always look better than on Firefox. I would switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if only things started looking the same on it.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#156

Post by Kinrany »

sneak wrote: post #152
tdiff wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use telegram

Telegram is a privacy downgrade from WhatsApp. WA is at least end to end encrypted; Telegram is not.

Telegram is not a downgrade in this instance.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#158

Post by testfrequency »

jeffbee wrote: post #69

It's sort of interesting that Brave was not affected by this because they already blocked the technique used by the Yandex app. I wonder if Brave devs were aware of that specific abuse, or if they just thought that localhost traffic was distasteful categorically.

I really wish I was ok, morally, with using Brave.

One of the few that seem to have their shit together

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#159

Post by cguess »

Kinrany wrote: post #156
sneak wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is a privacy downgrade from WhatsApp. WA is at least end to end encrypted; Telegram is not.

Telegram is not a downgrade in this instance.

It's not encrypted by default, WhatsApp is.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#160

Post by brookst »

ninth_ant wrote: post #9
xnx wrote: post #6

Without the suggestion to install an adblocker, this is not credible advice.

A media outlet which depends on ad revenue as a primary income source is unlikely to suggest this. Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea, independent on any decision to use ad blockers or not. The Meta/Yandex incident in particular is straight-up malware and everyone should remove their apps.

You’re not wrong, but there was a time many of olds remember when editorial content and commercial concerns were firewalled. It used to be outrageous, and usually wrong, to suggest an editorial position was contingent upon a business benefit for the media outlet.

I miss those days.

Post reply on HN