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Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

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Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#201

Post by tomnipotent »

chaps wrote: post #199
tomnipotent wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that you don't think protecting that group is a critically important thing for everyone is very telling. Again you take the worst-case interpretation, with a dash of ad hominem, to help you climb that moral high ground you seem fond of. > about how we don't want these features So you speak for the whole of Google's customer base?

You clearly have no intent on trying to understand why people have issues with this, so I'm done here. Best, friend.

No post body was provided.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#202

Post by wakeupcall »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #174

how many people here do NOT have a google account? lets do a roll call.

If you're using android, is it actually possible not to?

I'm not using any google product except android at this point. I need to use a few apps that require the BS of safetynet, and when this happens you're pretty screwed. I remember some years ago I was still able to setup an android phone without a google account, but it was so _intentionally_ broken there was no point.

People suggest Apple, but apple is just as bad if not worse in my eyes. I'm a dev, and I do not eat their kool-aid.

The "turning on activity tracking" of the post is nothing new to me. I have no means to prove this, but I'm quite privacy conscious and I went through every single setting in the google account and android during setup. The settings reset by themselves to tracking a couple of times per year. I do the same treatment to my family members, and I see the same end result (although in that case I cannot know if they were just coerced to tap "allow this thing" somewhere).

The end result is that I stopped trusting google quite a long time ago.

Regarding search, you can switch to pretty much any other search engine right now. DDG, bing.. it doesn't really matter much. They all got better, but the real kicker is that google got a lot worse to the point that I no longer see their engine useful for search queries. I've read some people here say "google still has better verbatim search".. HA, that's so far from the truth it's almost laughable. The only way I can get my terms in the results so far is with kagi and searx with additional filters.

I can say the same for most of their offerings. The technical excellence is still there, but it's being intentionally corrupted to the point that doesn't matter anymore.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#203

Post by herio »

robertlagrant wrote: post #154
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will this be different for European users because of GDPR (default on that is, the splitting sounds like it would be a GDPR win), if not what are the arguments for it being GDPR compliant? What happens to data of searches of users that were in a Workspace and no longer are, by being fired or by no longer paying for the service themselves? What happens if they move to a new organization?

Presumably just like all your corporate Slack or Teams chat history, or your emails, the things you did on company time remain the property of the company you're employed by.

Not always the case. At the European company I work there are many rules and regs on who can legally access employees email, depending on the country of the employee. Luxembourg and the Netherlands can be really tricky for example and they are not the only ones.

It's not automatically solely owned by the company.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#204

Post by Ensorceled »

prox wrote: post #185
drpixie wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call bulls*t here. Facebook has a long history of change-the-name-of-the-setting-and-the-new-flag-defaults-to-ON as a method of changing users' settings back to what facebook would prefer. Excuses aside, it looks like the same thing from google.

I have to agree. You don’t turn on stuff for people who turned it off. The default should be off, no matter where you are moving the new setting, which is fine all by itself, if informing the user. Golden rule is that the user is in control.

> The default should be off

If you split a control into two, more granular, controls, the default should be whatever I, the user, set the original control to be.

Having the default be a more privacy protecting setting is better than the default being the best for ad tracking, but really it should be what I wanted.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#205

Post by Ensorceled »

cik wrote: post #138
riverguardian wrote: post #70

Hello hello, PM for the feature checking in here. amf12's reply is quite on-point. Web and App Activity is designed to store search activity across all Google services, and we're splitting Workspace data out since it's governed by strict data handling guarantees, with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits of better search in Workspace without having to opt-into search history being trac…

Active, soon to be former user here. Constantly moving things around, to at the very least temporarily hoover data from users is wrong. The changes going on recently mean, that I'm finally eliminating my use of the G. I've dropped paid services. I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses. I've embraced other search engines again - and they're surprising…

> I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses.

What are you switching to? I'm in the same situation of a couple of family groups and a couple of small businesses on GSuite and looking for alternatives.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#206

Post by tremon »

0xy wrote: post #73
4ec0755f5522 wrote: post #69

I don't understand the confusion. Doubleclick ate Google from the inside. How can you possibly expect them to do anything else? Anything that favors your privacy, ever? They are in the business of consuming your data for profit. That is google's industry: consuming you. They are absolutely running with the motto "be evil". You think some checkbox in a "privacy settings" window is going to stop it?

DoubleClick's ad domains are hard coded into Google Chrome [1], so that additional telemetry is sent to their ad servers on every request. You cannot disable it. It's never disclosed to users. When you use Chrome, you're literally using the DoubleClick Browser. Privacy and ethical concerns aside, this is a clear antitrust violation. Google's ad competitors are at an automatic disadvantage. The FTC has gone after Inte…

your [1] link references a comment in the code, not actual working code. Can you do better or should we classify your entire post as fake news?

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#207

Post by evocatus »

riverguardian wrote: post #70

Hello hello, PM for the feature checking in here. amf12's reply is quite on-point. Web and App Activity is designed to store search activity across all Google services, and we're splitting Workspace data out since it's governed by strict data handling guarantees, with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits of better search in Workspace without having to opt-into search history being trac…

Thanks for confirming that Google is no longer run by the same people I trusted (at least, somewhat more than I do now) over a decade ago.

I encourage everyone to make the leap to DDG or some other search engine that doesn't just treat you as a data cow to be milked for your precious, precious "insights."

Even GMail is no longer an attractive proposition - the risk of being locked out (perhaps, even automatically!) of an account that serves as your primary mode of recovery / identification to other websites, with little to no chance of getting an actual human on the line to address your issue, is too great. I would rather not have my finances and other important accounts be subject to the whims of the big algorithm in the clouds.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#208

Post by Accacin »

Aurelius3 wrote: post #157
_zllx wrote: post #14

Use LineageOS+microG and (at the very least) Aurora Store on your phone. Use Firefox containers to sequester all Google services away from your other activity. Of course, use uBlock Origin. Achieve near total peace of mind when faced with things like this. Soon, I want to unsubscribe from all YouTube channels and move them over to RSS. I'll use a third-party YouTube client to watch videos queued from my feeds. Then,…

What is the reason firefox containers can't be used in private browsing mode? I really want to use them but also want to clear all stored data after closing a window. So far I've just been using firefox nightly, firefox, and ungoogled chromium to give me a total of three maximum "containers"... Is there a better way to benefit from private browsing modes while allowing for more containers?

I use a Firefox addon called "Temporary Containers". Basically unless I tell it overwise, every tab I open (unless it's the same domain) is opened in a new container. When the tab is closed, the container is deleted.

I use the automatic mode, but it's quite configurable in what you can do and works incredibly well.

It's way better than private mode IMO.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#209

Post by rednixion »

riverguardian wrote: post #120
twhb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments and the email both are written like nobody really wants tracking off, at least not if they know what’s good for them. Is that what you believe?

I think "tracking" is a bit misleading here. It's product (search) usage activity. None of the Workspace data you provide is ever used outside of Workspace, nor is it used for any other purpose than for the benefit of you and your users (we can't create machine learning models from your data to improve the experience for other customers, for example, without your prior consent), and that data is never used for ads.

“…(we can't create machine learning models from your data to improve the experience for other customers, for example, without your prior consent..”

Which if added as a new privacy setting to workspaces later on would seem to imply that this change of removing the org wide opt-out is really how Google could build the right conditions necessary to get users to “opt-in” when they really have not expressed any interest in doing so while making it a large enough task for admins to fail to achieve 100% enforcement of the organization’s actual desired configuration state… and hides the real intent of the change.

Sorry but “we are opting all your users into this and removing your ability to stop us” is an odd change that is being driven by something other than the feedback org admins. I have a hard time believing that normal users will see enough of an improvement to warrant even mentioning their email search to their boss but do find it probable that admins will mention being forcibly overruled by Google to others that help influence renewal… just seems like something else is the driver and the end goal.

imo believing that this change is being driven by good intent wouldn’t be so difficult if the change to make workplace privacy settings a user-only controlled setting if it inherited the current organization stance. Some users would enable it and if it really does improve the user experience so much then others will adopt it when they see it’s effects in action or get the “well I don’t have that problem” comment from a coworker(this is how Google search, Chrome and Gmail got to their levels of adoption after all). As of right now though it sounds like all the other messaging that we have to put up with which after awhile is to take as anything other than “you are trying to steal something from me”.

At least it’s not a setting that can only be saved in the browser’s local storage and not at the account level like so many other annoying things that get pushed(looking at you YouTube).

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#210

Post by flyinghamster »

danuker wrote: post #197
cik wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active, soon to be former user here. Constantly moving things around, to at the very least temporarily hoover data from users is wrong. The changes going on recently mean, that I'm finally eliminating my use of the G. I've dropped paid services. I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses. I've embraced other search engines again - and they're surprising…

> I've embraced other search engines again - and they're surprisingly good enough, finally. Or perhaps Google is crap enough. I no longer find anything useful when the search term overlaps with something for sale. Even Wikipedia search is better in that case, and I skip directly to it.

I've run into this a lot as well. If I'm looking up a place that catches my interest, 9 times out of 10 I'm *not* interested in hotel rooms or flights there. One Firefox search bar feature that I dearly love is that I can quickly and easily override my default search engine.
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