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Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

lauren.vortex.com

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Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#31

Post by barrkel »

barrkel wrote: post #9
masklinn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can (disclaimer edition note: but it's not necessarily for the faint of heart, and isn't officially supported. On their updater and update policy, Google manages to be worse than Apple on Windows, which is already pretty fucking bad). 1. On Windows and OSX (at least), the actual updating is performed by a single service running in the background for all Google applications (the Google Updater). This ser…

On Windows, Autoruns from SysInternals ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.asp... ) works fairly well for finding out about these things that happen automatically, and disabling them, as easy as unchecking a checkbox. There's at two categories relevant to googleupdate: CurrentVersion\Run, and Task Scheduler.

Too late to edit: there's a third one, in Services, on my machine gupdate1ca54[more hex digits] - it also links to googleupdate.exe.

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#32

Post by aj »

barrkel wrote: post #30
aj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do check and tell if you have the Google Updater service running and that it is working fine? Else, please tell how you managed to turn off automatic updates in Google Chrome?

Google Updater is not running. I turned it off with Autoruns, like I said in my other comment.

Then how is that NOT a workaround? You are simply putting forth an argument which does even pertain to the point I was making.

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#33

Post by barrkel »

bradgessler wrote: post #29
barrkel wrote: post #27

I'm starting to get the impression that Chrome is the browser for inept people, and that if you want good control over the browser behaviour, it's not a good choice. Chrome's responsiveness to public feedback is similar to Google's responsiveness, i.e. not responsive at all, and tends to authoritarianism. My worry is that Firefox may take too much of a lead from it, and similarly start removing features.

Cookie management is kind of a tin-foil hat feature that is already served by Incognito mode. For the more technically inclined that really care, there are switches to turn on cookie management (and no doubt third party extensions)

I don't think it's well served by Incognito mode. You want to keep login cookies, but not J. Random Site's tracking cookies. Similarly, I need to install an extension (No History) into Chrome to disable history logging without disabling login cookies; but it isn't able to clear the "Most Visited" list that shows up in new tabs, owing to limitations in the API.

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#34

Post by kelnos »

jrockway wrote: post #21

Summary: "I noticed a bug in the latest Beta version of Chrome. I know Beta versions are 100% stable and never have bugs, though, so I assume this is some conspiracy by Google to ruin my life or something. Two more pages of whining about this." I wish everyone contributed to open source projects, so they would know when to blog and when to file a bug report.

There's actually an issue on Chromium's tracker that suggested removing this feature (which was then closed as implemented). See link somewhere in the comments.

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#35

Post by barrkel »

aj wrote: post #32
barrkel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Updater is not running. I turned it off with Autoruns, like I said in my other comment.

Then how is that NOT a workaround? You are simply putting forth an argument which does even pertain to the point I was making.

aj, you said expressly, twice, "that is a feature that Google has hardcoded into Chrome. You CANNOT disable auto-updates", "hardcoded in Chrome".

Your statement is factually incorrect. That's my point.

It is not "hardcoded in Chrome". It's a separate application altogether, and it's soft-configured in Windows, not hard-coded into Chrome. The fact that it's soft-configured in the Windows registry, using documented APIs, means that it is easily disabled; there's even a utility written by MS employees, on the MS website, for such software configuration. I take hard-coded to mean that there's code built in to Chrome which tries to auto-update on startup, in an unavoidable fashion. But there isn't. It's not hard coded.

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#36

Post by sid0 »

barrkel wrote: post #27

I'm starting to get the impression that Chrome is the browser for inept people, and that if you want good control over the browser behaviour, it's not a good choice. Chrome's responsiveness to public feedback is similar to Google's responsiveness, i.e. not responsive at all, and tends to authoritarianism. My worry is that Firefox may take too much of a lead from it, and similarly start removing features.

I think this newsgroup post from Brendan (Eich) summarizes why that's not going to happen: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.marketing/msg/0d3ceac...

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#37

Post by dhess »

bradgessler wrote: post #29
barrkel wrote: post #27

I'm starting to get the impression that Chrome is the browser for inept people, and that if you want good control over the browser behaviour, it's not a good choice. Chrome's responsiveness to public feedback is similar to Google's responsiveness, i.e. not responsive at all, and tends to authoritarianism. My worry is that Firefox may take too much of a lead from it, and similarly start removing features.

Cookie management is kind of a tin-foil hat feature that is already served by Incognito mode. For the more technically inclined that really care, there are switches to turn on cookie management (and no doubt third party extensions)

As far as I can determine, Incognito mode just creates a 2nd sandbox for cookies and history that's shared across all Incognito tabs/windows, and is only deleted once you close them all. Cookies you create in one Incognito tab or window are visible to all other Incognito tabs/windows, just as cookies created in plain tabs/windows are visible to all other plain tabs/windows. So if you go into Incognito mode and browse there for a few hours, soon you've got a bunch of cookies that are following you around the Internet until you close all your Incognito tabs. In my case, I have Chrome set up to delete all cookies on exit, so Incognito doesn't buy me much: I might as well just quit the browser and restart.

If Incognito mode worked in such a way that each tab were its own cookie sandbox, then I'd be reasonably satisfied with it as a cookie management solution, but as it stands, it's not good enough. (Because each tab is a separate process in Chrome, one would think that it would be reasonably easy to support that behavior.) In lieu of that, what I'd really like is a Chrome extension like Firefox's CookieSafe, where I can block all cookies by default and then whitelist them back in on a site-by-site basis, but nothing like that exists at the moment.

For now, the best I can do is the Tab Cookies extension, which removes a domain's cookies once you close the last tab that's browsing the domain. For my purposes, it's inferior to both of the other solutions I mentioned (per-tab sandboxing and whitelisting), but at least I can keep my footprint reasonably small, as long as I'm diligent about closing tabs.

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#38

Post by 1337p337 »

modeless wrote: post #12
stretchwithme wrote: post #3

The author says google is pushing out new versions of the browser automatically now. I was pretty sure I didn't enable the automatic updating feature but when I checked "About Chrome", I was informed that the browser had been updated. Seems to be no way to disable this either. Am I missing something?

This is how Chrome has worked since forever, and it's a good thing. Asking the user for confirmation for security updates leads directly to users running known-insecure versions of software. If you don't want auto-updates, use Chromium.

...Or a different browser.

Seriously, though, Google is used to web development, where they control the software and the machines running it. A new version of GMail rolls out, and everyone gets it. Like in the case of Buzz, this isn't always good, but it makes developers' lives easier.

But desktop applications are a different game. Almost any time you take control away from the user, it's bad. New version of the browser introduces a security flaw? Sorry, you've been automatically upgraded. Hate a new feature? See previous answer. Security hole found in the Google Updater daemon? Oops, we gave it admin privileges and ran it without telling you.

Has Google created so much good will over the years that people don't scream about this the way they would about similar behavior from Microsoft/Apple/DemonizedCompanyOfYourChoice?

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#39

Post by flipbrad »

Tichy wrote: post #28
thezilch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm not familiar with which Firefox controls you are referencing, the following is a shot of the cookie+"X" and the impending modal for selecting 0..n cookies and site data to be allowed indefinitely or for this session alone: http://i.imgur.com/va1xW.png

Key thing is really to disallow third party cookies, as that (among other things) is what is being used to track you by all the advertisers, spammers, Facebookers and so on out there.

what will the response to this be? Could the site host set a cookie that then (from the server) is read and the content reported directly to the advertiser?

Re: Google Removes Cookie Control from Chrome

#40

Post by drdaeman »

gaius wrote: post #19
modeless wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how Chrome has worked since forever, and it's a good thing. Asking the user for confirmation for security updates leads directly to users running known-insecure versions of software. If you don't want auto-updates, use Chromium.

Imagine the howls if Microsoft had done this...

Howls of joy because we won't have any IE6 systems left? ;)
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