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Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
71–80 of 102 posts
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm the former head of Cookie Compliance If the Internet didn't turn out the way it turned out, this could have been the greatest job ever.
Being the best in the world at what you do and not being allowed to do it is...not the greatest job. ;-)
Thank you for doing it anyways. The state of things seriously depresses me. We used to leave platforms just for putting up banner ads.
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#73Hi, I'm Dr Tim Libert, founder of webXray who did this audit. Happy to answer questions from YC'ers. [Note, stepping away for some mental health exercise, stressful day!] I also want to push back on Google telling the press our California Privacy Audit is "is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how [Google's] products work". I'm the former head of Cookie Compliance at Google and I have the federal court filing…
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Thank you for what you do.
There are a lot of Google and Meta engineers who are convinced that they're not the bad guys.
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#74Hi, I'm Dr Tim Libert, founder of webXray who did this audit. Happy to answer questions from YC'ers. [Note, stepping away for some mental health exercise, stressful day!] I also want to push back on Google telling the press our California Privacy Audit is "is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how [Google's] products work". I'm the former head of Cookie Compliance at Google and I have the federal court filing…
Apologies in advance an excuse my ignorance as I am going on a hunch here and don't have much rather than perhaps frustration driving my comment, but it feels like this isn't the first and nor will be the last we find stuff like this. I can't help but think they will pay the fines and go on continuing doing this, which makes it seem like it just evolved into a scheme where the government now takes their cut.
Sadly this isn’t even that bad compared to what’s in their own app binaries. If you’ve got an old iPhone you can jb and some claude usage to spare I highly recommend hooking up a ghidra mcp so you can see for yourself.
I don’t have any of their apps on my phone. And there is no known method to get rid of the trackers in your iCloud keychain.
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#75I don't think monetary fines are going to protect the rights of the people. The justice system must arrest the CEO's and put them into prison. I would like to know if there are less drastic measures, but there needs to be consequences such that these corporations won't try this again.
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cooking != Tracking? That's historically been a very prominent purpose of cookies. Sure it's not exclusively tracking, but it's nonsense to make the assertion that "Cookies != Tracking"
Cookies serve a lot of valuable purposes, it's important to disambiguate.
Sure. But given the lack of specificity from the person I was responding to, it felt important to correct.
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#77Jail time for execs. Only way things change.
Just update the codebase, much easier, 10 minutes.
That entirely ignores and excuses the chain of decisions that lead to this problem. Removing it from the codebase today does nothing to dissuade them from doing something similar tomorrow
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#78Is there still anyone competent that "doubt" so? As long as data transit through their infrastructure, in security, we must always assume that it's recorded (and later-on, eventually used), it has nothing to do with "settings".
If a user has an "opt-out" button or signal it should be wired up to a system that functions as such. This is just a software engineering, you could vibe-code a fix in ten minutes.
You are assuming this was simply a development oversight and not part of a larger systemic issue
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you agree that you have no way to confirm whether those websites honor or do not honor the do-not-sell-my-info choice. You are simply checking whether they set cookies or not, without knowing whether the data is sold or not on the backend.
We run scientific audits that provide evidence of specific data transfers under specific network conditions.
Your marketing should specifically say "We track cookies" (or if you wanna get punchy about it, "We track cookies so cookies don't track you") so potential customers know exactly what they're getting. For the purposes of legal compliance, this is pretty irrelevant. There may be people that want to know that the existing laws and company's compliance to them doesn't actually stop the cookies from being sent, but your privacy report says the companies are "Our findings reveal major technology companies simply ignore globally defined opt-out signals, raising the spectre of industrial-scale non-compliance with California requirements", which is untrue and potentially opens you up to libel claims. They are not ignoring the laws, they are complying with the laws in a way that may or may not be what the consumer actually cares about.
Re: Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out
#80they have no fear of the current financial incentives, there has to a punitive quantity involved, and the mentality of any regulators has to catch up with present day. fines that amount to a daily expenditure account, do nothing. fines have to have potential to do real damage to, or destroy noncompliants, if there is going to be any deterrent. contempt, is obvious, the chance of jail should exist in actuality, rather…
> fines that amount to a daily expenditure account, do nothing. Even those relatively small fines rarely get paid. Companies can tie up the judgements in the courts for years without having to pay a single cent. [1] > The Data Protection Commission (DPC) is owed more than €4 billion in fines that have not been collected or are subject to legal challenge. The DPC hit companies – including firms in Big Tech – with more…
Hopefully they hold off until the financial straw breaks and then they leverage their owed fines to claim ownership of these shithole companies completely.
I know I'm dreaming, but still.