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Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

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Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#91

Post by kick »

kevlarr wrote: post #64
kick wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox should definitely be used, but donating to Mozilla is a mistake. They waste a lot of it, their executive compensation rates are way too high (especially given that MoCo just laid off employees), and Mozilla still hasn't kept up with promises they gave years ago (that Pocket is still proprietary being a notable and depressing example). Donate to smaller developers of software you use, it'll go a lot further, a…

Donations go to Mozilla "the non-profit organization" rather than Mozilla "the corporation". Mozilla (the corporation) has the typical/bad corporate structures and ridiculous executive compensations. Mozilla (the corporation) had the layoffs. Mozilla (the corporation) bought Pocket with money that comes from deals with search engines. That being said, though... > Donate to smaller developers of software you use, it'l…

The Mozilla Foundation controls and owns the Mozilla Corporation, and the executive structure looks more or less the same. Baker's compensation has been inversely tied with performance, and she runs both.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#92

Post by sstangl »

driverdan wrote: post #58
kick wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox should definitely be used, but donating to Mozilla is a mistake. They waste a lot of it, their executive compensation rates are way too high (especially given that MoCo just laid off employees), and Mozilla still hasn't kept up with promises they gave years ago (that Pocket is still proprietary being a notable and depressing example). Donate to smaller developers of software you use, it'll go a lot further, a…

> their executive compensation rates are way too high Just because they're a non-profit doesn't mean execs should be paid far below market rates.

Mozilla engineers typically accept a salary that is below market rates.

Recently they have been increasing salaries to be more competitive.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#93

Post by jcl »

c16 wrote: post #80

Chrome explicitly having a line [1] of code to not send the `x-client-data` header to Yahoo made me laugh. [1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/comp...

FWIW, it looks like that's a test case -- it is not part of Chrome itself. They most likely just wanted an example of a third-party website, and could have used any non-Google site there.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#94

Post by pdkl95 »

janpot wrote: post #4

Not endorsing this, but according to https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#variat... > We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations he…

This is impressive doublespeak.

> This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable information

> a seed number which is randomly selected on first run ... chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy)

They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy probably isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined with at least 24 additional bits[1] of entropy from the IPv4 Source Address field Google receives >=37 bits of entropy, which is almost certainly a unique ID for the browser. Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.

> Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address)

They even admit to inspecting the IP address...

> operating system, Chrome version and other parameters.

...and many additional sources of entropy.

[1] why 24 bits instead of 32? The LSB of the address might be zeroed if the packet is affected by Googles faux-"anonymization" feature ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167059 )

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#95

Post by Kiro »

deeblering4 wrote: post #53

I see people recommending Firefox, but I'll say that for mac users Safari is a very usable browser too. It's quite fast, and to my knowledge is not collecting/sharing my personal data with apple. https://www.apple.com/privacy/ These days I only use chrome for the g-suite tools that seem to require it to avoid mid-meeting crashes.

Safari is horrible for HTML5 games. Dealing with all sorts of issues to the point where I've more or less given up and just tell my Safari players to use something else.

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#96

Post by GrayShade »

BLO716 wrote: post #62

With that said, one can simply filter out these analytics with a c:\Windows\Systems32\Drivers\etc\hosts -> pointing to 0.0.0.0 or PiHole solution ( https://pi-hole.net/ ), yes? I mean, this is probably not the holistic solution, but this is why we have a firewall, vpn, antivirus, filters to just keep DNS in check, yes?

So are you suggesting people should DNS block google.com and gmail.com?

Re: Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID

#100

Post by throwawa66 »

eitland wrote: post #67
throwawa66 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more people are blocking ads. Google’s business model is under threat. They will turn into hyenas in order to survive.

Good point. Although I feel their hyena nature has been visible for a while now and what we are now seeing is hungry hyena :-)

Oh it will get worse. Youtube will be riddled with ads every 5 minutes or so. Will take the cable tv path soon. The good news is that their greed will eventually crash themselves.

Hey, i dont mind a little ad here and there even though I give 0 fucks about any product being advertised. But the quantity is becoming hard to process without adblockers. Had they not taken the full evil mode path I’d have considered paying for youtube.

I think im better of weaning myself off almost completely. Or alternatives...

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