In Google Chrome’s “Cookies and site data” settings, accessible via the Preferences menu item or directly with
chrome://settings/cookiesin the address bar, you can enable the setting “Clear cookies and site data when you quit Chrome”. However, I’ve discovered that Chrome exempts Google’s own sites, such as Search and YouTube, from this setting.
I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but this really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Technology companies are particularly adept at being hostile towards users, and Google is no exception.
q. What does a boll weevil walking on a treadmill in Google HQ represent?
a. Toned B. Weevil.
This *does* come as a surprise to me; I’d always assumed google had other ways of tracking you with chrome which would make long-term storage of those cookies unnecessary.
I’ve just confirmed it happens here too on windows and linux. Chrome isn’t deleting the persistent local storage for google properties including google and youtube even when chrome has been configured to delete them.
I also noticed that chrome seems to be generating a cookie for ogs.google.com without visiting a google property at all, but this does does not seem to be consistent so I’m not sure how to reproduce it, but after enough restarts and/or time it eventually gets regenerated with the same value it had before it was deleted. Anyone know what it’s used for?
I’ve always felt that it’s just basic Chrome/Chromium hygiene to add
--incognitoto its launcher… like washing your hands after using the toilet.I switched to ungoogled-chromium (https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium) since Mint removed chromium from their repository (conflicts over chromium self-updating behavior).
Found it quite usable both on desktop and mobile.
Chicken and egg problem.
If most of us know that Chrome is a spearhead for Google’s datacollecting and datamining business, why do we use it? “Ah, because lots of sites only work on it.”,.. Then stop using it and demand that the sites work on other browsers. If Chrome gets less used, the sites will have to change. As is, those of you that use Chrome (or Chromium) are part of the problem.
I know what you mean but there are NO people who care about privacy and use Google Chrome as their main(*) browser or are invested(*) in Google/Facebook services. You could define privacy this way and you wouldn’t be far off.
Most people, however, do not care about privacy. Either they do nothing important online (in most cases that’s true), do not realize the extent of data aggregation, or, in some cases, they simply trust Google. The latter is actually quite common because of perceived Google’s neutrality – try convincing your friends/family to switch to a mail server or a cloud service _you_ manage – suddenly they will care about privacy a lot.
(*) I was qualifying these statements because it is difficult to avoid these companies entirely. It is very easy to minimize amount and importance of data we send to them, though.
ndrw,
I’m with Arawn in avoiding technologies that have forced telemetry or track us to sell ads, however I’m pretty much in agreement with your points too.
Yeah, I’m quite tired of people who unhelpfully say if you don’t like it you don’t have to use it because in many cases that’s false. My personal choice was to install lineageos with microg in order to avoid google services. I was generally successful in the endeavor, yet I faced a major regression when work forced me to get a stock android phone owing to their VPN’s forced google dependencies….grrr. Why the hell should a VPN service be tethered to google, this is stupid and pisses me off.
There is a lot more behinds the scenes infrastructure to support applications at Apple and Google then anyone thinks.
We think “Application X is talking to servers owned buy Application X Co. That must have taken a lot of work!” because that’s how it works with normal computers, but it didn’t take that much work. A dev at Application X Co used the libraries provided in the Android SDK to hook into services provided by Google to facilitate a RAD environment for applications which are going to be listed in the Play Store.
Apple is similar but much more locked down.
Flatlader_Spider,
Yep, and even if a user is savvy about the ways in which tracking are possible, we’re often not made aware of the fact that information is being processed by these companies, particularly when 3rd parties are sharing the information with google/apple/facebook/ms/etc.
Well, people have different perceptions of how creepy apple and google are (rightly or wrongly), but I’m bothered that their idea of security and privacy means blocking access for others while keeping the data available for themselves. Don’t worry, we have your interests at heart :-/
They are a better actor then some other tech companies, but I’m pretty sure MS is considered the most neutral tech company, which is a large part of their resurgent appeal. This only happened because they missed the boat on the Internet, mobile, and ad driven everything rather then any sort of corporate ideology, and they will sell everyone out as soon as they can figure out how.
Most people don’t even know what privacy is. I’m continuously amazed how many people won’t adopt online signatures or communications. Their excuse? Security and privacy concerns. Yet what do these same people use? A darned fax machine and the freaking U.S post office because, and I’m not kidding, these same people think those two methods of communication are the most secure. Yeah, right. The unencrypted picture over the phone line with a random person on the other end or the same people who can’t even deliver a package reliably are more secure than a private, encrypted communications channel. Sure. Anyway, rant mode off. I just had to get that out there.
darknexus,
Many corporations have phased these faxes out, but I find that we often need to fax documents when dealing with the government. They haven’t kept up with the times at all.
I was dealing with the IRS not long ago and they gave me two options: mail or fax. I asked if they would accept anything else and they would not. Certified mail is about $5. I ended up buying a virtual fax while I was on the phone with them for $5 to send them a fax. They may not trust emails, which would have been more convenient but it’s understandable because you never know if someone might be snooping on that… But why in the world don’t they have an official HTTPS website to upload documents?? Not only would this be more secure than email, postal mail & faxes, it would be convenient for everyone involved and cost everyone less money including the IRS.
This is just on top of how damned stupid it is that the IRS doesn’t accept e-filing directly and forced us to pay private 3rd party e-filing companies. What a waste.
Anyway, rant mode off. I just had to get that out there.
New word for privacy: Nagof – No Apple, Google or Facebook . Apple might be better but I needed the vowel.
Well, you can sub Amazon for Apple and it still works.
I’ve been using Firefox as my daily web browser for decades now, and this 99% FUD. Firefox is really bad at web based video calls, but the vast majority of web sites work fine.
However, this doesn’t matter because Chrome is produced by Google, and Google is a deified corporation. Ask people. 100% of their arguments boil down to brand recognition, a belief that large corps are good, and conformity.
Plus, derivatives.
And people will be here telling telling us why we’re wrong in five minutes.
This is why I switched back to Firefox (now that it received its long-overdue renovation with Quantum): Chrome integrates with your Google account a bit too closely for comfort. For example, if you choose a certain account to perform synchronization, Chrome then assumes this is the default account you want to use for every Google website: YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive etc. Uh? What if I don’t want to use my “main” Google account to sync my desktop bookmarks?
And all these “Chromium” forks lack synchronization altogether. I am done with Chrome browsers.
I knew Firefox was my browser again when I gave it a Yahoo email and it accepted it. Why shouldn’t it? It’s a valid email address.
I confess I’m a little disappointed that no one here suggested the user of Brave Browser. It uses chromium engine, so it renders properly pretty much every page that is compatible with chrome/chromium, and it’s privacy oriented – it natively blocks trackers, 3rd-party cookies and abusive/intrusive ads.
I use it on my Android phone, on my Windows installation and on my Linux installation (Elementary OS), and I’m yet to find a site where it doesn’t work (ok, sometimes I have to disable the blockers for a website to work properly, but as long as it’s done only every once in a while, I’m satisfied).
Here in Brazil (I don’t know how it works in other countries) internet banking sites are awful to access: you have to install plugins, applications, even system services (practically rootkits) to enforce security and yet many times it doesn’t work. With Brave I access all internet banking sites I need, and it even works like a charm with client certificates.
So, there is at least one GOOD alternative (not to speak of Firefox) to Chrome that really is privacy oriented and actually works pretty well. All we have to do is use it and spread it.
Because Brave doesn’t have good syncing like Firefox does.
and google wonders why they are being investigated……