4 ms·

For now at least, there's this escape hatch: chrome://flags/#account-consistency Edit: Some are saying this doesn't work on Chrome 69. :(

colemickens 8y ago
Maybe they've revised the flag, but the flag did not disable the feature as much as the text might lead you to believe. My comment from a couple weeks ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17943524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17943524
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Thanks for letting me know! For some reason I don't see that on my toolbar, though I haven't tried creating a new profile. I'm on Chrome 68 on Windows, if that might explain anything?
stefano 8y ago
When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. At that point, it's better to move to an alternative browser, it's not worth it to fight it with hacks. If too many people use the escape hatch, they'll remove it.
- mtgx 8y ago
  That was also my argument against all the "hacks" people posted online against Windows 10 tracking. Most of them were short-lived because Microsoft had an incentive to stop them from being used in the next update of Windows.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  I know. I was just trying to help another poor soul like myself in the interim of figuring out how to switch. For me at least, it's very nontrivial work.
- SiVal 8y ago
  It seems as though the needed escape hatch is a browser that simply CAN'T send info about you back to home base. Firefox might qualify, but I don't know for sure, and I don't want that to be our only option. There's a lot of great engineering that goes into Chrome. So I'm wondering: Is enough code open sourced to make it possible for an organization such as Apache, GNU, or whatever, to create a sanitized fork of each new version of Chrome? This would be a version of Chrome with no privileged party other than its user. Every other party would be limited to the same set of features (cookies, local storage, etc.) that apply to all 2nd parties.
  - rst 8y ago
    You might want to look into the Brave browser (https://brave.com https://brave.com), which is a commercial browser based on the Chromium code, funded by a micropayments idea, which tries to generally be more privacy-sensitive than the Google version. As for a fully open-source version: here's a fairly recent summary (2017) of what's in Chrome and not in Chromium (the open-sourced subset): https://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what%E2%80%99s-the-difference-between-chromium-and-chrome/ https://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what%E2%80%99s-the-differen... There are other omissions that could get in the way of general usability; chromium also omits some proprietary licensed codecs, including the mp3 support. However, Google synch support, etc, is left in -- and if you desire to keep that out, maintaining the patch set that does it without cooperation from upstream could be a hassle. Whenever they refactor of update the integration between synch and the rest of the browser, you need to make corresponding changes in the patch set that cuts all that out -- and at a fairly rapid pace, too, lest you find yourself unable to ship an urgent security update. So, it's doable -- but at a price in usability, and doing it right requires some kind of continual effort. Which is what Brave is, in effect, trying to arrange with their payments-based funding scheme. And even a very capable person trying to do the project solo, on a volunteer basis, would be putting themselves at risk of burnout.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      Does one really want to associate themselves with Brendan Eich though? Brave is what he has been building after being ejected from Mozilla. While Brendan has built some interesting and useful things including Javascript, he is apparently poisonous enough to cause three of Mozilla's board members to resign, including a founding executive of Yahoo, the former CEO of AVG, and the former CEO of Mozilla Corp (from 2008 to 2010). His wiki page is a good reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  > When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. I would say that when you're looking for escape hatches, you know the defaults don't match your personal preferences. I understand why some people don't like combined login. However, I personally prefer it, and I guess that the decision to add it was made on the basis of believing that most people would feel like I do, or at worst feel neutral.
  - danudey 8y ago
    Based on all the discussions I've had or seen with Google developers, they added it based on the basis of believing that most people should feel that you do, or at worst won't notice. It's unlikely that they considered privacy concerns, above and beyond "we can be trusted so it's fine".
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
      I don't know who you are or whether you have had conversations with the people who are responsible for the feature. All I can say is that that does not match my perception of the typical way of doing things at Google, as someone who has been working there for a while. That said, I do not sit close to where this feature was built, so maybe they do things differently over there.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  That is how I feel about my use of youtube-dl. But youtube is so damn entrenched nowadays...
omgtehlion 8y ago
This flag is not really working. Just checked it (chrome 69.0.3497.100)
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Aw man. It's working on 68! Guess I have to avoid upgrading for now. Thanks.
  - smt88 8y ago
    So you're choosing a less-secure version of Chrome over just switching to Firefox? What makes you so loyal to Chrome?
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Your comment is aggressively presumptive (and wrongly so) so I'm not inclined to respond directly. You can browse my last few comments if you're genuinely interested.
blihp 8y ago
A better escape hatch is https://mozilla.org https://mozilla.org Granted, Mozilla's had their own issues and some apps / sites may have become as dependent on Chrome as sites were on IE way back when. But given Google's flexing their control muscles over the last few years, a clean break is probably the better long term solution.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Question: How do I sign extensions I wrote for myself so I can actually use them, without uploading a copy of the extension somewhere? That's my roadblocker right now. I don't know how to migrate make my own extensions work on my own system without uploading them to other people's servers. (Yes, I want Firefox stable. I don't want to run a buggy browser.)
  - EwanToo 8y ago
    You can run either Firefox ESR or the unbranded builds [1] if you want unsigned extensions, but I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla? 1 - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded_Builds https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      > You can run either Firefox ESR Then I have the exact same problem when support dies in the coming months though. > or the unbranded builds [1] Interesting, so does this mean that if I want stable builds, I'd have to manually update to the exact unbranded counterpart of that stable version? > I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla? I guess because I really don't see what business they have forcing me to upload my extensions to their servers? Same reason why people don't like uploading Chrome stuff to Google servers? ~~~~~~~~~~~ Edit: I'm trying out the unbranded builds and running into a problem when I try to use my existing profile: disabling signature checking doesn't work. However, it works on a fresh profile. Not sure what the problem is...
colordrops 8y ago
Doesn't work for me.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  What version?
  - colordrops 8y ago
    I tried 69 at the time. Haven't checked for a few days.

colemickens 8y ago

Maybe they've revised the flag, but the flag did not disable the feature as much as the text might lead you to believe. My comment from a couple weeks ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17943524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17943524

mehrdadn 8y ago
Thanks for letting me know! For some reason I don't see that on my toolbar, though I haven't tried creating a new profile. I'm on Chrome 68 on Windows, if that might explain anything?

stefano 8y ago

When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. At that point, it's better to move to an alternative browser, it's not worth it to fight it with hacks. If too many people use the escape hatch, they'll remove it.

mtgx 8y ago
That was also my argument against all the "hacks" people posted online against Windows 10 tracking. Most of them were short-lived because Microsoft had an incentive to stop them from being used in the next update of Windows.
mehrdadn 8y ago
I know. I was just trying to help another poor soul like myself in the interim of figuring out how to switch. For me at least, it's very nontrivial work.
SiVal 8y ago
It seems as though the needed escape hatch is a browser that simply CAN'T send info about you back to home base. Firefox might qualify, but I don't know for sure, and I don't want that to be our only option. There's a lot of great engineering that goes into Chrome. So I'm wondering: Is enough code open sourced to make it possible for an organization such as Apache, GNU, or whatever, to create a sanitized fork of each new version of Chrome? This would be a version of Chrome with no privileged party other than its user. Every other party would be limited to the same set of features (cookies, local storage, etc.) that apply to all 2nd parties.
- rst 8y ago
  You might want to look into the Brave browser (https://brave.com https://brave.com), which is a commercial browser based on the Chromium code, funded by a micropayments idea, which tries to generally be more privacy-sensitive than the Google version. As for a fully open-source version: here's a fairly recent summary (2017) of what's in Chrome and not in Chromium (the open-sourced subset): https://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what%E2%80%99s-the-difference-between-chromium-and-chrome/ https://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what%E2%80%99s-the-differen... There are other omissions that could get in the way of general usability; chromium also omits some proprietary licensed codecs, including the mp3 support. However, Google synch support, etc, is left in -- and if you desire to keep that out, maintaining the patch set that does it without cooperation from upstream could be a hassle. Whenever they refactor of update the integration between synch and the rest of the browser, you need to make corresponding changes in the patch set that cuts all that out -- and at a fairly rapid pace, too, lest you find yourself unable to ship an urgent security update. So, it's doable -- but at a price in usability, and doing it right requires some kind of continual effort. Which is what Brave is, in effect, trying to arrange with their payments-based funding scheme. And even a very capable person trying to do the project solo, on a volunteer basis, would be putting themselves at risk of burnout.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Does one really want to associate themselves with Brendan Eich though? Brave is what he has been building after being ejected from Mozilla. While Brendan has built some interesting and useful things including Javascript, he is apparently poisonous enough to cause three of Mozilla's board members to resign, including a founding executive of Yahoo, the former CEO of AVG, and the former CEO of Mozilla Corp (from 2008 to 2010). His wiki page is a good reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
> When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. I would say that when you're looking for escape hatches, you know the defaults don't match your personal preferences. I understand why some people don't like combined login. However, I personally prefer it, and I guess that the decision to add it was made on the basis of believing that most people would feel like I do, or at worst feel neutral.
- danudey 8y ago
  Based on all the discussions I've had or seen with Google developers, they added it based on the basis of believing that most people should feel that you do, or at worst won't notice. It's unlikely that they considered privacy concerns, above and beyond "we can be trusted so it's fine".
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
    I don't know who you are or whether you have had conversations with the people who are responsible for the feature. All I can say is that that does not match my perception of the typical way of doing things at Google, as someone who has been working there for a while. That said, I do not sit close to where this feature was built, so maybe they do things differently over there.
newnewpdro 8y ago
That is how I feel about my use of youtube-dl. But youtube is so damn entrenched nowadays...

omgtehlion 8y ago

This flag is not really working. Just checked it (chrome 69.0.3497.100)

mehrdadn 8y ago
Aw man. It's working on 68! Guess I have to avoid upgrading for now. Thanks.
- smt88 8y ago
  So you're choosing a less-secure version of Chrome over just switching to Firefox? What makes you so loyal to Chrome?
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Your comment is aggressively presumptive (and wrongly so) so I'm not inclined to respond directly. You can browse my last few comments if you're genuinely interested.

blihp 8y ago

A better escape hatch is https://mozilla.org https://mozilla.org Granted, Mozilla's had their own issues and some apps / sites may have become as dependent on Chrome as sites were on IE way back when. But given Google's flexing their control muscles over the last few years, a clean break is probably the better long term solution.

mehrdadn 8y ago
Question: How do I sign extensions I wrote for myself so I can actually use them, without uploading a copy of the extension somewhere? That's my roadblocker right now. I don't know how to migrate make my own extensions work on my own system without uploading them to other people's servers. (Yes, I want Firefox stable. I don't want to run a buggy browser.)
- EwanToo 8y ago
  You can run either Firefox ESR or the unbranded builds [1] if you want unsigned extensions, but I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla? 1 - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded_Builds https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > You can run either Firefox ESR Then I have the exact same problem when support dies in the coming months though. > or the unbranded builds [1] Interesting, so does this mean that if I want stable builds, I'd have to manually update to the exact unbranded counterpart of that stable version? > I'm curious what your concerns are with the unlisted extensions option from Mozilla? I guess because I really don't see what business they have forcing me to upload my extensions to their servers? Same reason why people don't like uploading Chrome stuff to Google servers? ~~~~~~~~~~~ Edit: I'm trying out the unbranded builds and running into a problem when I try to use my existing profile: disabling signature checking doesn't work. However, it works on a fresh profile. Not sure what the problem is...

colordrops 8y ago

Doesn't work for me.

mehrdadn 8y ago
What version?
- colordrops 8y ago
  I tried 69 at the time. Haven't checked for a few days.