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Google finally revealed how much personal data they collect in Chrome
- oriettaxx 6y agois it the same for EU and non-EU users?
- sarcasmatwork 6y agoGood find here! Using Brave + Duck duck go.
- Grazester 6y agoWhy Brave??
- sarcasmatwork 6y agoIt's better than Chrome and FF imho. Lacks the tracking BS from Chrome, and FF has gone downhill.. Any reasons not too?
- encryptluks2 6y agoBrave uses Chromium.
- ravenstine 6y agoWhat's wrong with Chromium? I don't think Google's tracking specifically has anything to do with Chromium. Chromium !== Chrome
- freedom42 6y agoBecause the direction Chromium is heading is in large part controlled by Google, more than Firefox. Also Chromium still has Google bits, otherwise ungoogled-chromium won't exist right?
- ravenstine 6y agoI see. I generally agree with that, which is one reason why I'm a Firefox user, but I'm not totally sure I buy it as a reason not to use Brave. It's a fair viewpoint, though. I could see it being a reason for being against Brave if the Google-ness of Chromium is able to make Brave less private.
- freedom42 6y agoI think Google recently took out the syncing capability from Chromium. Things like that. Edit: Also the manifest v3 thingy which made Ublock Origin operation restricted, also I think it prevented CNAME uncloaking. Idk whether Google went ahead with manifest v3 though.
- encryptluks2 6y agoNothing. I use Chromium. I just prefer it over Brave.
- asddubs 6y agoI think the main problem is that by using it you're still giving google decision-making power over the future of the web
- ancarda 6y agoWhy not use a Firefox fork like Waterfox? That fixes a number of the complaints people have with Firefox while not pushing us towards a browser engine monopoly - which you do by using a Chromium based browser. Besides, the Basic Attention Token crap in Brave is kinda shady.
- eingaeKaiy8ujie 6y agoWhat's wrong with Firefox?
- ancarda 6y agoNothing, so long as you're okay with telemetry, bundled junk like pocket, and the removal of the compact UI (see the thread from yesterday - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26464533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26464533). Firefox's internals are great -- it's never been faster or as stable, and for that we made real sacrifices like losing XUL extensions but increasingly I don't understand Mozilla's decision making. EDIT: I understand many of the things I'm talking about can be fixed with about:config. I had a list of over 30 flags in my notes and it was becoming untenable to patch all my devices whenever a feature I needed was changed or removed. Whereas with Waterfox, I so far have only one about:config change: dom.security.https_only_mode = true
- hackerfromthefu 6y ago>> I don't understand Mozilla's decision making. Yeah lots of (usually subtle-ish) incongruous actions. Ignore the public messaging and work backwards from what they actually do to understand their real motivations. I've written some other comments with my analysis on it if you're interests you can check my comment history.
- sarcasmatwork 6y agoI have not heard about Waterfox, will give it a try. I've only been using Brave for the last ~2months.
- 6y ago
- NtGuy25 6y agoIt's produced by a "Reputable" company and has a good update process. I can TRUST my software updates from brave. "Ungoogled Chromium", while FOSS, have no good update method, and since i'm not going to build it myself, I don't have the same level of trust that something malicious hasn't been implanted. Brave provides similar features to ungoogled chromium and I don't have to support Mozilla or Google and their practices. Big issue is the trust factor. As well as all the Chrome zero days going out, not having security updates in a timely manner is risky.
- Grazester 6y agoThere is a a lot of talk here about "Trust", that's somethings I cannot attribute to Brave. I am sorry.
- foolinaround 6y agoWhat is the reaon?
- tres 6y agoWhat's the business model again? How are they making money? "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold"
- foolinaround 6y agoI found this, and i do get ads... https://www.computerworld.com/article/3292619/the-brave-browser-basics-what-it-does-how-it-differs-from-rivals.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3292619/the-brave-brow...
- weinzierl 6y agoBrave is still new and when it comes to security, we will have to see how it turns out. You put quotes around reputable and rightly so. Brave just bought a ton of clickstream data, harvested stealthily by another "privacy-focused" browser. When it comes to privacy, no, I don't trust Brave an inch.
- viklove 6y agoWhy would you use a proprietary browser when Firefox is around?
- encryptluks2 6y agoChromium is open source and Firefox collects quite a bit of data by default as well.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoChromium is open source, but almost nobody uses it. Almost everyone uses either of the proprietary forks, Chrome and Edge.
- encryptluks2 6y agoNot if you use Linux, and Chromium is also in the Chocolatey repo and Homebrew.
- URfejk 6y agoAnd on Android you can use Ungoogled Chromium.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoPeople who use Linux to browse the web, or install browsers with Chocolately or Homebrew, are all an extreme minority of browser users. Also, this post is about iOS...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smt1 6y agoChromium is Chrome with a lot of code ripped out. Specifically most things that interact with google, widevyne, etc.
- 6y ago
- xiphias2 6y agoI don't understand why Location (and other data) is 5 times for the Google app for example. Can somebody explain the differences?
- ricardbejarano 6y agoControversial opinion: Half the data Chrome collects is harmless, and the other half is up to the user to give up: - Location data: you are asked and must approve for Chrome to use (at least on macOS) - Financial data: you must enter it manually and click "save for future use". Could it be better? Sure! But I think DDG is exaggerating here. We're not _that_ bad.
- siggen 6y agoI am in agreement. You can choose not to log into Google from Chrome, for example. I don’t think Chrome misleads when it collects these specific information. Where it collects, it’s obvious— I didn’t see anything in the OP picture that was a surprise/hidden collection.
- tinus_hn 6y agoIf you chose to allow Chrome to know your location, so it can show you on the map, do you consent to have your location tracked continuously and associated with your Google account?
- sp332 6y agoNo, that's a setting in your Google account and not in the browser. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en
- nerdponx 6y agoThat Q&A is very careful to avoid stating that location data is not sent to Google when "location history" is turned off. You really think that by flipping a switch on your account page, they are going to start discarding some of the data they are sent from client devices?
- tesseract 6y agoBut would people necessarily associate "I gave Chrome the OS-level location permission, so I could enable location on <non-Google website>" with Chrome itself tracking the location and connecting it to a Google account?
- sys_64738 6y agoIs Google 'Do No Evil' dead?
- corytheboyd 6y agoHasn’t quite a lot of time passed since they gave up on that motto? I’m not upset about the content of the “article”, I hope it wasn’t a secret to anyone that Google, the owner of the worlds largest web advertising platform, has been collecting data from users this whole time.
- sp332 6y agoYes, officially almost three years ago. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393 https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
- Crash0v3rid3 6y agoWhat a terrible article. Look at what the last paragraph says despite the title: The updated version of Google’s code of conduct still retains one reference to the company’s unofficial motto—the final line of the document is still: “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!”
- BalinKing 6y agoI feel terribly misled—for several years now, I thought they removed "don't be evil" entirely (apparently, courtesy of overhyped news headlines and whatnot). Obviously it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things (I don't suddenly trust Google a whole lot more), but it feels bad to have both believed and passed on misinformation. (And, yeah, it's also my fault for not having checked primary sources at the time.)
- sp332 6y agoI just searched around and picked one near the top of the results. Lots of similar reporting at the time.
- andor 6y agoThe real question is how much data is collected from users who have "Web and App Activity" sharing turned off.
- tialaramex 6y agoWhat do we suppose this picture is actually comparing? I think these are self-assessments, and crowing that you've assessed yourself as not having problems is not a very reliable sign that you don't have any problems.
- gowld 6y agoWhen has Google not revealed the data Chrome collects?
- whoopdedo 6y agoWhat part of those vague descriptions covers Google's practice of reading messages sent to a GMail address that are purchase receipts and adding it to a list of places you've shopped at?
- Wohlf 6y agoThat's not a function of Chrome, that's a function of Gmail.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y agoWhy use DDG when you can use Bing directly?
- freeflight 6y agoBecause DDG has bangs [0] [0] https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
- fsflover 6y agoCompare their privacy policies. Otherwise you are right and it's better to use https://yacy.net https://yacy.net and SearX.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago1) I use VPN anyway, so Bing doesn't know who I am. 2) Bing belongs to Microsoft whose primary business is to sell software, not ads, so they are less dependent on collecting user information. 3) If I wanted a search aggregator, I would use a non-US company, for example, Qwant.
- fsflover 6y ago> Microsoft whose primary business is to sell software, not ads, so they are less dependent on collecting user information. If it was true they would not collect every keystroke on their OS.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y agoYeah, and Bill Gates installs mind controlling chips via vaccines
- karinakarina 6y ago1) VPNs only hide your IP address. They don't make you anonymous. Search engines and websites can still track you. 2) If it's non-private, it still collects personal data. 3) Or Startpage - HQed in the Netherlands, hides IP address, Anonymous View feature lets you visit results in private, and Google results.
- shadowgovt 6y agoIs there more context for this? I'm seeing an infographic sourced to "Apple App Store as of March 2021," but I don't own an iPhone so I don't know where this information comes from. Are these boxes permissions declared by the app, data collection as detected by some heuristic at Apple, or what?
- RickS 6y ago> Are these boxes permissions declared by the app Pretty much. My understanding is that they're self-reported (as opposed to inferred from eg SDK/API usage), but I haven't looked into it super deeply. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600998/apples-privacy-nutrition-labels-available-now-and-good-for-business.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600998/apples-privacy...
- Hani1337 6y agoMy biggest privacy concern with Google is how search result URLs contain user identifiers.
- yourad_io 6y agoDo you have an example of this?
- lmkg 6y agoWhen Google Ads is linked to Google Analytics, the links append the 'gclid' query parameter to the URL they point to. This value is how a downstream conversion, collected by Analytics, is associated with the upstream ad click from Google Ads. The 'gclid' parameter is unique to the ad impression, i.e. it's a join key to both the term that was searched, and the user who searched for it.
- jefftk 6y agogclid is appended to ad clicks, but not organic search: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9744275 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9744275 (Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)
- Hani1337 6y agoFrom mobile browser it can also tell the phone firmware and brand
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raspasov 6y agoI use Safari. It's the best browser for Mac.
- ur-whale 6y ago> I use Safari. So, instead of handing all of your info to Google, you hand it over to Apple. Nothing to write home about.
- raspasov 6y agoWhat do you use? PS Also, I'd rather share *some* data with a company that proactively (1,2) teaches users how to minimize data sharing and is moving to an opt-in model rather than opt-out. I realize that this is a marketing strategy also. But at least it's not disingenuous. (1) https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/A_Day_in_the_Life_of_Your_Data.pdf https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/A_Day_in_the_Life_of_Your... (2) https://www.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_White_Paper_Nov_2019.pdf https://www.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_White_Paper_Nov_201...
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoWhat major tech company monitors you less than Apple? Microsoft? We live in an era where you can be a tinfoil hat closed off out of touch Linux user or just deal with it. Nobody likes it so you're not special for touting an obviously majority opinion. But the utility it brings to connect people makes most forget and not care.
- Crazyontap 6y agoI guess the majority of people on HN already know this more or less. The problem is still this: We still don't have good alternatives to Google's products and services. 1) Android: Google still owns all our phones. Even on rooted phones it hard to remove google services that god know send so many requests containing whatnot to the eeee addresses. Just install no-root firewall and you will be amazed the amount of pending requests that accumulate in 1 hour. 2) Google search: I guess I can manage with DDG but when it's not that straight forward search, subconciosuly I'm still thinking that let's just do a quick google search to see if i'm not missing anything. And often I find better results. While adblocks makes sure I filter most of the crap. 3) Gmail: Yes there are alternatives but switching emails is hard. It's a big commitment for most people to switch a 10 year old gmail address. And it still works great at filtering spam and whatnot. And same for maps, youtube and all their services.They really have a big leverage on everyone. Quiting facebook and instagram was child's play in comparison. I haven't logged in for almost an year now. Quitting google is really hard otoh.
- martincmartin 6y agoGoogle Maps has the wrong street names near me, so I looked for something from OpenStreetMap. But there's nothing that works with Android Auto. In fact, there are only two Android Auto navigation apps, Google Maps and Waze. Both owned by Google, and Waze seems happy to send me through the most confusing intersections if it thinks it will save 5 seconds of driving time.
- valiant55 6y agoI've submitted multiple corrections to Google Maps and all of them eventually were fixed. I even got a same day response one time, with the longest taking about 3 weeks. I haven't made any corrections recently. Have you attempted to submit feedback on the Maps site?
- seaman1921 6y ago+1 ... rather than complaining about it, leverage the editing functionality provided in there to make the maps better for everyone.
- obviouslynotme 6y agoI am going to make the real controversial opinion: Who is surprised here? Google makes money by spying on people. Everything they make is designed to make money. Search history gathers what you are interested in. Android and Chrome vacuum your physical data and more. YouTube both gathers your interests and might become a serious advertising platform someday. Gmail vacuums up what Android messaging misses. Google Ads, Fonts, and Analytics catch anyone who isn't using Chrome with the help of webmasters. Every major Google product is designed around one purpose: knowing everything about you. I have used Firefox for years and years because this is obvious to me. Google shuts down divisions that make a lot of money all the time. Yet somehow, they are just spending ungodly amounts of money on all this "free stuff." Please. I don't care if you watch a 30 minute YouTube video on how to set all of your Google settings in just the right way for them to graciously not upload live video of your face. Two patches later you have to do it again. This is all while trusting this highly sketchy company to honor its settings. It's like trying to set the perfect contract with a demon or wish for a monkey paw. The real way to win is to not do it.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoWhy does it matter who is surprised?
- obviouslynotme 6y agoBecause it won't change. Everyone here knows what Google is and I will bet you that over 90% of HN unique users come from a Chrome browser. It will only get worse. Google always steps on everyone when it dominates a market. Gmail marked your private email server as spam by mistake? Good luck even finding someone to care. Chrome is at this very moment disabling the HTTP2 standard push feature, essentially asserting Chrome as the real standards body. This is what all of us chose. Without some regulatory body stepping in, privacy will never come back. Even then, that regulatory body will probably be completely staffed by Googlers, since they are experts in Internet privacy.
- karinakarina 6y ago
- geocrasher 6y agoThere was not anything in that list that I wasn't already aware of. I was expecting some kind of smoking gun that caused me to say "Aha! THAT is how I know Google is EVIL!" and it was never there. Half the things are opt in, the other half are disclosed if you read the TOS/AUP at all or even just think about why they don't charge for basic services. So yawn whatever.
- arsome 6y agoThis is cool and I'm glad to see Apple reporting on it - but do they offer you a way to simply bypass it and achieve better privacy without breaking things? Like send fake location data, randomize a device ID per app, etc. XPrivacy did this quite nicely on Android and I'd love to see something similar on iOS.
- zepto 6y agoYes. You can’t stop Google doing geoip, but you can stop iOS providing GPS to Google. Device id’s can indeed be switched off.
- jasonvorhe 6y agoA company that purchases data from another search engine (that most likely also uses aggregated personal data to deliver results) with just two products (search + browser) compares its app data usage to a behemoth that strives for the most personalized experience possible in exchange for personal data in order to display personalized ads. Google's apps offer opt-in voice search (solving Audio), optional end to end encryption for bookmarks & search history (solving Browsing History), while location and diagnostics are opt in as well and it's also up to you if you want to store your address book of store you credit card with Google (solving Contacts & Financial Info). Yes, most people will probably use Google Contacts, Maps, unencrypted bookmarks & browsing history and and store their credit card data in the browser, but you're not forced to do that. I really wish DDG would innovate on search, improve their own crawlers & indexing and then attack Google head on by comparing better results with the ad-ridden, SEO-flooded shit show that Google results have become. Instead, their marketing keeps on comparing apples to oranges and just keeps on playing the privacy angle, which is intellectually dishonest because DDG and Google have completely different goals. Boy do I hope for some real competition in the search engine market. Brave and Neeva can't launch soon enough. I'm so sick and tired of giving DDG changes upon changes only to switch back to Google because the results haven't improved much.
- Seirdy 6y ago> I really wish DDG would innovate on search, improve their own crawlers & indexing and then attack Google head on by comparing better results with the ad-ridden, SEO-flooded shit show that Google results have become. DuckDuckGo's organic results are proxied from Bing (or sometimes Yandex). Their crawler (DuckDuckBot) just fetches favicons and scrapes data for a few Instant Answers. Most of DuckDuckGo's non-privacy-related selling points are their instant answers, which in my experience are really good. Alternative indexing engines to the "Big Three" English indexers (Google, Bing, Yandex) with decent privacy include Mojeek, Right Dao, Gigablast, Gowiki, wbsrch, and others. I've counted 16 English alternatives in all.
- lixquid 6y ago> Most of DuckDuckGo's non-privacy-related selling points are their instant answers, which in my experience are really good. And yet has no undeprecated pipeline for submitting non-"essential bug fixes" to[1]. I really love the idea of having an engine that does just a little bit more for me up front, but not if it's all closed off; that's what I'm trying to get away from. [1]: https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/
- cmelbye 6y agoWhere can I find Safari's privacy nutrition facts?
- intellirogue 6y agohttps://www.apple.com/privacy/labels/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/labels/
- izgzhen 6y agoDDG will still have a hard time competing with Google in both search quality and revenue even if only keyword-based ads is allowed and used in future. Privacy is a nice feature to have, but not sufficient.
- karinakarina 6y agoOkay maybe it won't overtake the tech giant but what about just providing a private choice? And what about Startpage? 1. Startpage provides Google results while protecting privacy. 2. So far, contextual marketing has been profitable for both Startpage and DDG. It's not Google level revenue, but interest in private search is growing significantly.
- asjkaehauisa 6y agoAll is about threat model. I really would love to switch to firefox but afaik it's less secure. So who would hurt me more, so random dude or corporation? My choice is simple. It's the same with all messengers. I use facebook messenger (because everybody around me use it) and i know that they collect a lot of data (and have acess to my chats). For me, still threat isn't facebook but my acquaintances who use weak password, so they're easy target (and my messages would be compromised). We have to change our mind about computers. Everything can be exploited and used against us.
- SimeVidas 6y ago> I really would love to switch to firefox but afaik it's less secure. Afaik it’s more secure. Personally, I’ve enabled DNS-over-HTTPS and HTTPS-only mode, which are both available as standard options in Firefox. There are more security options on the about:config page. Of course, there’s also Enhanced Tracking Protection, which is enabled by default. It’s more of a privacy feature, but it has a positive effect on security as well..
- lights0123 6y ago> afaik it's less secure Firefox doesn't have a Spectre vulnerability that allows websites to read crossorigin images, videos, and JS that won't be fixed for another month or 2 :)
- varispeed 6y agoAre they not violating GDPR because of that? Surely they don't need to know most of that data to process search queries? Or it is a classic example of trying to bypass regulation by creating the fake need for this data in their T&C. Another question is that why regulators don't look into that? If I search for "Pythagorean formula", do they need my address for that? I think the business model like Google should be outlawed (and I believe it already is illegal in the EU) and it should not be possible to pay for a service with your personal data. Yes, I get the argument that if services become paid, then a lot of people won't be able to afford the subscriptions, but we could have a law that email operators should provide basic email service for free, just like banks have to provide basic bank accounts free of charge.
- loosetypes 6y agoDDG: compared to Google, yes. How does the duckduckgo mobile browser compare to safari on iOS with regards to privacy though?
- pvaldes 6y agoIn the last weeks I had seen a phone repeating the entered password in a clear voice (after a "security update" none less), and other showing in google maps the exact point where a home video has been recorded while playing the video.
- paxys 6y agoWhy is stuff like saving browsing history, doing voice search or autofilling credit cards suddenly a bad thing? Chrome lets you turn all of that off in a single click if you want. I have personally found most of the features on that list to greatly enhance my web experience.
- emmelaich 6y agoSame! I'd like critics to point out the downsides of Google not having this information too. For me, the Google search is sometimes magical. Way better than any other.
- koheripbal 6y agoIf the data stayed local, I would agree with you. ...but the issue is that they upload it and merge it into a profile of you that they keep, sell to 3rd parties, and is available to governments to inspect.
- fragile_frogs 6y agoI would get pretty mad if chrome wouldn't autofill my credit card information
- hallqv 6y agoPlease tell me why this kind of data collection is harmful for the average user? I love data collection, it makes the web sing!