3 ms·

I recently looked at the changes they make to the default preferences and so many are nothing to do with privacy, and some of those that are also reduce the use

I recently looked at the changes they make to the default preferences and so many are nothing to do with privacy, and some of those that are also reduce the user's safety (e.g. disabling Google Safebrowsing). I'd advise any prospective users to comb over the changes very carefully before using it.

bityard 5y ago
There are those of us who would choose privacy over safety every time...
GhettoComputers 5y ago
How does google safe browsing make me safer? It’s just sending all my network data to google for them to tell me if it’s safe or not. If you don’t see the issue with sending every website you use to google for them to tell you if it’s safe I don’t know what to tell you. Sending your browsing history to a database has everything to do with privacy.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  It's not even the privacy aspect alone. There have been repeated cases of absolutely legit, not even controversial sites landing on blacklists, for reasons of technical errors maintaining those, or some jurisdictions DMCAing some other site(s), hosted behind the same IP-range in the same data-center. Boom. Suddenly the site is gone, or at least you have to click around endless warnings about impending doom if you proceed. For nothing. This is the same shit like antivirus ware on Windows. Utter non-sense. Meanwhile, for instance on often visited sites(like weather), the Ads happily delivering malicious payloads. This also happened many times, but can't blacklist large sites for delivering malware, can we? Would cost too much ad-value. No-Go!
  - kaba0 5y ago
    How often does a non-controversial site gets added to it vs the genuine threats/phishing websites it protects grannies from? I think it has an absolutely good tradeoff based on the relative percentages of the former categories.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      I'd have to consult lists, since I disabled those features almost as soon as they were becoming common. So about 10 years ago. With the exception of a Windows7 installation which I had to use occassionally. There I disabled that later, out of curiosity, until it grew too annoying. And of course, when being elsewhere, wanting to show some people some sites(not porn, gaming, just self hosted bloggers or forums) again and again. And I've been like wtf, what am I doing wrong, where did I make a typo, or am I remembering the sitename wrong? Nope. Everything all right. Just not the blacklisting. And this also happened with FF running under Linux. Why are you all so apt to accept being conditioned into learned helplessness?
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I also will not send my URLs to google for them to tell me if its safe or not. I do use hosts on my router for ads and to block malicious sites, but its all local files rather than phoning google with my browsing history.
  - proactivesvcs 5y ago
    I came across a very annoying case of it blocking seclists.org for a few months but it eventually cleared up. Despite this, I still advocate for it. If one day it does start seeming to act maliciously I can simply push a button and it's switched off. Until then it provides a real benefit to security because a whole lot of nasty sites are blacklisted using the service. If you think it's for nothing then perhaps it's worth looking into how the service works and how successful it is.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Your's may be a valid point of view. But mine is too. Because I didn't pull that shit out of thin air, instead having experienced it, and came to the conclusion that it IS indeed the same shit. At the end of the day. All those 'swimmies' and life-savers are ball and chain to me, dragging me down. Learn to surf, row, swim, dive, whatever!
- proactivesvcs 5y ago
  I suggest you look up how Google Safebrowsing works; it's not how you may think. I'm pretty anti-Google and I leave this feature switched on because I believe the trade-offs are worthwhile.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    >Google maintains the Safe Browsing Lookup API, which has a privacy drawback: "The URLs to be looked up are not hashed so the server knows which URLs the API users have looked up". The Safe Browsing Update API, on the other hand, compares 32-bit hash prefixes of the URL to preserve privacy. The Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers use the latter. >Safe Browsing also stores a mandatory preferences cookie on the computer. >Google Safe Browsing "conducts client-side checks. If a website looks suspicious, it sends a subset of likely phishing and social engineering terms found on the page to Google to obtain additional information available from Google's servers on whether the website should be considered malicious". Logs, "including an IP address and one or more cookies" are kept for two weeks. They are "tied to the other Safe Browsing requests made from the same device." Looks like it works exactly like I thought it did and is not useful to me and a privacy concern.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      > The Safe Browsing Update API, on the other hand, compares 32-bit hash prefixes of the URL to preserve privacy. The Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers use the latter. How exactly?
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        The rest of it. >Safe Browsing also stores a mandatory preferences cookie on the computer. >Google Safe Browsing "conducts client-side checks. If a website looks suspicious, it sends a subset of likely phishing and social engineering terms found on the page to Google to obtain additional information available from Google's servers on whether the website should be considered malicious". Logs, "including an IP address and one or more cookies" are kept for two weeks. They are "tied to the other Safe Browsing requests made from the same device."

bityard 5y ago

There are those of us who would choose privacy over safety every time...

GhettoComputers 5y ago

How does google safe browsing make me safer? It’s just sending all my network data to google for them to tell me if it’s safe or not. If you don’t see the issue with sending every website you use to google for them to tell you if it’s safe I don’t know what to tell you. Sending your browsing history to a database has everything to do with privacy.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
It's not even the privacy aspect alone. There have been repeated cases of absolutely legit, not even controversial sites landing on blacklists, for reasons of technical errors maintaining those, or some jurisdictions DMCAing some other site(s), hosted behind the same IP-range in the same data-center. Boom. Suddenly the site is gone, or at least you have to click around endless warnings about impending doom if you proceed. For nothing. This is the same shit like antivirus ware on Windows. Utter non-sense. Meanwhile, for instance on often visited sites(like weather), the Ads happily delivering malicious payloads. This also happened many times, but can't blacklist large sites for delivering malware, can we? Would cost too much ad-value. No-Go!
- kaba0 5y ago
  How often does a non-controversial site gets added to it vs the genuine threats/phishing websites it protects grannies from? I think it has an absolutely good tradeoff based on the relative percentages of the former categories.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    I'd have to consult lists, since I disabled those features almost as soon as they were becoming common. So about 10 years ago. With the exception of a Windows7 installation which I had to use occassionally. There I disabled that later, out of curiosity, until it grew too annoying. And of course, when being elsewhere, wanting to show some people some sites(not porn, gaming, just self hosted bloggers or forums) again and again. And I've been like wtf, what am I doing wrong, where did I make a typo, or am I remembering the sitename wrong? Nope. Everything all right. Just not the blacklisting. And this also happened with FF running under Linux. Why are you all so apt to accept being conditioned into learned helplessness?
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      I also will not send my URLs to google for them to tell me if its safe or not. I do use hosts on my router for ads and to block malicious sites, but its all local files rather than phoning google with my browsing history.
- proactivesvcs 5y ago
  I came across a very annoying case of it blocking seclists.org for a few months but it eventually cleared up. Despite this, I still advocate for it. If one day it does start seeming to act maliciously I can simply push a button and it's switched off. Until then it provides a real benefit to security because a whole lot of nasty sites are blacklisted using the service. If you think it's for nothing then perhaps it's worth looking into how the service works and how successful it is.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Your's may be a valid point of view. But mine is too. Because I didn't pull that shit out of thin air, instead having experienced it, and came to the conclusion that it IS indeed the same shit. At the end of the day. All those 'swimmies' and life-savers are ball and chain to me, dragging me down. Learn to surf, row, swim, dive, whatever!
proactivesvcs 5y ago
I suggest you look up how Google Safebrowsing works; it's not how you may think. I'm pretty anti-Google and I leave this feature switched on because I believe the trade-offs are worthwhile.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  >Google maintains the Safe Browsing Lookup API, which has a privacy drawback: "The URLs to be looked up are not hashed so the server knows which URLs the API users have looked up". The Safe Browsing Update API, on the other hand, compares 32-bit hash prefixes of the URL to preserve privacy. The Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers use the latter. >Safe Browsing also stores a mandatory preferences cookie on the computer. >Google Safe Browsing "conducts client-side checks. If a website looks suspicious, it sends a subset of likely phishing and social engineering terms found on the page to Google to obtain additional information available from Google's servers on whether the website should be considered malicious". Logs, "including an IP address and one or more cookies" are kept for two weeks. They are "tied to the other Safe Browsing requests made from the same device." Looks like it works exactly like I thought it did and is not useful to me and a privacy concern.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    > The Safe Browsing Update API, on the other hand, compares 32-bit hash prefixes of the URL to preserve privacy. The Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers use the latter. How exactly?
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      The rest of it. >Safe Browsing also stores a mandatory preferences cookie on the computer. >Google Safe Browsing "conducts client-side checks. If a website looks suspicious, it sends a subset of likely phishing and social engineering terms found on the page to Google to obtain additional information available from Google's servers on whether the website should be considered malicious". Logs, "including an IP address and one or more cookies" are kept for two weeks. They are "tied to the other Safe Browsing requests made from the same device."