How To Turn Off Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” Ad Tracking—and Why You Should
How To Turn Off Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” Ad Tracking—and Why You Should
Google did it again.
Laughs in Firefox
After dragging my feet for years I finally moved back to Firefox a few weeks ago. Sure, there's a few features I miss from Chrome/Edge (vertical tabs, PWA support, tab groups, etc.) but I was able to 'fix' many issues with extensions and a custom userchrome.css, and trust is ultimately more important to me.
I'm thankful there are still free, open, privacy respecting options out there.
There are Tab Groups add-ons for Firefox. I’m sure there might be vertical tab add-ons, too.
As someone who never went to Chrome, I’m just sitting here trying not to be all “I told you so!” from when Chrome started to really take off a decade ago.
You can also edit the userChrome.css file to get rid of the top tabs.
Step 1. Uninstall Chrome why are you still running it? Stop giving Google power over the internet. Just stop. Uninstall it. Use Firefox, Brave if you must. Just ditch Chrome.
Step 2. See above. Just flipping stop. No, don't install another browser and keep chrome. Just DITCH CHROME. TOTALLY. If you need a backup use Edge or Brave or Firefox. STOP GIVING GOOGLE POWER OVER THE INTERNET.
Unfortunately, it's not like it would realistically change the monopoly Google has over the internet. The greatest financial backer of Mozilla is Alphabet and if Firefox starts to gain too much traction, they will simply axe Mozilla and unless they manage to get another backer fast, Alphabet will have THE monopoly over the Internet.
Don't get me wrong, I'm doing my part and using Firefox (when it doesn't constantly crash), but Alphabet's holding way too many strings currently for any change to happen.
My understanding is that Google pays Firefox to use Google as the default search engine, which they also pay Apple for the same, so it's a win-win situation and unlikely Google would ever do such (especially since Chrome is already the dominant browser for user base)
To stop supporting Firefox would be begging for antitrust investigation (if not in the US then in the EU). Plus Mozilla would probably find another sponsor so all they'd be doing is draw attention to themselves. If it were a large piece of the marketshare at stake I could see it but Firefox is currently at 3-5% (depending on who you ask) so it's not even worth the aggravation.
I wouldn't use Edge, if you're on Lemmy, use Firefox. Cmon, if you're technically literate you can figure it out. Everybody else, use Brave. It's the least worse normie browser.
They forgot to add "Switch to Firefox" at the end of the title
I read this article from top to bottom and didn't find a clear explanation of why you should disable this feature.
Because it doesn't protect your privacy (Google still tracks everything), but it gives Google an even stronger monopoly to make taking other actions to protect your privacy less viable.
The end game is still their web DRM pretending to be "security" to make it impossible for you to choose how a page is displayed to you.
Google doesn't track everything. The browser determines your interests locally; the only information shared with Google (and advertisers) is which broad topics you've recently shown an interest in.
It’s an underhanded way of implementing a browser supported foolproof adblock detector. Even its stated goal of “give advertisers a unified, browser backed, ‘private’ way of tracking you for advertising” isn’t especially appealing or useful when you get something better than that from adblock anyway. Turning it off will be reflected in telemetry sites gather about feature availability and hopefully low adoption numbers discourage them from taking advantage of this “feature”.
Hmm, not having read up on the tech, what's stopping someone from making a Firefox plugin that just spoofs fake data back? It's all done client side if I'm understanding, so everything necessary to do so must be available. Only wrinkle I could see is if they have signing and ship the cert with Chrome and regularly rotate it. It's still not impossible in that case, just more annoying.
Because spying on you is bad. They mention the privacy implications in the article.
Gawd Google really is just a despicable company
Never seen it before. I'll give it a better read when I'm not so busy in a bit (taking a shit right now ;)
Instead, text the boss: this is gonna be a looong shit.
I hadn't seen it but am aware enough that it didn't reach me a whole lot. But still.
Damn.
I haven't seen it yet. Thanks for sharing.
Let me guess ... every new update reverts Chrome back to default settings
Chrome feels like it's updated every week
It's a browser. They have been getting weekly updates for like a decade now.
Updates generally don't require settings resets. It can happen if there's major changes but that's the exception, not the norm. If Chrome updates revert settings to default with any degree of regularity (I actually don't know if they do, I haven't really touched Chrome in ten? years) that's either gross incompetence or sheer malice.
Chrome updates itself about once every five - six days on my system
Firefox updates once about every two weeks and often just once a month.
Everytime I run a manual update, Chrome is always on the list.
Oh man! Time to give Google a damn good show of a morbidly obese balding 40 something world of warcraft guy beating it heavily to lesbian futanari furry content staring into the camera as he gets busy!
Google wanted this to happen, so why not give those suckers the VIP First Class treatment?
Anybody else think of things that'll make those Google folk writhe in visual and audial agony and cut the privacy invasion act?
Orrrr.... don't use Google Chrome.
Agreed. I never understood why anyone goes out of their way to install Chrome.
Rant:
Why not use Edge, which comes with the OS? I'm not promoting Edge, but it's already there. If you're going to install another browser, why not use Firefox instead? Every time I ask someone why they've installed Chrome, they either don't have an answer or say something like "it looks nice".
That said, Firefox' handling of tabs is still horrible. "Go Vivaldi" on this count. Sadly it's a Chromium browser.
How does Firefox fail you at tabs? I've always been happy with it, I sandbox my FB and Google social stuff, Save groups for opening at once, share tabs across devices, I don't want for anything.
Idk what people have about chromium tabs. Firefox does tabs just fine.
Also, edge does not come with most os, just w*ndows
lol
Not with any of my OSes.
Inertia. For years: IE sucked and Mozilla was painfully slow and missing features. I know it’s been quite a few years since that was a thing, but people don’t like to change, so I really think it’s still leftover behavior.
Or at least it is for me, but I’m mostly in the Apple ecosystem now, so it’s not as relevant
Using edge is probably a bigger offense than using chrome.
My computer doesn't come with edge
Yes unfortunately I've found chromium is just much better than Firefox when it comes to tabs. It's at least a step removed from Chrome.
Chrome was pretty good and somewhat faster than FF for a while in the oughts. At least it felt that way, and Google didn't seem so evil at the time. My guess is people go with chrome out of inertia
I go out of my way to purge Edge from Windows every time it works it's way back in no matter what registry edits I have to make, what Windows "features" it breaks or whatever script I have to write.
Edge is like having a roommate constantly hitting on you and occasionally withholding things from you when you reject them and you're basically over here going "They're already living with you, why not go with them instead of hooking up with someone from outside"
Chrome is ethically questionable admittedly at best, but Edge is straight up cancer.
I started using Chrome instead of IE11, which was crap for standards, and before Edge was a thing. When Edge came along, I got really ticked off by the constant nagging to use it, which made me hate it without even trying it. I will probably carry on with Chrome for now, whist I can still turn off all the ad tracking stuff.
Chromium is the open source project, it doesn't contain any of the Google Chrome specific changes.
Unfortunately, on Android, Chromium based browsers are SIGNIFICANTLY more secure than any other browser framework. I recommend Mulch and Cromite.
Again, this is ANDROID specific. Everywhere else, I use FF based browsers.
You can't just say that FF on Android is less secure and not give any sources for that claim.
I mean, you can, but that makes your claim not have any value.
Mobile FF on Android is just fine.
Are there issues with FF on android?
I'm having problems finding unpatched vulnerabilities on Android ff, could you expand on what makes it less secure?