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What's going on with major changes to privacy on Chrome?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Google is rolling out a new feature called “Privacy Sandbox” that also enables websites to use Google’s new “Topics API” to view web addresses in your browser history.
People are generally concerned because it allows a site like Petsmart.com to learn that you bank at WellsFargo.com and that you also visit Nickelodeon.com frequently. Petsmart may then use this information to target ads at you.
The larger concern is that just about any website can learn this information (so not just Petsmart.com, but SouthernRecipeMamaOfFour.net can also get this information, which is excessive access for a site like that to say the least). The fear is likely overblown, though.
What can you do to protect yourself? Don’t use Google products or Chromium-based web browsers.
Edit: Looks like my understanding was off. Shout out to NicoCharrua and a couple other users who clarified that Topics API doesn’t expose URLs, but instead looks at the URLs in your history to create topics (kind of like tags) that other sites can see. Hope my potential employer doesn’t find out about my love of large ethnic butts!
Cool comment except for this part:
The fear is sometimes overblown, though. It's awful for privacy, but it gets exaggerated a lot of the time, even in the comment you're replying to.
This isn't true. Websites only see some of the topics you visit, so in this example maybe Banking (or something a little more specific like savings account), and comics and animation. Here is the list of topics.
It's a good idea to stop using Google products and Chromium based web browsers, but you don't have to if you want to avoid Topics API. You can opt out of it (at least for now), and some chromium browsers like Vivaldi, Brave and Ungoogled Chromium will probably remove it from their browsers.
Imo the biggest problem with it (over other types of tracking), is that like RagnarokOnline said, any website can get the info, not just the advertisers. So say, the company you're working for could be told you're interested in Job Listings, or Retirement & Pension.
I would say, if anything, the fear is likely under-blown.
Sure, you’ll find many users here on Lemmy who hate what Google are doing… but we’re not the typical internet user. I mean, we specifically found this niche platform called Lemmy rather than use one of the mainstream social media platforms. The typical “normie” who uses Chrome probably has no idea about the privacy risks of using it (either in its current form or when the Topics API is being used). We need to help others understand, and hopefully convince these people to move over to Firefox.
So... Firefox? Are there even any other viable alternatives?
Safari?
IIRC safari is chromium based too.
No, Safaris engine is called WebKit. It's different, but they're related:
Once upon a time there was KHTML. Apple forked it to make WebKit. At some point Google forked WebKit to make Chromium. So now WebKit and Chromium development has diverged from each other over the years.
Anyway, use Firefox :)
Firefox is made by a non-profit for the purpose of making a web browser, it's not made by a giant corporation for the purpose of pushing ads.
You did not remember correctly.
Even though Vivaldi is Chromium-based, they already released a blog post in which they announced that they will disable the Topics API.
I don't think that is quite right. As far as I understand it the new feature generates topics from your browser history that website can use for targeted ads. So if you visit banking websites it might add to the finance topic. I don't think Websites get access to the history. Still it is a shitty idea and please use Firefox.
That's just false. It generates generic topics from domain names in the history and provides some of those topics to advertisers. Nobody gets to know which domains you've visited. It also has measures to make it hard to build a profile on you based on the provided topics.
Any kind of tracking is bad. You don't have to misrepresent what kind of tracking it is
To add to that, its not just about targeted advertising, but a concern is also what happens to data when (not if) leaks happen and targeted pricing. If someone has frequently visited Nickelodeon.com it could be that they have kids who are already applying pressure to purchase a hamster or bird and therefore the parent is likely to have a higher price tolerance for such a product than a childless person.
But it is optional ... why not just turn it off?
How long do you think it'll stay optional?
Which includes the Steam client. It's a CEF-based application.
Electron apps are largely irrelevant in this discussion, unless they include a general-purpose browser. The Steam client is exclusively used to display things from some Valve-owned API domain (or is there a general-purpose browser somewhere in there?). All the data generated by Steam is completely separate from the data generated by the normal Chrome browser.
And the same thing goes for Electron apps like Signal Desktop, Atom, VS Code, Slack, Teams, ...
Theres a general browser in the in game overlay