this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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What's going on with major changes to privacy on Chrome? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world to c/outoftheloop@lemmy.world
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What changes are they making, and how to prevent them affecting users?

Also, does Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, or a VPN with ad-blocking and anti-tracking prevent the new data collection through Chrome?

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[–] RagnarokOnline@reddthat.com 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

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!

[–] dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Cool comment except for this part:

The fear is likely overblown, though.

[–] NicoCharrua@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

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.

(...) 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.

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.

What can you do to protect yourself? Don't use Google products or Chromium-based web browsers.

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.

[–] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] Dlayknee@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Don't use Google products or Chromium-based web browsers.

So... Firefox? Are there even any other viable alternatives?

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Safari?

[–] dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 6 points 1 year ago

Even though Vivaldi is Chromium-based, they already released a blog post in which they announced that they will disable the Topics API.

[–] chris@l.roofo.cc 20 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

enables websites to use Google’s new “Topics API” to view web addresses in your browser history

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

[–] mathemachristian@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] maporita@unilem.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But it is optional ... why not just turn it off?

[–] Blizzard@lemmy.zip 21 points 1 year ago

How long do you think it'll stay optional?

[–] BanditMcDougal@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which includes the Steam client. It's a CEF-based application.

[–] federalreverse@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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, ...

[–] Krotiuz@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Theres a general browser in the in game overlay

[–] Zikeji@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago

So right now when browsing the internet if you take no steps to protect your privacy, it's like your house is surrounded by corporate spies collecting data on everything they can see you doing through the windows. And these are some huge windows.

Taking steps like adblocking, blocking known trackers, blocking third party cookies, VPN, and / or, blocking JavaScript altogether is basically just closing / blocking those windows to make it harder for the spies. Sure, they can still glean some info but significantly less.

With Chrome's recent change, now you've been opted-in to having a tracker strapped to your chest. They promise the data is less exposing than the current data being collected, but that can change They claim it'll protect your privacy because instead of the spies collecting data directly to provide to their employers they simply have to walk up to a terminal and collect the data the chest tracker has collected and curated.

This is just my interpretation, I haven't thoroughly researched it I simply decided it was too much and moved back to Firefox as my primary browser after using Chrome for over a decade.