- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Google enables advertisers a look into your browsing history…
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Firefox
I’m glad I stopped using chrome / chromium a long time ago.
What do you use?
firefox based browsers, ublock, and I avoid using google accounts.
What other Firefox-based browsers do you use besides Firefox?
Firefox-based browsers
probably meant Gecko browsers (Firefox use Gecko rendering engine). Other browsers that use this is like Pale Moon, K-Meleon, and Waterfox
That’s what I thought. I’m still curious about which ones OP uses…
I just use one browser actually, Floorp. What I like about it it’s the ‘Profiles’ feature, before Floorp I used Firefox, Librewolf, etc.
With Floorp I can just create another profile that it’s like another browser. It’s probably the best Firefox based browser but it’s not very known.
But you can already do this with Firefox.
Unless Floorp makes it easier? (Because on Firefox you have to bring the about:profiles tab first.)
I could not find it on Firefox without the: “about:profiles” that you mentioned, probably it’s not easy to find, it’s the first time I see it on Firefox. In Floorp is: Settings -> Profiles -> -Create, switch, config…
It should always be opt in, not opt out. Leave chrome in favor of a non-chrome browser, such as firefox.
Try librewolf , its just hardened FF
It’s opt in, just not in America
It’s crazy to think that this level of intrusion is considered fair game. The way these behaviors are normalized is completely dystopian.
It’s absolutely insane that this is legal. This type of spying is explicitly forbidden in the constitution of the United States of America, but since it’s a private corporation it’s suddenly okay? The FBI has been known to purchase information about consumers from private corporations. This is a back door around the 4th amendment. Actually since corporations are essentially governing by proxy, buying laws and legislatures, this is a constitutional violation.
Incremental changes have muffled the impact to most consumers sadly and as long as that works they’ll keep doing it.
They already did this with Youtube. I turned of Youtube history because I didn’t want anyone being able to track what I watch. All of a sudden, Youtube’s home page for my account was blank with a message that said “Turn on history if you want to see recommendations”. I sat with that for a couple days, going to Youtube to check out channels I’d subscribed to. It wasn’t the same. When I got to Youtube for some distraction, I want to discover something different from my usual stuff. So I delete my history weekly as part of “routine maintainence”.
That deletion strategy is useless. They can still retain that information indefinitely.
Just use the search bar.
And yet Firefox marketshare will keep dwindling. Drives me mad!
it’s crazy how many people just use whatever is most popular and never question it. the number of people who don’t use even a basic adblocker is mind-blowing.
People usually don’t respond well with threats they don’t perceive as harmful, or can’t perceive physically at all. Targeted ads and privacy in general is abstract to many people, and the only time they’ll start responding is if their emails or social medias get hacked due to their infos being sold on the dark web or something like that.
It’s actually impressive how bad they are when it comes to promoting themselves and market themselves as a viable alternative. One could genuinely think they do it on purpose almost
How could they improve?
crypto! /s
Targeted ads. Promotional campains to make people more aware of Firefox/why it’s better. Be more present online (instead of passively depending on the userbase). Take inputs from the community and actually doing something with them rather than saying “k” and then doing nothing. Those are just some off the top of my head.Edit: as pointed out by a kind user, targeted ads was a poor choice of words. I explained myself better below in the comments
Targeted ads.
I agree with everything you said except for the targeted ads part. It would be wildly hypocritical of them to do this.
Very fair point. My bad, I expressed myself poorly. What I meant with ‘targeted ads’ was to show ads not on the browser itself but to people who might be more easily convinced to use Firefox. For example, there’s a huge amount of viewers on YouTube that are tech-oriented. Nobody is stopping Firefox from sponsoring creators, videos or even collaborating with them.
Seems like a waste of money.
If people want to use garbage, let them. It’s not like telling them firefox is better is going to change anything.
Part of Mozilla’s funding comes from Google. I adore their browser and other software however the corporate itself has a questionable history as it is with many corporates usually anyway.
It’s disgusting. Users browser history is private, just like their search history. Fuck Google.
Exactly. If Google wants to collect user data and use it for their products, they should be paying users. You can’t build and sell cars without paying for the nuts and bolts, yet Google has been taking their materials for free.
Not for free, for a browser. This doesn’t make it any less evil.
That’s not the deal though. It’s not an exchange of data for the use of the product, like you would exchange money for a product or service. The product is offered free of charge, and alongside that they collect whatever they can get away with. There’s no consideration, there’s no proportionality, it doesn’t meet the basic tenets of contract law.
Data companies thrive in this hazy grey zone where regulations haven’t been made. However, when you compare what they do to anything else, it’s clearly unreasonable. If I invite you into my home, that doesn’t mean I give you permission to take the strawberries from my garden. If you invite me into your home, that doesn’t mean you get permission to go through my wallet and take photos of everything inside.
It’s getting worse, look at Microsoft now. You pay them for the software and they still take your data.
Data needs to be regulated, such that users are fairly compensated and more properly in control of it. Either that, or it must be completely open - Google can collect the data, but their raw database must be freely available to everyone. Lobbying has proven effective for Google et al, however there is some small hope because law makers themselves are also the victims - everyone is. They just need to realise the true value of what’s being taken from them.
I think you mean “tenets of contract law”, rather than tenants. Not trying to be “that” guy, I had to look it up myself.
Nice one.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but your analogy of inviting someone into your home is flawed. You did agree to them collecting some anonymous data just by using it, and the browser history usage is opt-in.
Their products are not free, they just don’t cost money. If you don’t agree with that policy, don’t use their products. I would also add that this is their business model for most of their products (which are undeniably extremely popular, because they’re good).
Maps, Search, Chrome, YouTube, etc are all really good products that you pay for by letting them use some of your data, but not the more sensitive parts, in my opinion.
I disagree that their “raw database” should be public. That seems like a terrible idea. I would much rather share my clicks and geolocation than pay for the service (I don’t, but I would prefer that model).
I do however agree that data needs to be regulated, and that users solely own all their own data.
Oh yeah no problem, just be alive in 2023 and don’t use any Google products. Totally an easy choice! /s
Yes, it very much is.
It actually really, really isn’t. Just try blocking Google services using an ad blocker and see how many websites don’t work. How Google track who you bank with, where you have social media accounts and basically everything they can with Captcha. If you don’t connect to google.com, gstatic.com and maybe fonts.google.com then so much stuff online simply does not work.
No amount of regulation would help if the users themselves don’t value their data. As far as they are concerned, these products are free. They might be wrong, but that’s irrelevant here, the relevant part is that to them their data is worthless so they don’t care. We need more education on this, not regulation. Or rather we need both.
It’s opt-in and they’re very clear about that.
For now
No… Even if that was true, what you’re saying is “you’re right, but you might not be in a month, sooo Google bad”.
It won’t be opt-out because first of all, that’s against the law. And second you’re literally opting in by accepting their terms…
I’m glad you live in the EU because it’s opt-out for everyone else.
I’m glad too
Glad I switched to firefox when it became apparent google wants to take away control to shove more ads in our faces.
In Chrome, start at the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. (Or just type chrome://settings/adPrivacy into your address field.) The ad privacy page lets you turn off Chrome’s targeted ads.
As per The Verge
Or… maybe… just stop using Chrome? Use Brave? Use Firefox?
Oh. So if you go through some particular combinations of settings then maybe you can find a way to request that Google reduce the ways they use your personal information. I guess that makes it totally cool and fine? I don’t think so.
Much better to use Firefox and avoid Google ever getting that info in the first place. That way you don’t have to constantly play whack-a-mole with deliberately confusing ‘privacy settings’ which don’t even fix the problem anyway.
Firefox is a great browser to switch to, it has a vast variety of customizability in configuration. It is a very flexible browser and it has helped me a lot in the past few years.
As a further suggestion on top of it, do use a custom user.js to harden your browser even more, set up your DNS Resolver to use Quad9 or any other private DNS Server like Scaleway, NextDNS, etc.
I also recommend using Oblivious DNS over HTTPS for added security.
I am on a Freedesktop Linux system hence I refered to the Archlinux Wiki in setting the beforementioned configurations up.
The only issue I got with FF is sometimes cloudflare page won’t load while any chromium one can load effortlessly. Otherwise FF is very good
(uses a different browser)
Have fun with that
My ad " you like thick women, Stoicism and band tees? well do we have a goth girl for you, limited item sold, not responsible for broken car windows or torched house, all purchases are final.
Fuck me I’m in
Damn advertisers are finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am is keeping me from being a better consumer and has me resenting capitalism and they’ll work to change my sad life, right? Privatize the profits, socialize the losses, isolate the losers. Got it.
Fucking hell I am sick of having to switch browsers every few years.
Why would you need to? Did you ever trust chrome? And google?
The joke being, that all browsers by now depend on ad money directly (or indirectly aka Firefox) - this means browsers can by definition never favor protection of your privacy over their money stream.
(I am using Firefox, but even they try to upsell their VPN solution with in-browser advertisement :-/)
A few years ago, I switched from Firefox to Chrome. A few months ago, I switched back to Firefox. Chrome is rolling out changes which are completely unacceptable, such as making adblockers impossible, and using my private browsing history for their own ads.
Don’t forget that chrome is also censoring saved bookmarks and purging bookmarks to URLs that are on their naughty list - right now that’s mostly piracy related things, but the precedence is set.
Don’t forget that chrome is also censoring saved bookmarks and purging bookmarks to URLs that are on their naughty list - right now that’s mostly piracy related things, but the precedence is set.
Your comment is a prime example of FUD.
For context, see https://lemmy.one/comment/2495139
TL;DR: Google is moderating public facing lists of links. Compare it to Lemmy moderators deleting illegal content in their communities.
You can still hate Google all you want, but please, don’t just read the headlines.
How about not using Chrome? Firefox Gang!
