Forget Chrome—Google Starts Tracking All Your Devices In 8 Weeks
Digital fingerprinting is suddenly back and it will be everywhere—here's what you need to know.
cross-posted from: https://fed.dyne.org/post/343234
Google Starts Fingerprint-Tracking All Your Devices In 8 Weeks
TL;DR - Google makes (arguably insane) claim that it previously acted responsibly with regards to fingerprinting, and says they will begin acting irresponsibility with fingerprinting in February.
Practical take-aways you probably already knew:
Like Google maps:
we anonymize your data before selling it. So it leaves your address every morning and goes to your office every morning but it's completely anonymous.
Exactly. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that Google's clever privacy engineering isn't enough to keep any of us safe.
Google's expectation that we be okay with these practices feels like corporate gaslighting, to me.
Huh, it's a good thing there is no way to easily determine who someone is from that information.
Thanks! The article was a bit of a tough read for me. Lol
Ditto!
It is probably wise to assume that the next serious data breach at Google will end marriages, get politicians arrested, get famous people canceled, fuel successful scammers, and have every other privacy impact you can imagine. We know the Google data pool is massive, and we have reason to believe it is incredibly personal. I'm aware that Google has anonymozation solutions in play, and I do not believe those solutions will be effective in a breach scenario.
That would be an interesting experiment. Maybe cancel culture and public shaming will cease when everyone realizes no one is perfect and most people do shitty things from time to time.
It won't only a few will be targeted in the media and the same cancerous culture will continue.
You should know when and how you are being tracked, and you should have an easy-button to say thanks, but no thanks.
Opt-out !? That's not even close to being a good solution.
Your data should not be collected, and you should not be tracked, UNLESS you agree yo it, ie opt-in, AND data collection is proportional/appropriate for the stated goal.
That's the spirit of GDPR.
So the e-mail I got with them claiming they will delete my location history is a lie?
To the best of my knowledge - from a spirited but doomed attempt to read Google's privacy policies - Google is committed to deleting your location history after sharing it with 10,000 or so vendor partners.
Each of those vendor partners have pinky promised to comply with the rules outlined in the same privacy policy that I failed to read.
For context, I'm not convinced any living person has read the entirety of Google's privacy policies.
Sadly, I'm quite confident - by the law of averages, human nature, and corporate corruption - that not all 10,000 trusted partners also deletes our location data history.
Google does take privacy preserving steps to anonymyze what it shares.
My educated opinion is that no amount of attempted anonymozation is sufficient for the breadth, scope and quantity of data that Google collects.
Shorter answer for you: yes, I believe that is a corporate lie. True only in technicality, but likely false by any reasonable persons expectation of what "delete" means.
Not to defend Google because they violate privacy in many ways, but they absolutely do not share that level of data with partners. This is not some ethical decision. The data is just far too valuable to Google. Google is extracting as much value as they can from users, advertisers, and publishers, and if they sold access to the data itself, publishers and advertisers could begin cutting out Google. Instead Google gives advertisers a lot of control over what users to target, and uses the data inside a black box to show those ads.
Google is hoarding your data and using it to show you ads with minimal built-in opt-outs. But they aren't sell your data.
I didn't see anything about the implications of this on the EU and GDPR?
What exactly is the change being made? I don't see that the article actually explains it anywhere.
They are updating their Platforms program policies
You can read the current version, archived here
And here's the proposed changes
I haven't read it all, but some glaring changes stand out in regards to fingerprinting (no longer prohibited) and device unique identifiers (no longer prohibited from gathering). Basically, Google wants to become even more lax with how users are tracked by their advertising partners
The worse, it does not only using Google Apps or Services, but more than the half of existing webpages use one or another Google API (at least googleanalytigs and google-tagmanager.which log and spy the visitors and users.
Hard, very hard to avoid it, Googles eyes are everywhere, even in FOSS.
You can pretty much block those domains in noscript without breaking the Website
Yes, you can easily block the tracking crap being downloaded to your HD and added to your browser, almost everyone do it, but you can't blck the logging of websites which use the Google (mostly) and other APIs. They store your PC and browser data in their server, which you can't access. The only possibility is using a VPN and other which spoof or fake your data, so that is don't have a real value. To use a mail which permits to mask your real mail direction, because your mail is an unique identifier which can be tracked all over the web. Using Image share which delete the EXIF data (vgy.me eg., Read always PP to see with which companies are shared your data, and some protections more to patch the worst privacy holes, but forget 100% privacy in the moment you goes online, it's only a myth to calm the people which intent to stay private with their shitty PC against the tech of the big ones.
*laughs in LineageOS
Laughs in GrapheneOS.
Pretty sure Graphene doesn't do much about fingerprinting on its own, it's nearly entirely up to the browser. They mention some of their plans to address that with Vanadium, but make no claims as to how effective it is now (at least on the features page).
*laughs in CalyxOS
Time to root and degoogle for the unfortunate.
Glad I don't use any Google services and no apps on graphene OS then for my main computers I run Fedora silverblue with no Google once again.
Yes but do you use PiHole and a solid VPN? Do you spoof your browser's useragent? Even then, some would argue that you are not safe enough from Google's prying eyes.
What's a Chrome?
I think you put that on your motorbike's tubes and stuff
Google it
Just install a ROM without gapps and no they won't
