
Google Chrome has become surveillance software. It’s time to switch - Jerry2
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2019/06/21/google-chrome-has-become-surveillance-software-its-time-to-switch/
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jfk13
Discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20243473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20243473)
(on the original Washington Post article).

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d1zzy
If you are wondering (like I was) what exactly are the claims against Chrome
that the article makes (instead of having just a flashy title):

\- Chrome doesn't, by default, block cookie based tracking, nowhere near as
much as default Firefox install it seems

\- Chrome auto-logs you in the "Chrome Sign in" feature when you happen to
login on Gmail. Really? I don't seem to be logged in in my Chrome but then
again, I always use incognito mode

\- mobile Chrome sends your location on every search and if you disable
location sharing sends less accurate positioning information. I'd like to get
a confirmation of this is true since if I disable location on my phone then no
app can get it, Chrome or otherwise, I think. Also again this needs to be
tested in incognito mode. And when the article says it still sends data but
"less accurate", is that more accurate than your IP address allows to find
your location? Because your IP address is always sent, inherently, in a web
request so if it's not more accurate than the IP address then it doesn't
really matter

In general I find this whole new awareness to privacy in browsers to be both
welcome and frustrating. It is welcome because I'm happy people are finally
waking up to it. It is frustrating because I've been using "private" mode
browsing (with extensions and whatever was available, even had extension to
remove the special Flash cookies) for the past 15+ years, never performed any
Google or Youtube search while logged in, never logged in to more than 2 sites
at once in the same browser session, using Tor for almost all browsing and
I've been laughed at for doing so. Glad to see I wasn't totally crazy then,
although a bit too late for that.

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joeyspn
I moved to brave a while ago. Works great both in desktop and mobile, and you
still get chromium under the hood.

The metrics it shows about the amount of ads and trackers blocked is
astonishing...

~~~
suby
Is Brave 100% open source? I don't trust them at all because I feel that the
underlying business model is shady (replacing website ads with their own ads).

~~~
joeyspn
> Is Brave 100% open source?

They have the project on github so I guess the answer is yes...

[https://github.com/brave/brave-browser](https://github.com/brave/brave-
browser)

The business model is also quite smart, since the users get paid BAT tokens
for viewing ads.

~~~
tapoxi
Their business model is quite unethical, removing the page's monetization and
replacing it with their own.

~~~
wickedlogic
Is it though? As long the person running the browser understands the
tradeoffs? I mean, the browser is _supposed_ to be your user-agent after all.

To render and provide interactions as you deem fit...

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umeshunni
Setting cookies is now Surveillance? Hyperbole seems to have become norm in
"journalism" these days.

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foobarding
oh, the irony. clickbait w/ the reward being ad revenue.

