Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history
YMMV, based on where you are
Google enables advertisers a look into your browsing history...
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.
A few posts up, there’s an article about how basically all cars manufacturers are a privacy nightmare
It seems to me that we need some software that intercepts the data being sent to Google, replaces all proper nouns with "Sundar Pichai," all numbers with a 10 followed by 100 zeroes, and randomizes everything else before sending. The data they receive would look like it was smuggled out of a Being John Malkovich parallel universe.
Or we could just use Firefox. Or Lynx.
"Enhanced Ad Privacy." That's the technology that, unless switched off, allows websites to target the user with adverts tuned to their online activities
That's some Orwellian shit right there.
This is how the internet has worked since forever. At least for Chrome it's opt-in, and they're very clear about what is shared.
Edit: apparently it's only opt-in in Europe so I offer my condolences
every day I'm glad I switched to firefox
I may be cursed but I have never experienced any slowdown with Firefox. I never noticed the appeal of Chrome, but have I only used it twice in my life…
Firefox felt pretty bloated for me back in 2005-2010 or so, they have greatly improved it though and I haven't noticed a difference in performance on either Chrome or Firefox.
I use a macbook for work. Chrome is ridiculously buggy and sucking every bit of memory. Firefox is almost as bad. Chrome is really bad when using more than 1 tab. Firefox has rendering issues with jira and git. Chrome compelling locks up when using meet, Firefox is slightly better.
In my opinion all browsers have sucked since 2015. Slow, unresponsive, rendering issues, resource hogs. Overall the browser experience has led me to use the internet less and less. It is not the privacy, it is the basic functionality is not working consistently.
It works really well on mobile, that's just about all the appeal I can find. Some sites are a bit glitchy on Firefox, but it's really rare. I keep it around for those occasions. On PC it's just Firefox and Edge (cuz work).
Every day a new article comes out that slowly convinces me to switch. Chrome's profile switcher was light years ahead of Firefox last I checked, but I'm going to have to check again and see if that's still the case and if so, what I can do to cope.
DOIT
This was overwhelming rejected by everyone, including Microsoft, Mozilla, Safari, and others. It's universally disliked, and Google knows this, but they intentionally know they're abusing their monopoly to push anti-consumer bullshit.
It sure would be nice if the US still pretended to care about consumers and breaking up monopolies.
I was born way after that may have ever happened, so sounds more like a fairy tale to me
The solution to breaking up monopolies is nationalization.
All of a sudden, we're paying less money and have way more rights. It's why the USPS can't open your mail without probably cause but fedex and ups can.
Rich people and their dick-suckers will be upset. But who cares about them anyways?
I opened the browser at the library to print a pre employment drug screen form today. The browser had a pop up asking to review settings, it looked like you could tell them not to use ads this way, but damn I wish I would have read it now. Not my computer and it reboots to clear the profile when you "log out" so I didnt spend the time
Why not just use Firefox (while you still can ...)
Why, will you soon not be able to?
I think they're just referring to FF's small market share.
Firefox's user base is apparently been dwindling for a long time now, so the possibility of this browser shutting down due to not having enough funds is getting higher and higher each year. At least, that's how I interpret it.
"don't be evil" days have been over since forever ago.
Any organization that feels the need to outright claim without being asked that they're not evil are 100% projecting and are evil.
I think they honestly weren't, back in those days, or at least trying not to be.
Now google is a fully fledged advertising and marketing company
I already dumped google search in favor of DuckDuckGo years ago which gives objectively better results. Google search has been overrun with SEO spam since years ago
I'm getting rid of chrome, then of google drive, then what more... Google maps is a big one to drop too but it's so nice.
It sucks that a company builds good software and then just abuses the crap out of it but this is why we have open source!
Lastly I'll need to drop google from my Android phone, somehow.
Nah. In the early days it made sense because Google was doing some really cool things.
2056
Please drink verification can
Don't forget to scream "I fucking love Amazon!" clearly into the microphone.
Black mirror comming true!
That's fine. I'll continue to use Firefox.
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".
Firefox
So glad I moved to Firefox, fu Google
Mobile has extensions too. Ublock on Firefox mobile is a god send.
I tried Firefox in like 2016 but it was very slow for some reason.
Is it fast now? Been thinking about securing my privacy lately so I might give it another try.
Im going for as much privacy I can while still maintaining as much functionality as possible.
Anyone having any pointers?
Ive used Firefox and chrome for a long time side by side and on a daily use basis there is not any discernable difference that's caused by the browser. On Firefox, add the extensions ublock origin, privacy badger, and decrentraleyes to start with, and I'd recommend changing default search to duckduckgo or start page as well. Your entire web experience will be massively improved (Yes ddg and start page look and feel different. Search results are the same but without all the ads and misdirects)
If you want privacy, you will sacrifice convenience.
I assumed this was happening for years
I think it's a new thing where the browser does the profiling locally, and supposedly without allowing sites to track you anymore. But of course the sites can still ask the browser for your personal interests in order to serve you ads, so I couldn't tell you why they think this is any better.
Who tf used Chrome for years!?
(checks notes)
Oh, the majority :|
Well that's the thing, Google needed something to test with before they started doing this.
I thought this is the way it’s been since 2008.
I think I'll just invite Google to come get my dna, set up cameras everywhere, and install a microchip in my brain. Then I can be done with this slow-walk of privacy invasion.
I got the Google Suppository Health Monitor, I just stick it in my butt and nano bots flood my body looking for things to advertise to me about.
Yet the simps still won’t use Firefox
I feel like people in general give google too big of a pass all the time. I feel like I read apple hate every second while people somehow distinguish android from google.
Ikr? Google openly became the cartoonishly evil overlord, so much so it basically entered pop culture as such (Meta, Apple, MS, Amazon, etc also all the same).
And installing either Firefox or Chrome is exactly the same for the user, usage too. But no, let the poor megacorp have some more data so they can sell us some more direct ads and even more indirect ads that aren't even labeled as such (yet Alphabet profits from that) ... and become even more powerful influencing everyones lives, legislation, etc
I hated being the go-to guy for tech support in my family, but at least I get to jam open sauce things everywhere. They are never happy with any changes, but after a few days nobody remembers Microsoft & co, so everyone is really happy with things like Linux, Firefox (mobile too!), LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Signal, FairEmail & other open android apps, etc
Every bit helps. Nicely done friend!
But they have a great excuse tho! Something about vertical tabs! Fuck privacy when vertical tabs are at stake!!
Vertical tabs are an ABOMINATION!
Well that's what to expect from a web browser created by an advertising company.
That's what people don't understand. Google's actual customers are advertisers, just like with broadcast television. The deal you make with Google is that they'll give you all sorts of "free" services and software, and in return, you'll see ads.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with that model. You get what you want, Google gets what they want, and advertisers pay for it all in the hopes that you'll like whatever they're selling and buy it.
You can always stop using free services and pay for them directly instead, cutting the advertisers out. Or use free services from non-profits and open-source software.
But the problem is that it's also in Google's best interests to make that as difficult as possible. To make avoiding their data-consumption damn near impossible. Collecting, comparing, collating, and indexing data is literally what they're the best in the world at. And they have their methods of getting it everywhere.
A broadcaster can't stop you from turning off the TV or muting it during ads. If they could, they certainly would. (Thanks, laissez-faire capitalism!) But they're not serving the ads AND providing the TV itself.
Google is both the broadcaster and the TV manufacturer in this analogy. They're saying, "Here's a free TV. Isn't it nice? And it'll help us give you extremely targeted and personalized ads. Hope you don't mind that we've made it hard to mute, and the TV never actually turns all the way off. And sure, it's got a camera and microphone, but what did you expect? It's free!"
Chrome is like Facebook, zero respect for privacy. Anything you do with Chrome can and will be used. From day one Chrome has fed all your browsing activity to their index bot. After your browsed a URL, shortly after googlebot crawled that site.
Call the evil by its proper name :)
How about not using Chrome? Firefox Gang!
I am the only person out of my friends group who doesn't use chrome. One of my friends even fully understands the issues with chrome and still won't stop using it!
I can't understand this there's got to be some kind of psychological phenomenon happening here I'm completely unaware of.
I feel like they have some sort of unwarranted loyalty to chrome...
At a personal level I use waterfox I just like the way it looks.
It's inertia, at least in my own experience. I've had a bunch of things I've been meaning to do but was lazy and stuck in my habits until some new event made me say "enough is enough" and then I try the new thing and a lot of the time I end up thinking I should have just done that sooner. But before that, it's "I know there's problems with this but it's what I know".
Doing the jump to Linux is the current one I'm procrastinating on. I use it already, just not on my main machine, so it's not even like I don't know how it is. I've just had a Windows main machine all my life and installing a new OS is a pain. But I do want to feel amusement instead of annoyance when hearing about the latest BS MS is trying to push.
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 slower and clunkier. I use Firefox for privacy and addons, but if I didn't have to I'd probably use Chrome.
Explain how , like with examples. I use both every day plus like 4 other browsers and there is no difference a normal user could possible see between the two. All browser have slightly different layouts and features but all at this point have surface functionality that's essentially the same What the hell are you seeing in Firefox that is "slow and clunky"
Got this today, I have to use chrome for a couple things every month, and they conveniently turned on all their tracking and ads and bullshit. Had to turn all that crap off again. Not that they'd glean any useful information from my paltry chrome usage, but it still pisses me off.
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.
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
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.
Let me get this straight:
Until now, Google and other advertisers stored cookies on your device and tracked your browsing history on their servers.
Know, everything happens locally and this is somewhat worse then the old way to do it?
How?
No. Now Google straight up monopolizes your browser history instead of trying to guess your interests.
At least here in Germany it is opt in. As the algorithm runs locally, I don't see a big issue with this.
I didn't opt in to this feature to be clear, and ghostery should help for tracking.
But if I wouldn't have this option, I would be more willing to have my history evaluated locally, instead of having my history evaluated for 90% of the sides on some third party advertisers owned system.
Hm. I was going to write "because I could have been visiting sites that don't sell my data to Google or other advertisers. And now those fuckers will have this information." But then, if I use Google Chrome to visit those sites, then it serves me right.
Firefox for the win.
Good point.
I guess that most advertisers cannot track you everywhere, while your history has the full information. Anyway, happy Firefox user here, I am just shocked how the Google monopoly on browsers is playing out, especially since I am forced to use Chrome for some websites.
I figured they did this already just without saying it out loud
They been doing it for years now, they just formally announced it lol
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.
finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am
I don't know, have you tried checking out the hot singles in your area? /s
pay $49.99 a month and you're guaranteed to speak to at least 1 bot as soon as your subscription expires.
Interesting tidbit: I've been watching "the big bang theory" a lot these past few weeks on my own hosted jellyfin install.
I don't use google search anywhere, I don't type tbbt anywhere. Yet, on my Android phone I have this obligatory Google news thing when I swipe left (HATE that) and all of the sudden that thing got chock full of chatgpt written TBBT articles... I don't really go there (usually end up there by accident swiping left once too many) and I don't read those articles but it really obviously switched to TBBT articles when I switched to watching TBBT.
This really kinda freaks me out and makes me wonder WTF more google is monitoring. I use a Google Chromecast, I guess google monitors that?
That and your phone's microphone and other sensors.
Not using Google Assistant here
You can buy phones from NitroKey (the company that makes secure, open-source security keys) that have the microphone and sensors physically removed.
Which phone do you have? I've been able to disable that "swipe left to access Google" thing on every Google Pixel I've ever owned. Just long-press your home screen and go to home settings and disable it.
OnePlus 8T. One day they pushed an update that removed the option to disable it. Obviously they have a contract with Google so that they profit from this, and it sucks .
When I have some time I might reinstall some new OS on it that removes all that crap
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
Even better a non chromium browser aka Firefox
It's opt in, just not in America
Who knew that using a browser made by an ad agency would result in ads?!
shockedpikachuface.webp
“.webp” fucking classic, I snorted.
I dont believe google was an ad agency when they initially made chrome and for a long time following that. You cant conflate the two and say "what did you expect"
Google pulled the rug from under us on this. Albeit very slowly and super obviously.
Ads in search results was always their business model.
Adsense was made in 2003. That's when Google entered the ad industry. Chrome was released in beta in 2008. That's 5 years of being an ad agency before creating Chrome.
Everyone talks about Firefox. And that's cause Firefox is good and hands down the best. But I've been using Vivaldi which is chromium based for years. Anyone have any opinion on Vivaldi?
Vivaldi is based on Chromium. So it basically gets placed in the same field as Chrome and Edge.
Basically except they dumped the parts they didn't like and built it out to be better than anything else based on chromium.
So it's leagues above both of those browsers.
chromium is fine though? doesn't send any data over. Just has a problem with addons pretty sure
Vivaldi has some amazing features that I wish other browsers would catch up on. Unfortunately it's really buggy. Crashes with no recourse to recover your tabs. That's a deal breaker and I dealt with that a fair number of times. Then I decided I'd use their workspaces feature to try and avoid losing all my tabs. Great plan, worked until all my fucking workspaces got deleted too. For every good feature Vivaldi has, it has several game breaking bugs.
I love Vivaldi, if Firefox could do side bar and tab grouping id use it but V just does it better and with built in ad blocking.
I use Edge and can’t switch to Firefox for the same reasons. There’s stuff I use on Edge that is not available on Firefox. Unfortunately, those are dealbreakers for me.
It's not bad, but using a Chromium-based browser still supports Google's attempts to build a monopoly on browser rendering engines. Also, there are Browsers (like LibreWolf, a fork of Firefox) with better privacy features and adblock.
Pihole goes brrrrrrrrrr.
It's not hard to get around PiHole. If enough adopt it, they'll just use technical workarounds to make Pihole pretty useless.
Pi-hole works by giving clients non-routable addresses in response to DNS queries of known ad-serving domains. If the client (web browser, phone, smart device, etc) doesn't let you set its DNS server (as many no longer do) and doesn't obey DHCP, then you can't feed them those addresses. You could block outbound DNS traffic from all clients except your Pi-hole, but in response some clients will just refuse to work entirely. And if they require DNSSEC (or DoT/DoH with a pinned certificate), there's nothing you can do.
Glad I switched to firefox when it became apparent google wants to take away control to shove more ads in our faces.
I thought they already did that.
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
I now understand late stage capitalism
Uhhh.....
"Since your history shows frequent use of pornhub, we highly recommend websites like xvideos and redtube"
Because that's totally what every 15 year old fellow really needs hey Google?
(uses a different browser)
Have fun with that
Someone needs to make an extension that googles random stuff all the time and floods ones history with so much background noise that the history becomes useless.
This already exists btw
I recommend using 'Adnauseam' for Firefox.
It hides ads in addition to clicking them. This generates revenue for the site and also obscures your digital footprint.
Or, you know, just don't use Chrome or Google!
I thought they did already.
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
FYI, while this is a terrible move, it does not allow advertisers to see your browsing history like you said. Google looks into your history, the advertiser gives them ads and Google serves the ads to the users they think will like it. The advertiser never sees any of your data. Ironically, Google's advertising system is the safest compared to systems like Meta's.
But the advertisers do see the demographics and effectiveness of their ads being served. That's a pretty good peek into browser histories, even though it's not as minute as the statement leads you to believe.
Still, it's too much.
Glad I'm not using Chrome.
But the point being that there is no way for an advertiser to see an individual's browsing history, nor estimate it with the demographics. You can see what the wide majority is searching for but not an individual.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Google. I use Google services but I opted out of everything I could. I don't even have an advertising ID on their servers.
Thanks for clarification.
Interesting tradeoff - I have more trust in Googles security teams than 99,9% of the real time bidders around.
Until Google decides to sell that information directly to advertisers.
it does not allow advertisers to see your browsing history like you said.
Google is no advertiser? And they monopolize it now. I mean, they did anyway, but...
How would I go about transferring my stored passwords from Chrome to Firefox?
When you first install Firefox, it offers it during the initial setup
Switch to a dedicated password manager - Bitwarden for example.
Then you can try any browser. Firefox definitely wouldn't be my choice but it is better than Chrome.
You can export from Chrome as a CSV file then import to Firefox.
And that’s why I will continue to use Chrome only for work. Yuck.
At least at my workplace they let us choose to use Firefox or Edge. It's an official ICT policy that Chrome is explicitly banned from the network as it poses a data breach security risk. They pay Microsoft so there's a legal venue to pounce them if anything goes wrong, but with Alphabet is like dealing with an alien monolith, they take your money, your data, your sanity and don't even bother to return your mails when you need support.
Alas, we do everything on Google because we’re using Classroom, Drive, and their office suite. Since I’m already having to the use Google for everything, I just use Chrome for everything work-related.
Time to move most of my browsing to FF. It's already somewhere around 80% FF.
Sounds like a great and exciting innovation. I can’t wait to see more relevant ads based on my own personal interests!
Seems that 5 people can't read sarcasm and is prolly part of the /s gang
Oh wow, it's the shoes I just bought! How does it know? That's incredible! Okay, google, I'm ready for the next relevant ad. Oh wow, it's the shoes I already have again. Ha ha, but I'm not interested in those anymore.
I looked up "audiophool" on Chrome and I looked in my ad preferences and it started recommending stuff about speakers
edit: grammar
That isn't new, that's how ad networks work. Google owns one of the largest ad networks.
These sneaky foxes should be fired.
EDIT: it seems nobody wants to fire a fox. That almost drives me to the edge but I guess I'll just try to be brave and think of it as a safari.
Only after the narwhal bacons at midnight memmy mlem's on a lunar photon voyage.
Oh ffs, take my upvote, but know that I'm not happy my brainhole had to endure such punnery
How is it sneaky? They're very public about it, and the popup I got was opt-in, and clear about what would be shared if I agreed.
Great, can't wait to see ads for take out food, and small appliance repair.
Nothing made me happier than seeing ads for a new washing machine for months after I bought a new washing machine. Those ads were definitely still relevant and it wasn't annoying at all.
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 :-/)
But it was always Chrome 'feature' its google my activity feature.
Jokes on you Google! I delete my browser history every 30 seconds!
Do you delete their copy?
No worries, Google has your backup... :-P
![[HN] Google Chrome pushes browser history-based ad targeting](https://radiation.party/pictrs/image/3aa9abc9-aa49-4e7e-9d54-944c33eaad8b.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)