Keep in mind that while everybody here is all outraged about this, nobody else is. Because the experience is so nice.<p>It's the reason why I can search for "prefecture Melun" on my laptop, then jump in the car, open up maps on my phone, Start typing "1" and watch it suggest "12 rue de Gambas, Melun 77320", which happens to be the address of the Melun prefecture.<p>That sort of thing happens for me every day, and i think it's kinda cool. Google knows this stuff about my life and will suggest it at useful times. If I open maps on the day I have a flight, ferry, or hotel reservation, it'll just assume I want to navigate there (because it read one of my emails) and suggest it for me.<p>So yeah, I guess I should be outraged and worry that they'll start targeting me for ads or ratting me out to the NSA or something. But thus far they haven't.<p>It's just that they can offer all this cool stuff if they connect your devices. And in 2018 that involves using a database. Personally, that does not concern me all that much.
Thanks, but no thanks. Ditch Chrome and don’t worry about ugly hacks to remember or bookmark or ask about in the future when they no longer work.<p>Life is too short to put up with such nonsense. There are better alternatives [1] available.<p>P.S.: When you uninstall Chrome on certain platforms, it’ll open your default browser and direct you to a feedback page. Be honest and tell them why, and that you wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.firefox.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.firefox.com</a>
There's a great way to disable this and many other user-hostile features by going to <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mozilla.org/</a> and downloading Firefox. Suddenly, you are no longer fighting your browser.
While it's interesting to see ways to inhibit Chrome's new behaviour, getting into a privacy fight with your browser supplier seems to be a losing strategy...
I was surprised and angered by the sudden appearance of this automatic sign-in and sync. Between the time that it was activated silently and when I disabled it, I have a nagging suspicion that Google hoovered up my browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, etc. in the guise of "sync". While I couldn't find any evidence, whatever little trust I had left in Chrome is now gone.
Google should be very careful with these aggressive tactics. They are quickly losing many users. There are other options available nowadays, including browser like Brave. I personally have switched back to Firefox. I still like Google but they are falling into the same old trap of not listening to their users. The moment they let that escalated and there are other viable options then the game is over.
Linux users.<p>Put:<p><pre><code> {
"SyncDisabled": true,
"RestrictSigninToPattern": ".*@example.com"
}
</code></pre>
in a file called disable_sync.json (for example)<p>and place in the following location:<p>Chrome: /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/disable_sync.json<p>Chromium: /etc/chromium-browser/policies/managed/disable_sync.json
If I go to <a href="https://groups.google.com" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com</a> using my Android phone and Chrome 69 and press the sign out link, it won't sign me out. Next time I go to groups.google.com, I'm still logged in. What is the point showing the sign out link if it doesn't do anything? Thanks Google.<p>Firefox on Android properly signs me out.<p>One more reason why I don't use Android as my primary phone. I just don't trust Google.
I don’t understand why people are complaining about this. If you’re concerned about privacy then why would you even use a Google product in the first place? There are other options.
To disable this feature (at least for chrome 69, not sure if it will change), go to account-consistency: chrome://flags/#account-consistency and select disable.
What's the point of inconveniencing yourself in all these ways when there are fifty other ways people can track all your browsing activity anyway? It just doesn't seem worth the trouble.
I think the biggest point here is one of respect to the customer. The fact that I lost all of my settings when I simply logged out my persona is clearly disrespectful of the customer. With so many good options, why use Google?
Further convinced to go back to FF, darn it after an update and a reboot one hour ago, ctrl+space no longer works with chrome(which worked in the last few years) but it works the same way with anything else, yesterday it's that youtube brought my PC to grinding halt when it's used with crhome(firefox works fine), what's going on Google???
I found that the easiest way to do it on Mac is to download the Chrome Enterprise bundle, edit the .plist and convert it to a profile with McxToProfile, to get something like this:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/gepeto42/status/1043587638568079360" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/gepeto42/status/1043587638568079360</a>
Oh wow, so if you just log in into a Google Account it automatically activates Google Sync without any prompts and starts uploading browser history data and other no-Google properties related browser data? That's pretty nasty. I can understand that for most people this feature is very useful and it's fine to have it, just not fine to enable it by default without even a prompt or something asking users if they want to enable it (say the first time it detects a login to a Google property). Especially with all the governmental focus on Google right now I'm surprised this would get rolled out worldwide.<p>I never noticed it but it seems it's not being used when using incognito mode (I only browse in private mode, either Chrome or Firefox) so I wasn't aware such a thing is happening in the normal browser mode...
Great, another creepy thing in Chrome we have to disable. Like Google Software Update wasn't already annoying enough.<p>If I wasn't a web developer, and needed to use Chrome for testing, I'd have uninstalled that creepy quasi-spyware long ago.
For Windows and Mac Chromium builds without Google Sync I recommend: <a href="https://chromium.woolyss.com/" rel="nofollow">https://chromium.woolyss.com/</a> From the site: "Welcome on this auto-updated website to easily download latest stable version or good build of Chromium web browser. All is free and open-source."<p>Don't download the default installer. Instead scroll to the build that says "No Sync".<p>Chromium of course is the Google sponsored open source project that Chrome is based on. It has the dev tools of Chrome which I prefer to those of Firefox.
Once again another reminder that the need for open source alternatives with minimal to no logging is shown to be a greater necessity in an age where these companies know us better than the government. We can continue to pretend these companies are non-partisan and won't use the data collected for political influence, everyone here is <i>obviously</i> impervious to such influences, but the bigger concern is its influence on public perception.
If you are on linux please see:
<a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/ChromeWalkingAway?showcomments#comments" rel="nofollow">https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/ChromeWalkingAw...</a>
I tried to install Chromium but don't know how to install my extensions. So the this seems like the best solution for now although I am working to rehabilitate Firefox.<p>Thank you for doing this.
I don't think it's coincidental that this controversy arose at the same time Google is pushing their new "Signals" product in Google Analytics, which leverages customer sign-in data?<p>(Just noticed this today.)<p><a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7532985?hl=en&utm_id=ad&authuser=1" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7532985?hl=en&ut...</a>