This appears to be the same as this:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37427227">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37427227</a><p>Top comment on that one was:<p>Key actionable info: to fix this, go to this URL:<p><pre><code> chrome://settings/adPrivacy
</code></pre>
and turn off the toggles on each of the three subpages.<p>Alternatively, go to this URL <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/</a> to fix this permanently.
Can anyone explain to me why this is worse than third-party cookies?<p>*If* this lets chrome remove third-party cookies, doesn't it effectively increase your privacy by putting that tracking data on the user's machine instead of having random third-parties involved in every page load to harvest that tracking info?<p>I understand that you can currently turn off third-party cookies, but a bunch of the internet breaks if you do that. If chrome is able to turn off third-party cookies for a large swathe of people, I expect that most sites will be forced to make themselves work without third-party cookies.<p>I don't know a huge amount about it, but naively I'd rather have my machine present this kind of data than have a network of unknown third-parties collaborate by sharing bits about me to build a profile.
So, I've heard it said in another topic on `Topics` that a single list of topics, as far as it is an identifier for a specific person, is far less accurate than a tracking cookie (or similar technology).<p>Well, yes, maybe that is the case _right now_, but these are convenient arguments to push the technology through. There is nothing inherent to the technology that would prevent the `Topics` from being split such that 8 billion (current world population) unique combinations of topics exist.<p>If all topics are completely orthogonal to others, such that the existence of one topic for some user does not give extra information of another topic existing for the same user, we would expect a list of log2(8 billion) ~= 33 topics to suffice as a unique identifier for each individual user, _reported by the browser to every single website that is visited_.<p>So... obviously there is no technological limitation to this list of topics, it is completely feasible to design a list of 33 (or a little bit more) topics in this way.. so what will keep Google from not introducing more topics (as time goes on and people become accustomed to this feature)?<p>My point, in the limit, potentially a few years from now, this feature will be "pareto-dominant" of tracking cookies, or rather in all aspects better at tracking users than tracking cookies ever were.
We have a few options for monetizing on the web:
1. Sell stuff (e-commerce, subscriptions, services).
2. Sell ads (every website that's free except Wikipedia).
3. Ask for donations (Wikipedia).<p>I'm tongue and check for numbers 2 and 3. But with money coming in, people get paid. If you don't get paid, you don't eat. If you don't eat, you don't poop. If you don't poop, you die.<p>To sell ads, websites need to be able to show what demographics of people have clicked on ads, or else people will want to avoid buying ad space. Unless it's a huge brand like NFL, people aren't going to buy random ad space. You can do this in a walled garden logged-in app (a la Instagram or Facebook) or with _some_ form of tracking (every non-subscription publishing website).<p>We either roll out a way to do demographic tracking or every site will move into a logged-in method and sell data between one another on the backend. If you'd rather not get tracked, your best bet is to just not use the site to begin with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
> Additionally, there are features such as Protected Audience that can serve you ads for “remarketing” (for example, Chrome tracked you visiting a listing for a toaster, so now you will get ads for toasters elsewhere), and Attribution Reporting, that gathers data on ad clicks.<p>Why is this actually effective? When you bought a toaster (which is a likely reason why you visited the listing), why would ads for other toasters still be relevant?
Just for a little and silly laugh<p><a href="https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aeva/111027233991200762" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aeva/111027233991200762</a><p>"ars technica: we don't know how they did it but google chrome now extracts a pint of blood every time you log on<p>chrome user, dizzy from blood loss: I swear to god I am like this close to switching to firefox<p>another chrome user, on the verge of fainting from severe blood loss: no need to resort to that, just switch to [insert today's trendy chrome fork here] and be smart like meeee"
I am against this and think it's pretty unconscionable, but I will say this in defense of Google collecting my data:<p>Google's entire business model is predicated on the fact that they and only they know who I am. As soon as they sell "me," they lose the value of my (so-far) collected data. They <i>have</i> to sell me in bundles, anonymized, otherwise they make no money in the long run.<p>That being said, it's been proven over and over and over that behavioral ad sales don't actually result in more clicks or sales for the advertiser.<p>I've been using FF with some privacy extensions and settings as my personal browser for a few years now, I'm definitely not going to change that now.
I don't know if it is common knowledge, but only firefox offers application-level control Manual proxyis. (At least on win 10, I didn't check on others).
This feature alone makes Chrome / Edge unusable, at least for me.
The most important point to make here (and one missing from the article) is that Topics <i>is reducible to</i> (implementable using) third-party cookies. While one may argue browsers should have neither, enabling topics is not reducing user privacy if TPC is already enabled.
Also, when it asks you if you want to turn it on and you say “hell, no”, it will turn on a couple of other settings while it is turning that one off.<p>Make sure you go to chrome://settings/adPrivacy and review and re-disable those.<p>Or switch browser, which I have done on my personal machines.
I stopped using Chrome two years ago. I deleted the Facebook app. I have blockers on my desktop and iPhone. I’m aware everyone’s PI info is already compromised, but I’m not adding fuel.<p>There are excellent alternatives to Chrome. I encourage everyone to adopt one.
There are people in the comments saying Firefox is super slow compared to Chrome but modern computers are genuinely so fast I can't notice a difference. At least on my Core 2 Duo ThinkPad T61 I use regularly I have to do some comparisons on what the best browser choice is but on my main PC with a Ryzen 5 7600 and 32GB of DDR5 RAM it hasn't even really occurred that one is faster than the other. I use LibreWolf.
Does anyone know the MDM settings to disable it for everyone in our org? I could not find here: <a href="https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#</a>
Just to join the chorus (as I'm listening to Agnus Dei by Barber)<p>Firefox + uBlock Origin (too lazy to use uMatrix) + privacy badger (because why not) + multi account containers + User agent switcher (for sites which want something else and refuse to load on FF, e.g. bing chat)
... does this article seem a little low quality to anyone else?<p>> By far the most private browsers are specialist non-tracking browsers that prioritise no tracking, such as DuckDuckGo...<p>wha???<p>> Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbrush, or that this time last year you bought a birthday card for your mum.<p>Wha?! The technology google is deploying wouldn't even support that. Frankly the level of personal invasion required to achieve this...<p>Was this just like a bit of biting sarcasm or something? Dry wit that flew over my head?<p>This article seems off.
If the topics API is really just returning a list of things the user is interested in, like:<p><pre><code> 2: 'Arts & Entertainment/Acting & Theater',
3: 'Arts & Entertainment/Comics',
...
132: 'Computers & Electronics/Consumer Electronics/Home Theater Systems',
...
208: 'Home & Garden/Gardening',
...
</code></pre>
why not just have a simple survey and let the user pick or rate what they are interested in? Why the need to have the web browser actually track everything?
What’s crazy to me is how many people in the forum continue to run Chrome. There’s barely any mention of switching off Chrome in this thread until scrolling down towards the bottom of the comments. Why is that? It’s so obvious how this story is doing to end—Google will do everything in their power to shove ads down Chrome users throats no matter how many ad blockers people try to run.<p>What is it about Chrome that makes it so much better than alternatives like Firefox, Safari, or any Blink engine variants that aren’t spyware?
<a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?q=privacy+sandbox" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://hn.algolia.com/?q=privacy+sandbox</a><p>It's been discussed to death so many times already.
Can I just tell Google what I like and then they serve me ads for those things only? Because the current scheme seems like a whole lot of unnecessary subterfuge just to reliably serve me ads I will never click on. Wouldn't they rather have a shot in hell of serving me an ad I might actually click, while also not turning themselves into the poster boys for online privacy violations?
If I'm using Chrome only to test how websites render in it, what are the alternatives? Use another Chromium based browser or do they have the same issues as Chrome? Use a browser testing suite such as BrowserStack? Or will using a user-agent switcher in Firefox achieve the same effect as using Chrome?
Unrelated, but the other day, I searched something on DDGo on Firefox mobile in private mode, and a few hours later, I see a targeted ad related to that search.<p>Whats the deal with that? The only extension I have installed is Ublock mobile.
Is there a legal or data privacy angle here in enterprise environments where Chrome can be banned due to their sharing of private/internal browsing history with third parties?
Ars' (and lobste.rs') take on this [1] is titled "Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome" - with Google cookies and ads on the page ofc.<p>[1]: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-oppos...</a>
> Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbrush, or that this time last year you bought a birthday card for your mum.<p>fuck off
Delete Chrome.<p>“The intent of the Topics API is to provide callers (including third-party ad-tech or advertising providers on the page that run script) with coarse-grained advertising topics that the page visitor might currently be interested in.”<p><a href="https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics#the-api-and-how-it-works">https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics#the-api-an...</a>
Just stop being a helpless victim and get rid of this evil corporate spyware and switch to a privacy-respecting browser like Firefox, or even better LibreWolf <a href="https://librewolf.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://librewolf.net/</a>
It's essential to stay vigilant about online privacy. Consider exploring alternative browsers or privacy settings to protect your digital footprint. Also, check out AC Football Cases