Why you should suddenly delete Google Chrome

A shocking new Google tracking admission, which has yet to reach the headlines, should be a serious warning to Chrome’s 2.6 billion users. If you are one of them, this new nasty surprise should be a genuine reason to quit.

Behind the marketing and feature updates, the reality is that Chrome is wrapped up in terms of privacy and security. Has fallen behind rivals to protect users from tracking and data collection, has been their plan to abandon nasty third-party cookies uncomfortable postponed, and the replacement technology that he said would prevent it from being profiled and followed by users ends up making everything worse.

“Ubiquitous surveillance … harms people and society,” warns Firefox developer Mozilla, and “Chrome is the only major browser that doesn’t offer significant protection against cross-site tracking … and will continue to leave users unprotected “.

Google readily admits (and ironically) that this ubiquitous web tracking is out of control and has caused “an erosion of trust … [where] 72% of people believe that advertisers, technology companies, or others track virtually everything they do online, and 81% say the potential risks of data collection outweigh the benefits. “

So how can Google continue to openly acknowledge that this tracking undermines user privacy and yet enables this default tracking in its flagship browser? The answer is simple: follow the money. Restricting tracking will materially reduce advertising revenue from user segmentation with sales presentations, policy messages, and opinions. And right now, Google doesn’t have a plan B; his great idea for anonymized tracking is in disarray.

“Research has shown that up to 52 companies can theoretically observe up to 91% of the average user’s web browsing history,” a senior Chrome engineer said in a recent call to the Internet Engineering Task Force, “and 600 companies can observe at least 50% “.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox is supposed to address this, to meet the needs of advertisers who want to target users in a more “privacy-preserving” way. But the problem is that not even Google’s staggering level of control over the Internet advertising ecosystem is absolute. There is already a complex web of crawlers and data brokers in place. And any new technology simply adds to that complexity and cannot exist in isolation.

It is this unfortunate situation that is behind the failure of FLoC, Google’s self-managed attempt to deploy anonymous tracking on the web. It turns out that building a wall around just half a hen effect isn’t particularly effective, especially when some of the foxes are already hanging inside.

Instead of targeting you as an individual, FLoC assigns you to a cohort of people with similar interests and behaviors, defined by the websites you all visit. So you’re not Jane Doe, a 55-year-old sales assistant who resides at 101 Acacia Avenue. Instead, you are introduced as a member of Cohort X, from which advertisers can deduce what they are likely to do and buy from regular websites visited by group members. Google would inevitably control the whole process and advertisers would inevitably pay to play.

FLoC received immediate fire. The privacy lobby called the risks that data brokers would simply add cohort identifiers to other data collected about users: IP addresses or browser identities or any web identifier of their own, providing them with even more knowledge about people. There was also the risk that cohort identifications could betray sensitive information: politics, sexuality, health, finance, …

No, Google said when it launched its controversial FLoC trial, telling me in April that “we firmly believe that FLoC is better for user privacy compared to individual cross-site tracking that prevails today.” .

Not so, Google has suddenly admitted. telling the IETF that “the current fingerprint surface, even without FLoC, is easy enough to uniquely identify users,” but that “FLoC adds us fingerprints. “Let me translate this, as the privacy lobby had warned, FLoC creates things worse, not better.

Google ended the FLoC trial last month, saying it needed a rethink before putting anything into production. “It’s become clear,” the company said, “that more time is needed across the entire ecosystem to do well.”

This moratorium included amortization for tracking cookies; everything goes hand in hand. Google “will continue to track and profile users using cookies until at least 2023,” warned rival Brave at the time, “but online privacy is a growing wave. Google is already under water and seems desperately in need of major reforms before 2023 “.

From Google delay was disguised in the normative issues this had also been triggered by FLoC and whether this would lead to improper control of Google over the advertising ecosystem. But your reality as a Chrome user is much more serious. With third-party trackers still in place, with the failure of FLoC, and no definite plans to improve the technology, there is no tangible end in sight of fingerprints in Chrome.

“We’re always exploring options on how to make Sandbox privacy proposals more private, even though we support the open and free web,” Google told me when I asked about the IETF’s astonishing admission. “Nothing has been decided yet.”

But what has What has been decided is that third-party cookies are here to stay, at least for the next two years, probably longer if Google doesn’t find the way out. Google is “hiding and gaining time to regroup,” says Brave, “to consolidate its control over web tracking.”

This, of course, isn’t as easy as setting aside Chrome, Google’s browser, and its search engine. no the same thing. Google “it has crawlers installed on 75% of the millions of major websites“Several times more than Facebook, which is the next worst. Similarly, just look at recent reports suggesting that Google will pay Apple about $ 15 billion this year to be the default search engine for its devices. .

Chrome’s problem is that your browser, search engine, and crawlers come from the same source. If your browser is a custodian of privacy games and these crawlers are data thieves, you probably don’t want them all to have the same logos.

In FLoC and the Privacy Sandbox, Google says it’s exploring ideas for an aqueous solution. Users assigned to topics instead of cohorts, manual audit of topics to mask sensitive areas, fake topics to confuse profiles. “We believe these mitigations could drastically reduce the utility of FLoC for cross-site fingerprinting,” Google told the IETF. But that’s a lot of quins, ifs and maybes, and “nothing has been decided yet.”

“The pragmatic view,” Ija Thornton-Trump of Cyjax, CISO, told me is that FloC was another attempt to “target” digital marketing within the Google browser system instead of a third-party cookie. , to ensure it “does not escape” from being tracked “especially if it is not completely”. As usual, any company that wants to “improve your privacy,” but get billions of digital media and need your data to be effective, is deeply problematic. “

Chrome is one of Google’s leading platforms for creating user data profiles, though you can add Maps, Mail, Android, YouTube, and multiple platforms, apps, and services. And so, as the browser market belatedly begins to put users ’privacy first, Google can only do so if it can find an alternative way to sell these ads.

“If you use Chrome, you’ll give up your privacy,” my STC colleague Kate O’Flaherty warns this week. “There won’t be anything that preserves privacy, but still, service advertisers. They need to know things about you.”

If you’re an Apple user, Safari is a much better option: avoid tracking between default sites, a more useful and extensive private browsing mode, a tech giant’s browser, and not an advertising giant. Apple’s private relay is also a big step forward for your privacy, breaking the chain of identity between your device and the places you visit. Although teething issues mean it will only be in beta when iOS 15 launches.

If you use a platform other than Apple, Brave, Mozilla and DuckDuckGo offer more private and better options. And while you can use Chrome in incognito mode, despite recent legal issues, you should be aware of its limitations. Is no a good alternative to a more privately designed browser.

Chrome is an excellent browser—technically. But, as with all platforms, apps, and services, you always have to keep track of money. Once you ask yourself, is this a product I paid for or am? Jo the product, other people pay to access me, then you can start making clearer decisions. And just by making these decisions with privacy in mind, you’re sending the message that your data isn’t a fair game to collect at will.

There’s a perfect illustration of this when you contrast Chrome’s privacy tag with other major browsers in Apple’s App Store. Chrome is totally out of step with the others, both for the data it collects and for the fact that everything links to the identities of users.

“Regardless of FLoC, fingerprints are real and we’re seeing that happen,” Google told the IETF. “We would like to stop this widespread monitoring of users on the network.” Excellent. Well, just stop it then. Follow the Safari example. Turn off tracking by default, reduce the collection of data linked to user identities, and if you find a genuine option that preserves privacy, you can add it again. to users to make the decision.

Is it dramatic to suggest that you leave Chrome as an alternative? That depends on your perspective. The FLoC source test registered millions of yours without choosing to participate in a secret test that Google now admits has added additional fingerprint surfaces. This means they identified and outlined you more easily. It’s not good. Similarly, after promising to drop tracking cookies, Google changed its mind, again, it’s not okay.

Yes, Google needs to find a way to present Yours data a her paying customers: advertisers, if their surveillance business model is to survive. But don’t.