Fools rush with proclamations. Posting what other browsers and companies do with this same data, with verification, is a lost level of critical thinking today.
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Google to Delete Chrome Incognito Browsing Data to Settle Lawsuit
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I guess the next best thing is to use YouTube and Chrome signed out. At least then they can't make as much money off you.
Relevant webpage:
Also, there is Ungoogled Chromium:
github.com
Also, there is Ungoogled Chromium:
GitHub - ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium: Google Chromium, sans integration with Google
Google Chromium, sans integration with Google. Contribute to ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Not sure where this confidence comes from. Google clearly outlines how user data is utilized in their privacy policy. Google doesn't try to market itself as a champion of user privacy either. They are vocal about their stance on ad & tracker blocking technology and don't try to hide how they are making their money. They don't try to hide their cooperation with government surveillance and law enforcement either. A quick search even with their own search engine will reveal their long history of privacy violations and partnerships with ad companies & data brokers all over the planet.
Anybody who is privacy-concerned and does even a minute of research will immediately know to stay away from Google. How is this "absolutely" less transparent than Apple? Apple just spits out a bunch of empty one-liners about privacy in its marketing and remains secretive with all its closed-source software. I'm sure the privacy community gets a good laugh every time Apple says Safari is the standard for privacy.
I will grant that Apple has made some decent moves for user privacy with features like private relay and lockdown mode. But to ignore Snowden leaks on big tech's intimate relationship with government surveillance, the CSAM-detection disaster, Tim Cook's obvious eagerness to expand Apple's ad business, unpatched VPN "bugs", unaddressed vulnerability to software like Cellebrite that enables cops get into iPhones, etc. is blind faith. It would be extremely difficult to convince someone who is moderately concerned about data privacy to trust Apple and its marketing one-liners on privacy.
None of these companies operate on a concept of morality. What matters to them is their reputation, their profits and what they can get away with. They do not deserve loyalty. Apple is vocal about privacy in its marketing because it is profitable to do so and because the typical customer will believe them without thorough proof of their statements. That's it. I think it's going to be very amusing to see how their (public) stance on privacy evolves as they increase AI presence on their products in the upcoming years.
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I think it’s cute that you’re defending Googles position here, but you said "Let's not pretend Apple is much better these guys when it comes to privacy." And that is objectively wrong. Apple is much better on privacy than Google in every metric. Irrespective of what is said or is transparent, Google clearly does not value privacy, excepting to say they value the $ value of privacy.
They lied about privacy with incognito.
I think it's cute that you have so much faith in Apple, but do you want to supply a detailed explanation on how "Apple is much better on privacy than Google in every metric."? And how "Irrespective of what is said or is transparent, Google clearly does not value privacy, excepting to say they value the $ value of privacy." is countering any single line in my last post? With proof too please, since not even Apple seems willing to provide that.
You can interpret the situation how you would like, I am not in disagreement. I would not say lying/supplying a partial/inaccurate explanation 100% equals marketing itself as a champion of user privacy, but I understand you need a branch to cling to since you do not seem to have any intention/ability to address other parts of my post.
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I’m not the one who suggested Apple was not much better than Google.
lol. No clinging.
There is a difference between software bugs, responding to legal court signed warrants, and saying "oops, we didn't think people thought Incognito meant we weren't tracking them". I know there are people who need to baste in the cynicism that everyone is equally bad, so I'm not going to take this line of reasoning much further, but just to address the items you listed so that they don't stand uncontested:
Most governments can get direct access to your account if they accuse you of possessing CSAM, and then they can go fishing. Apple created a secure, private means of proving a user does not have CSAM in their iCloud account, obviating the need to open your account to a government warrant. People freaked out because they don't understand how it worked, or the protections put in place. Was it perfect? No. Was it better than the status quo? Likely, yes. But we let perfect defeat better.
The argument that if Apple can scan for one thing, they can scan for another was always a stupid argument. First, they would only add fingerprints to the scan if they were approved by multiple child protection authorities in different jurisdictions-- so one government can't sneak new searches in. Second, if a government has the power to force Apple to modify their CSAM scanner, they have the power to force Apple to do the same thing without the CSAM scanner.
At least Apple made an effort at a privacy protecting solution, and published the full details of the approach they proposed well in advance of actually deploying anything. They then responded to public criticism and feedback from concerned organizations and did not deploy that technology.
So I don't see at all how this is somehow equivalent to Google secretly storing your browsing history while telling you that it isn't visible.
Snowden lost relevance a long time ago. That said, aside from the debacle over secure CSAM scanning, Snowden has praised Apple's pro privacy stance. Yes, the Apple logo showed up in a slide on PRISM, but Apple has said they don't give any government agency direct access to their servers and will only share information when presented with a court order (ie. in compliance with the law).
Unlike denials by other companies, Apple's claims are supported by the fact that it took the government 5 years longer than Microsoft and 3 longer than Google to convince Apple to participate and the leaked PRISM presentation stating that 98 percent of PRISM production is from Yahoo [sic], Google, and Microsoft-- meaning 2% was collected through the other 6 participants combined, of which Apple was one.
I haven't seen Cook talk much about trying to expand ads, but certainly services more broadly. Again, Apple provides controls to maintain privacy when using their ad network, preventing personal identifiers entirely if you choose or rotating them with a click if you choose otherwise. In a world with ads, Apple's solution looks to be the most privacy preserving.
This is a true problem. I don't know if they haven't patched these because they just haven't gotten enough priority, or because they help some other service run, but I don't see any evidence that this is an intentional effort to scrape personal data. It could serve that purpose, but it would be an exception to all of Apple's efforts and wouldn't benefit Apple so much as network providers (Apple is the target endpoint for these packets either way).
Which unaddressed (but addressable) vulnerability? My understanding is that this is just a cat and mouse game between the developer of a complex software product and a sophisticated provider of what is essentially hacking software to intelligence agencies. I'm not aware of any vulnerability that Apple is intentionally leaving open.
To quote the Celebrite website:
That doesn't sound like Apple is leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed, it sounds like an arms race.
Most governments can get direct access to your account if they accuse you of possessing CSAM, and then they can go fishing. Apple created a secure, private means of proving a user does not have CSAM in their iCloud account, obviating the need to open your account to a government warrant. People freaked out because they don't understand how it worked, or the protections put in place. Was it perfect? No. Was it better than the status quo? Likely, yes. But we let perfect defeat better.
The argument that if Apple can scan for one thing, they can scan for another was always a stupid argument. First, they would only add fingerprints to the scan if they were approved by multiple child protection authorities in different jurisdictions-- so one government can't sneak new searches in. Second, if a government has the power to force Apple to modify their CSAM scanner, they have the power to force Apple to do the same thing without the CSAM scanner.
At least Apple made an effort at a privacy protecting solution, and published the full details of the approach they proposed well in advance of actually deploying anything. They then responded to public criticism and feedback from concerned organizations and did not deploy that technology.
So I don't see at all how this is somehow equivalent to Google secretly storing your browsing history while telling you that it isn't visible.
Snowden lost relevance a long time ago. That said, aside from the debacle over secure CSAM scanning, Snowden has praised Apple's pro privacy stance. Yes, the Apple logo showed up in a slide on PRISM, but Apple has said they don't give any government agency direct access to their servers and will only share information when presented with a court order (ie. in compliance with the law).
Unlike denials by other companies, Apple's claims are supported by the fact that it took the government 5 years longer than Microsoft and 3 longer than Google to convince Apple to participate and the leaked PRISM presentation stating that 98 percent of PRISM production is from Yahoo [sic], Google, and Microsoft-- meaning 2% was collected through the other 6 participants combined, of which Apple was one.
I haven't seen Cook talk much about trying to expand ads, but certainly services more broadly. Again, Apple provides controls to maintain privacy when using their ad network, preventing personal identifiers entirely if you choose or rotating them with a click if you choose otherwise. In a world with ads, Apple's solution looks to be the most privacy preserving.
This is a true problem. I don't know if they haven't patched these because they just haven't gotten enough priority, or because they help some other service run, but I don't see any evidence that this is an intentional effort to scrape personal data. It could serve that purpose, but it would be an exception to all of Apple's efforts and wouldn't benefit Apple so much as network providers (Apple is the target endpoint for these packets either way).
Which unaddressed (but addressable) vulnerability? My understanding is that this is just a cat and mouse game between the developer of a complex software product and a sophisticated provider of what is essentially hacking software to intelligence agencies. I'm not aware of any vulnerability that Apple is intentionally leaving open.
To quote the Celebrite website:
That doesn't sound like Apple is leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed, it sounds like an arms race.
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Good to know. I prefer to use Safari. Privacy and Google don't go together.
i use chrome on my mac only for those rare situations where i need chrome extensions. safari doesnt support this. for example planing hiking or biking routes with squadrats or statshunter extensions in komoot, strava or other web based planner. this has nothing to do with incognito i know, more a side note of using chrome or not.
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We serious right now?
One company's business model is the collection and selling of data to third parties.
The other company's is not.
To insinuate "they're the same" is some seriously lazy thinking.
Yes, Apple collect data. No, they do not sell that data to third parties.
if you think that's a trivial difference...
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Anyone that trusts any company whose business model is the collection and selling of user data to respect their privacy is fooling themselves.
By all means use Google, Meta, twitter, TikTok and all the rest, but don't kid yourself that they're selling you out as much as they can.
By all means use Google, Meta, twitter, TikTok and all the rest, but don't kid yourself that they're selling you out as much as they can.
As a developer, I find the devtools lacking behind in comparison to Chrome, and also their render engine is less supportive of newer features.
100%. When I was studying for my degree, part of the forensics part of things was examining popular browser forensic artefacts. The only thing Incognito mode did was hide it from the UI, otherwise all logging was exactly the same.
For me this is the whole context behind apples walled garden approach from a consumers point of view. Chrome is already like 80% of the desktop market and just like IE back in the day, lots of people will be or are being forced to use it for compatibility reasons.
IOS spared me from that bs. Now if chrome is allowed on iOS worldwide they will force through that market share to the same as desktop. And we have this defacto trojan horse OS masquerading as a browser stealing and lying about its data intake.
I just want to choose to be in an eco system that doesn’t have this issue. And according to half the tech bloggers and various governments I’m not allowed to have that choice.
The most pro choice people in the tech world actively choosing to remove my choice to have a locked off and controlled system.
That’s the way I see it anyway.
IOS spared me from that bs. Now if chrome is allowed on iOS worldwide they will force through that market share to the same as desktop. And we have this defacto trojan horse OS masquerading as a browser stealing and lying about its data intake.
I just want to choose to be in an eco system that doesn’t have this issue. And according to half the tech bloggers and various governments I’m not allowed to have that choice.
The most pro choice people in the tech world actively choosing to remove my choice to have a locked off and controlled system.
That’s the way I see it anyway.
This is why you don't search online on how to hide dead bodies. Buy a book on the topic in a faraway tourist destination. Use cash and wear a covid mask and a cap. Also buy a couple of other books with it so no one gets suspicious.
It is for simple reason. Users' data is key input to Google core business model - ads. They screwed without it. Apple key products are HW and streaming services. Contrary to Google, they can sell privacy as one more product. It's so obvious difference but hardly ever mentioned in such discussions.
You can test this for yourself. Install copies of all the browsers you wish to evaluate, and run the test at coveryourtracks.eff.org
Based on those tests, it appears that Brave and perhaps Epic are quite good.
Notice that, based on the above test, that Brave and perhaps sometimes Epic are the only browsers with a randomized footprint. All other browsers have a unique footprint that allows easy tracking.
For those of you who swear by Apple's Safari, you'll be interested to test Safari using the above test.
It was obvious to me that Incognito was keeping browsing activity private on an individual's computer, or Chrome profile. It did not imply anything about total anonymity on the server side.
Im surprised its not obvious to more people?
As way of comparison, Firefox's version of Incognito tells you this straight up
And did I say or imply anything different?
Also it does not make obvious that your local computer would log your data and send these to the Google even when not visiting Google domains/websites. And that's what was happening in this case.
LOL
Definition of WHATABOUTISM
the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse; also : the response itself —called also whataboutery… See the full definition
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