
Visit inducing lingo.
"We believe that we as a community can, and must, do better."
I guess it sounds better than
"We believe that we as a privacy violating, data harvesting, multi billion dollar advertising company can, and must, do better."
On Tuesday, Google published an update on its Privacy Sandbox proposal, a plan thoroughly panned last summer as a desperate attempt to redefine privacy in a way that's compatible with the ad slinger's business. In a blog post, Justin Schuh, director of Chrome engineering, asked the web community for help to increase the …
We already have Green-washing. Now the devil himself is Ad-washing? Or what is going on here?
A future quote from the devil:
Your privacy is very important to Google. We certainly do not share your data with you, therefore, it will be private by definition. Google will be the only one who has access to your private data. We ensure your privacy in every way and prevent you from sharing your private life to anybody, including yourself. Google knows how to handle all your private data and can therefore be trusted to keep it safe from you.
> Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Bennett Cyphers said there doesn't appear to have been much community interest in Google's proposals.
Why would there be much interest? Google proposal is a bad joke, designed to allow the practice of tracking people under the thin veil of being "protective of privacy".
That said, killing third party cookies can only be a good thing.
I started disabling third-party cookies in Firefox and Chrome the day I learned about them. Then I stopped using Chrome when Google released its hypocritical V3 Manifest, soon before Firefox strengthened its anti-tracking features. I only launch Chrome if a website doesn't load properly to check whether it's browser or plugin-related (UBlock, Privacy Badger and Cookie Autodelete - NoScript prevents so many websites from working I was always whitelisting). Or maybe I should launch MS Edge in those cases ;)
Whitelisting is the only safe approach, and then only if you've reverse engineered the JavaScript and know it's not been changed since you did so.
Every corporate user security policy I've ever examined (and that's over some 20 years) states "thou shalt not download software and run it on your work computer". So we hand folks a wide open web browser with JavaScript (and even maybe Flash) enabled by default, which effectively breaches the policy whenever they browse the web.
Doesn't seem like compliance (or security) to me.
Google, you could start by:
- Stop logging all searches
- Stop scanning and reading gmail users emails (Yes, google still does this)
- Stop scanning and using peoples personal files in your cloud services for marketing or other purposes
- Stop trying to track everyone around the web
- Stop storing the tons of data you do from android users (for advertising/statistics)
- Stop using your chrome browser as a means to target users with ads more easily
- etc
In fact, Google, just stop being Google. To be honest, when Google say "We care about your privacy" I can't help but laugh.
but they DO care. Possibly, there's no other company in the world that cares SO MUCH about your privacy which is, essentially, their bottom line. Well, maybe except Amazon. And Microsoft. And all other usual suspects. THEY. ALL. CARE.
Google just became aware that it no longer needs 3rd party cookies (which it can't control fully) when it can control the very tool people use to browse the web - all the data 3rd party cookies and tracking techniques attempt to use are already there - and without any chance for the user to block it (but using a different browser, of course).
Thereby the more control Google has on user data, the more advertisers have to pay Google for targeting through that data...
Whenever a security breach is found, most responsible people patch to fix the problem.
Third-party cookies are one such breach, and yet google will do something in 2 years time?
As for user agents, all mine have been "stuck" at the same thing (well, updated perioidically to match the latest and most popular version) for years.
Anyone who tries to assume browser-capabilities based on user-agent string can sod off. This ain't the 90's
(We need a "grumpy old man" icon)
Anyone who tries to assume browser-capabilities based on user-agent string can sod off. This ain't the 90's
A year or so back I changed my user agent string to the IE6 one to check out obsolete browser handling, got interrupted before I changed it back and then knocked off for the day. Next morning I'd forgotten about this and was baffled by many web sites including the Google search page looking remarkably like flashbacks to the 90s. I don't know if that still happens, but doing this to an unsuspecting colleague's browser might provide a gentle amusement for a Friday afternoon if it's still the case .
I imagine that it's still the case since the User Agent String seems to be the only clue the server has as to what capabilities the user's browser has. As a communication tool, UA strings would seem to leave a **LOT** to be desired. But I'm not sure that I trust Google to fix them properly. Entirely too much of a "What Big Teeth You Have Grandma" element in that situation.
Google has a fresh list of reasons why it opposes tech antitrust legislation making its way through Congress but, like others who've expressed discontent, the ad giant's complaints leave out mention of portions of the proposed law that address said gripes.
The law bill in question is S.2992, the Senate version of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), which is closer than ever to getting votes in the House and Senate, which could see it advanced to President Biden's desk.
AICOA prohibits tech companies above a certain size from favoring their own products and services over their competitors. It applies to businesses considered "critical trading partners," meaning the company controls access to a platform through which business users reach their customers. Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta in one way or another seemingly fall under the scope of this US legislation.
Google is winding down its messaging app Hangouts before it officially shuts in November, the web giant announced on Monday.
Users of the mobile app will see a pop-up asking them to move their conversations onto Google Chat, which is yet another one of its online services. It can be accessed via Gmail as well as its own standalone application. Next month, conversations in the web version of Hangouts will be ported over to Chat in Gmail.
Updated Another kicking has been leveled at American tech giants by EU regulators as Italy's data protection authority ruled against transfers of data to the US using Google Analytics.
The ruling by the Garante was made yesterday as regulators took a close look at a website operator who was using Google Analytics. The regulators found that the site collected all manner of information.
So far, so normal. Google Analytics is commonly used by websites to analyze traffic. Others exist, but Google's is very much the big beast. It also performs its analysis in the USA, which is what EU regulators have taken exception to. The place is, after all, "a country without an adequate level of data protection," according to the regulator.
After offering free G Suite apps for more than a decade, Google next week plans to discontinue its legacy service – which hasn't been offered to new customers since 2012 – and force business users to transition to a paid subscription for the service's successor, Google Workspace.
"For businesses, the G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available after June 27, 2022," Google explains in its support document. "Your account will be automatically transitioned to a paid Google Workspace subscription where we continue to deliver new capabilities to help businesses transform the way they work."
Small business owners who have relied on the G Suite legacy free edition aren't thrilled that they will have to pay for Workspace or migrate to a rival like Microsoft, which happens to be actively encouraging defectors. As noted by The New York Times on Monday, the approaching deadline has elicited complaints from small firms that bet on Google's cloud productivity apps in the 2006-2012 period and have enjoyed the lack of billing since then.
A former Google video producer has sued the internet giant alleging he was unfairly fired for blowing the whistle on a religious sect that had all but taken over his business unit.
The lawsuit demands a jury trial and financial restitution for "religious discrimination, wrongful termination, retaliation and related causes of action." It alleges Peter Lubbers, director of the Google Developer Studio (GDS) film group in which 34-year-old plaintiff Kevin Lloyd worked, is not only a member of The Fellowship of Friends, the exec was influential in growing the studio into a team that, in essence, funneled money back to the fellowship.
In his complaint [PDF], filed in a California Superior Court in Silicon Valley, Lloyd lays down a case that he was fired for expressing concerns over the fellowship's influence at Google, specifically in the GDS. When these concerns were reported to a manager, Lloyd was told to drop the issue or risk losing his job, it is claimed.
Google Cloud's Anthos on-prem platform is getting a new home under the search giant’s recently announced Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) portfolio, where it will live on as a software-based competitor to AWS Outposts and Microsoft Azure Stack.
Introduced last fall, GDC enables customers to deploy managed servers and software in private datacenters and at communication service provider or on the edge.
Its latest update sees Google reposition Anthos on-prem, introduced back in 2020, as the bring-your-own-server edition of GDC. Using the service, customers can extend Google Cloud-style management and services to applications running on-prem.
Democrat lawmakers want the FTC to investigate Apple and Google's online ad trackers, which they say amount to unfair and deceptive business practices and pose a privacy and security risk to people using the tech giants' mobile devices.
US Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) and House Representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) requested on Friday that the watchdog launch a probe into Apple and Google, hours before the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, clearing the way for individual states to ban access to abortions.
In the days leading up to the court's action, some of these same lawmakers had also introduced data privacy bills, including a proposal that would make it illegal for data brokers to sell sensitive location and health information of individuals' medical treatment.
Spyware developed by Italian firm RCS Labs was used to target cellphones in Italy and Kazakhstan — in some cases with an assist from the victims' cellular network providers, according to Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG).
RCS Labs customers include law-enforcement agencies worldwide, according to the vendor's website. It's one of more than 30 outfits Google researchers are tracking that sell exploits or surveillance capabilities to government-backed groups. And we're told this particular spyware runs on both iOS and Android phones.
We understand this particular campaign of espionage involving RCS's spyware was documented last week by Lookout, which dubbed the toolkit "Hermit." We're told it is potentially capable of spying on the victims' chat apps, camera and microphone, contacts book and calendars, browser, and clipboard, and beam that info back to base. It's said that Italian authorities have used this tool in tackling corruption cases, and the Kazakh government has had its hands on it, too.
Brave Software, maker of a privacy-oriented browser, on Wednesday said its surging search service has exited beta testing while its Goggles search personalization system has entered beta testing.
Brave Search, which debuted a year ago, has received 2.5 billion search queries since then, apparently, and based on current monthly totals is expected to handle twice as many over the next year. The search service is available in the Brave browser and in other browsers by visiting search.brave.com.
"Since launching one year ago, Brave Search has prioritized independence and innovation in order to give users the privacy they deserve," wrote Josep Pujol, chief of search at Brave. "The web is changing, and our incredible growth shows that there is demand for a new player that puts users first."
Special report Seven months from now, assuming all goes as planned, Google Chrome will drop support for its legacy extension platform, known as Manifest v2 (Mv2). This is significant if you use a browser extension to, for instance, filter out certain kinds of content and safeguard your privacy.
Google's Chrome Web Store is supposed to stop accepting Mv2 extension submissions sometime this month. As of January 2023, Chrome will stop running extensions created using Mv2, with limited exceptions for enterprise versions of Chrome operating under corporate policy. And by June 2023, even enterprise versions of Chrome will prevent Mv2 extensions from running.
The anticipated result will be fewer extensions and less innovation, according to several extension developers.
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