Increased my interest in Vivaldi
... as I'm always rooting for the underdog.
However, isn't Vivaldi one of those browsers that under the hood use the same engine as Google's Chrome?
Google asked rival browser Vivaldi to add uninstall instructions on its website download page – something Google doesn't do itself – after deactivating Vivaldi's advertising account earlier this year. Vivaldi is among the many software vendors that advertise products with the search giant. AdWords customers appear at the top …
"However, isn't Vivaldi one of those browsers that under the hood use the same engine as Google's Chrome?"
Yes, it uses the open source Chromium / Blink engine.
The fact that Google has created a spy wrapper around Blink and calls it Chrome doesn't affect Vivaldi.
"The fact that Google has created a spy wrapper around Blink and calls it Chrome doesn't affect Vivaldi."
Maybe. Maybe Chromium is fine -- I don't have the time or expertise to confirm that, so I take the safer option of just considering Chromium as suspect as Chrome.
I noticed recently that my auto-cookie-deleter kept removing google cookies in Firefox, even if I didn't browse anywhere, so I've just moved to Basilisk (which is based on the early 2017 Firefox), but runs off a Gecko-based rendering engine... So not even using Chromium/Blink.
Google's "Calendar Team" emailed me to say I wasn't using their "official" app, which is odd because I don't know how they knew, as I had ticked the "Don't scan my apps", and I don't link to the Google calendar system (I run my own ownCloud server for calendars)
Anyway, just waiting to find the right phone replacement to drop Android, then I guess the only Google thing I use is YouTube
> Anyway, just waiting to find the right phone replacement to drop Android, then I guess the only Google thing I use is YouTube
Sony Xperia X re-flashed to run Jolla's Sailfish is your only non-Android, non-IOS smartphone option. It's simple enough for a Reg reader to do, less so for the general public.
I doubt it. Vivaldi's user base is tiny compared to Chrome's so I don't reckon this is related.
I've recently stopped using Vivaldi because the team seems to be repeating the Opera mistakes and doing esoteric stuff with a lot of QA problems rather than doing what they originally said they would.
Switch off bluetooth, wifi and location when you are not in your home or actively using it. Saves on battery but more importantly makes you much harder to track. Also, take the time to dig around google's privacy settings pages and disable everything. There's more than one page and some of them are redundant, meaning switching off something on one page doesn't work, you have to do it on all pages. I use an Android mobile and started using Gmail when they weren't yet so evil so it's hard to get around using Googly services, but at least the amount of tracking can be limited. But you have to take the time to opt out of anything you can and hope with crossed fingers they actually honor that.
"You can always run Tor on an android to anonymise yourself, Ihaven't tried it"
Tor on Android is fairly awful.
And doesn't really protect you from Google's tracking. If everything you do at the application layer contains a tracking code then it doesn't really matter what the transport and session layer is.
> For all that google are great at remembering everything anyone has ever done they somehow keep forgetting the restricted privacy settings I enter
Upvoted. Partly because I appreciate the irony you point out, but if I'm honest, it is mainly because there's a part of me that hopes that whatever google analytics beacon is tracking my upvote and downvote patterns may hopefully get the hint.
Yet people love them...
For the life of me, I can't understand why anything coming from Google is used by anyone?????
Granted there are some bits that are extreemly hard to avoid but using their OS('s) and Advertising data collection system knows more about you than you do.
Big Brother in all but name.
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hmm I completly forgot they made everything able to recognise search queries in their form for the various IOT home devices, I'll have to give it another go.
Ask Jeeves for me used to be brilliant, however this was about 14 years ago when Lycos was my second go to search engine.
Ask Jeeves for me used to be brilliant, however this was about 14 years ago when Lycos was my second go to search engine
Never managed to make Jeeves work properly for me. Back in the day, my usual search engines were Altavista or Metacrawler. The simple use of "+", "-" and "quotes around phrases" was a revelation (was it actually introduced by Altavista?)
M.
Apple really are no better, no Facebook, nor Microsoft, Yahoo or pretty much everyone else.
The only difference is what you get for giving up your data. Apple will give you nothing, infact charge you a premium AND still take your data, Microsoft don't really give much, Facebook either, at least with Google, you get quite a decent set of offerings from photo store, gmail, drive, maps etc.
For the life of me, I can't understand why anything coming from Google is used by anyone?????
Possibly because for the most part it actually works, and does so without too much effort on the user's part? Joe Bloggs either doesn't care or doesn't understand (not quite sure which - possibly both) about what Google does or doesn't do with their data and simply sees the convenience of being able to browse using a fairly decent browser, to use email anywhere, to have their photographs synchronised everywhere, to be able to contact people easily on whatever SM platform they prefer.
Joe Bloggs rarely feels even slightly uncomfortable when something they do in one context suddenly appears in another and when you tell him that the reason that happens is because company 'a' passed data about his actions in one place to company 'b', who then targetted him with advertising in another place the usual reaction is "meh".
AC because at the place where I work, central IT does MITM with https. I've tried explaining to people that the padlock which shows when they log into their bank at lunch break does not mean they have a secure connection with the bank, just a secure connection with work's proxy and that IT can potentially log and see everything they do online, including usernames, passwords and potentially sensitive information such as bank statements and that whether or not you trust IT do be sensible with these logs, what happens if there's a breach and the logs are stolen, and "meh" is exactly the reaction I get, followed by placing an Amazon order for a couple of hundred quid.
"AC because at the place where I work, central IT does MITM with https. I've tried explaining to people that the padlock which shows when they log into their bank at lunch break does not mean they have a secure connection with the bank, just a secure connection with work's proxy and that IT can potentially log and see everything they do online, including usernames, passwords and potentially sensitive information such as bank statements and that whether or not you trust IT do be sensible with these logs, what happens if there's a breach and the logs are stolen, and "meh" is exactly the reaction I get, followed by placing an Amazon order for a couple of hundred quid."
The web filter I'm most familiar with, Smoothwall, has a builtin category of sites, mostly banking, which are exempted from https mitm inspection. Sure, you have to trust your IT folks not to override this but I'd have thought most companies other than those needing very high security would realise that it's in everyone's interest to allow their employees this amout of privacy.
"Possibly because for the most part it actually works, ... Joe Bloggs ... simply sees the convenience..."
IMO, this is an important bit that doesn't get enough attention. People often work within parameters they do not set. Often the time and energy involved exceeds what is available. Yeah, I've downloaded, installed, and troubleshot Ubuntu on my laptops. I can use apt-get fairly well. Ask me if I can get a calendar to work across all my devices, including my android phone and tablet.
Much as the thought makes me cringe, I'm actually toying with going all Google or all Apple because I simply don't have the discretionary time & energy to spend getting shit to work. This is where Google and Apple excel. Their shit simply works. I need to make ONE entry into ONE calendar when I book a freelance gig, NOT be asked anything by my software, and have it show up on EVERY device because I do NOT choose which device I have at hand when booking a gig or checking my availability. I need to be able to start an invoice on one device and continue it on another.
Most of my colleagues use Apple. I ask why and the answer is always variations of, "It just works."
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"You're always known, because you're always logged in."
No, I'm not.
On a computer, I log in for specific purposes, and when I am done I log out again. Oh my phone, I sometimes remain logged in for longer, but I do log back out again eventually.
Although when I tried to do so the other day I discovered I couldn't. There is no 'log-out' option that I've found on a phone other than to "remove" the Google account, but it now won't let me do that. (My "administrator" says no, apparently). So I promptly logged in on the PC and kicked the phone off the account from there.
Now I seem to have an alert that I can't get rid of - "Google Play services - Account Action Required - <my registered email>"
The account action that is required? AFAICS, it just wants me to sign in.
Go to hell, you bastards.
I'm starting to hate Google more and more...They're getting more like the government every day.
Don't waste all your hate on Google. Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, credit card processors, cable companies, credit bureaus, and many more are all in the tracking business, and most are more opaque and aggressive than Google.
Re government -- private companies' surveillance systems are far less constrained than those of most any democratic government, because we click away our rights. It's probably just a matter of time before .govs adopt the same model. Before you can get a driver's license, passport, police or fire response, board a plane, pay your taxes, etc. you'll have to agree to a Google-style 30-page TOS that waives all of those pesky "rights" and "freedoms" that prevent Big Bro from keeping us under control safe from terrorists.
You of course forgot apple, ironically laughing all the way to the bank, not only selling all the same details as the others, but charging a premium for their products too, and creating a reality shield that actually has their believers oblivious to what's going on. They even refuse to read the apple privacy policy for fear of finding out things that they don't want to know....
I'm starting to hate Google more and more.
They're getting more like the government every day.
Where do you think Google came from? Two young guys at Stanford had the capital to build the company? NSA etc. saw the pothential and made sure they were bankrolled. they are the govt...
That's clearly the objective of this fake news. Its easy to work this out.
1/ read the screenshot of the reply and read the requirements for uninstall instructions
2/ go to chrome download website and clearly see google DO actually meet their own requirements
3/ wonder what the hidden agenda is
4/ wonder why there are so many dumb rabid google haters here that don't bother fact checking and just let into whatever the baiters want them to believe.
Andrew why did you post the link to Chrome install page rather than an advert for Chrome? I thought the article was talking about adverts.
Interestingly, I turned my ad-blocker off in Firefox for a few minutes and could not get one single advert for Chrome to appear across a number of sites, so I'm not sure how you verified that Google don't follow their own rules in adverts.
Came up for me over two browsers (one of them chrome) by searching for "chrome download" straight away. Nothing on the page itself is an uninstall guide but there is a terms & conditions link in the page footer.
Ad blockers also don't affect these Paid search ads at the top of the page.