Disable Google Chrome Sign In and Sync (opens in new tab)

The day is not that far, when you look to buy say car insurance, and you get $XYZ as a quote. Your ur friend gets $ABC where $ABC <<< $XYZ. Why? because the profile that all these corporation built on you seems to suggest you have the character profile of a 19 year old.

Is there a way you could prevent this? Yes, if you care about privacy and not let someone build that database in the first place.

It's not only/always the NSA that we need to worry about.. You can already see this in some sense. A flight ticket could cost more if you look for it using a Mac instead of a PC. The road to creepy data mess is not that far.

This is an old as time debate of "Security vs Convenience".

It's a lot easier to maintain web servers if they are only using the http protocol and not https. Does that mean I should not enable https? Same thing with letting Google start to categorize and selling your profile to organizations. It might be nice now, but in 5-10 years what will the landscape look like?

It's ultimately your choice to determine how much of your information you are willing to give up for the sake of convenience but you should think a little more about what the future could look like and start putting in some safeguards to protect yourself in the future.

Every feature you've listed works without forced log-in. Taking away the choice to share everything about one's life with an ad company is what people are angry about.

From what I've read, the main objection to this isn't the linking of the accounts for people who want it, it's that there's no way to opt out for people who want to use Google services on the web but don't want to log into the browser itself at all. I don't think there's any reason that they couldn't make it so that logging into Chrome automatically logs you into your Google account on the web as well without doing the reverse as well. To me, this feels like an even worse version of the "opt-in by default" issue; to opt out, you also have to opt out of logging into any Google accounts at all while in Chrome, which is a huge ask even for privacy-minded people who don't want to log into the browser itself.

> or ratting me out to the NSA or something. But thus far they haven't.

I think in a post-Snowden world that is a pretty bold assumption.

You get that cool stuff because you are signed into your Google Account on your laptop and on your phone. The controversy is over the new behavior of being signed into your Chrome browser by default. Do you really want by default to have your browsing history sent to Google?

The thing is that you opted into the services you gave examples of, you aren't opting into the Chrome sign-in, it's forced upon you.

No one had a problem with Facebook collecting tons of meta data, until one day, it mattered. One more link in the chain that ties users down, everyone is complacent while slowly becoming a product.

Also, even those of us who care about privacy are not all outraged about this. I have been using Chrome Sync (with a clientside encryption passphrase) for years. It always surprised me that there were separate login states for gmail and the browser. This change saves me a step, and reduces user confusion too.

I use and appreciate those conveniences too, without having ever signed in to Chrome or using Chrome Sync.

Many privacy-conscious people make all the same tradeoffs that everyone else does; like you, they've decided that what they're giving up is worth what they're getting in return. The problem with this change is that for many people there is no benefit and they were not asked, so they feel they are having something forcefully taken away from them without getting anything in return.

"Because the experience is so nice."

If the experience is "so nice" why are so many people outraged? The data suggests this is a terrible experience to look up and suddenly see you've been auto-logged into a browser without your consent. Terrible UX.

I think this is my favorite quote for discussions that start out like yours:

“Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. – Edward Snowden”

Maybe I'm foolish, but I have this hope that a shift from the "make money off of mining your data" business model to something else, perhaps like crypto/tokens enable, might just enable the convenience you speak of, without forcing me to sell my information because everyone else didn't care to value their data.

The point is that it is forced and you have to opt out, rather than opt in.

100% agree with you. This is one of the main reasons why I switched to Chrome. I can understand that some people value their privacy, but for those cases why don't just use a browser like Firefox.

Can you give one example of a convenience you got from being signed in to the Chrome browser? All of your examples would work without that.

While you're completely on the mark with this, I noticed that Google pulls the new Microsoft now that it has almost a quasi monopoly on the desktop: Most of the new, complex UIs by Google services (read: GCP Cloud Console, all of Google Marketing Platform) are slowing my Firefox to a grinding halt, often times even crashing the tab.

No problems in Chrome whatsoever. It's the only thing I'm using Chrome for these days and I can't help shake the same ugly feeling than when I was forced using Internet Explorer for government websites purely because of their ActiveX plugins back in the days.

>Suddenly, you are no longer fighting your browser.

I mean, if you're okay with Pocket showing you ads in your home page, your browsing data being sent to Cliqz, addons that publicise the "Mr Robot" TV show being installed without your consent, Mozilla pages that use Google Analytics scripts that cannot be blocked, then Firefox is a solid choice.

Except they wiped clear their extension "store" semi-recently and there are still things I need which do not exist. Every time there's a flareup of "Chrome is evil" I take a look, and then close Firefox with "still not for me".

I'll add one more to your side note.

Please tell your particularly non technical friends and relatives to avoid Google like plague if they care about privacy. Show them how - give a link to Firefox, Privacy badger.

A relative of mine who paid $7/month for a VPN service because he cared about his privacy from ISP, but was using Google Chrome and Gmail for sensitive personal Email. Fewer people from the non-engineering world know/understand what we assume is common sense. When you get a chance please don't hesitate to tell people of better choices.

Ditching Chrome is not an option for the security conscious; there is no other browser that has the security resources dedicated to it that Chrome has. It’s not even close.

I've got Firefox in my Pocket, and it is just as bad as Chrome. I try to watch videos, but hardware acceleration has too high of an ohm. My CEO donated to Prop 8 and thinks JavaScript is great. I think I will just go paste about Firefox being the best, when really I am just a Mozilla fanboy that pretends to know better than the rest.

Because my employer forces me to use G Suite and some of the features of that (Meet) don't work well (or at all) in non-Chrome browsers.

Chrome has become the de facto standard browser. I regularly run into websites that don't work (or don't work well) in Firefox.

Why is Chrome "needed"? I would imagine merely having a standards-compliant browser is the only thing you need?

In which case, why not Firefox?

As creepy as the Mozilla Maintenance Service.

Yes, it's only a matter of time until Chrome removes this flag, just like they removed developer support for disabling the autofill in web forms.

> I have a nagging suspicion that Google hoovered up my browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, etc. in the guise of "sync".

It does save some state even when you erase all your history. You can log into GMail, then go to your history and click to erase all history, after which the history settings page will scroll down (to hide the fact you're still logged into this sync thing?), and then when you go to GMail you're logged in again, effectively making Google bypass you clearing your cookies.

This automatic link does not automatically enable Chrome Sync[1]. You can see and delete Chrome Sync data here: https://myaccount.google.com/dashboard

[1]https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1044110733108101120

> They are quickly losing many users.

While I'd also like to think this, the reality is that any number of users they've lost would be negligible at best.

It worked on Chrome Version 69.0.3497.100 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Ubuntu 16.04 but it didn't work with Chromium Version 69.0.3497.81 (Official Build)

Chromium kept signing me into my Google account.

This no longer works in Chrome Canary (71).

EDIT: to be clear you can configure the setting, but it's not respected anymore.

Former Chrome engineer confirming my report here: https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/1043861647247515649.

I would also like to know if there is some kind of network blocking that could be employed. But likely everything goes through google.com ...

Then, they will run the service behind a crucial Google address / web page. Then what?

You install extensions the same way with Chromium. I don't understand how this could be hard to figure out.

I heard Firefox OS is awesome.

The easiest way is to switch to another browser.

> if you just log in into a Google Account it automatically activates Google Sync without any prompts and starts uploading browser history data and other no-Google properties related browser data?

No, it does not.

https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1044110733108101120

I think people would rather trade their security for convenience, which in the first place is why Chrome is so popular, with its inbuilt tie-in to Google services. Sure, you could provide an open-source browser that's security focused, but what makes it compelling to the end-user to switch away from Chrome? I don't think many laymen particularly care about this situation.

Yes.