Google is sued in U.S. for tracking users' 'private' internet browsing | Hacker News Reader

Google is sued in U.S. for tracking users' 'private' internet browsing

reuters.com

82 pointspseudolus38 comments

If you are not str8 and not out about your proclivities Facebook, Google, ATT, etc will out you indirectly (your friend, parent or partner needs to be smart though).

Example you have a bi or gay app on your phone.. you visit such websites, etc ... Facebook, Google, etc will start showing you ads geared towards things bi or gay people like. Now say you share your phone or your TV service with someone who doesn't know your proclivities and they are smart ... they will see the ads your being served are a lot of ads geared towards bi or gay people. Though on their phone and on their TV service they aren't seeing such ads. YouTube TV and ATT TV Now are the worst ... watching TV with your family members or partner or whoever and bam they are running such ads and all in the room watching too can see.

Im open about my proclivities, but many are not and FB, Google, etc have no business invading users' privacy & potentially ruining user's lives for their piggy bank. You will see old guys on Facebook complaining .. why am I seeing this disgusting ad ... ummm, the guy is looking at gay and bi content that is why, yet never came to terms with it nor ever could. Though that's his business and these companies have no right to invade our privacy like this!

Somehow Facebook managed to do to this to me despite having no FB-owned apps on my phone, using Firefox with the Facebook Container addon, and not having exposed that information on Facebook directly or through group membership or search history.

Unless they're reading my facebook messenger messages, I have no clue how they would have discerned that piece of information.

They do read your facebook messenger messages.

Then they can go fuck themselves.

They should be sued for this too!

Fb track you all over the internet. Not just on Facebook.

Did you sign up for that. Did you provide informed consent for it or did you not?

That's what Facebook Container extension is for.

Yes you have to treat facebook as hostile malware. This is the only way and it isn't close to being fully effective.

The question was did you sign up for this? Did you give informed consent for this or did you not?

> Unless they're reading my facebook messenger messages, I have no clue how they would have discerned that piece of information.

Facebook Messenger is not end to end encrypted, unlike WhatsApp (which is, but shares metadata with Facebook). Of course it’s reading your messenger messages as much as it’s reading posts on Facebook to see what the content is about and how to use it to build a better profile of you to show you and your contacts more “relevant ads”.

Consider Facebook Messenger like a private closed group on Facebook. Just the interface and conversation models are different.

I’m completely against Google and avoid its applications and services, but this sounds like a nonsense case with no merit. Yes, users may not understand that private browsing doesn’t prevent websites from tracking them, but the notice is clearly displayed on the browser window every time an incognito window is opened.

> Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesman, said the Mountain View, California-based company will defend itself vigorously against the claims.

> “As we clearly state each time you open a new incognito tab, websites might be able to collect information about your browsing activity,” he said.

This is why I gave up on Chrome and Android even though I loved both products.

I don't know if this complaint is valid and what the exact scope is. However, since switching to Safari and iPhone, I no longer constantly need to be on the alert about my privacy.

I strongly believe that Google's business model will always push them to exploit my privacy if there is an extra buck to be made.

You seem to trust Apple a lot more than I do. Why not go a step further and use Firefox/Tor?

I trust Firefox as well. It was my second choice. I had two reasons for not switching to Firefox.

1. Firefox used a lot more memory & CPU on my MBP. Maybe that is fixed now. I remember reading that they worked on the footprint.

2. The large majority of Firefox's revenue is (indirectly) driven by ads from Google. I just wanted to get out of the ad swamp once and for all.

Add to the list that Firefox doesn't have good security compared to Chromium variants, like proper per site process isolation.

I use Firefox on Android for regular browsing. I've also configured the default browser to be Firefox Focus, meaning that every time I click a link it opens a disposable session with no history available.

I guess I could still be tracked based on IP address as I'm not normally using Tor. Ublock and Privacy Badger does help there, I guess, but while it's not foolproof I do believe it's better than just assuming that Apple will take care of privacy for you.

I honestly don't think this has legs. The incognito mode in most browsers that I've tried informs you that you can still be tracked through javascript/google-analytics. What are they supposed to do, figure out that you're in incognito mode and ignore the data that they've got from your IP address and your mouse movement and all the other things they track?

The other way around - google's browser could figure out that it's a google analytics snippet and not run it. Kind of like the existing google analytics chrome opt-out extension does.

Yep, sounds like an attempt at a cash grab and nothing more.

This is a law suit over Google Analytics and JavaScript based tracking, not browser based tracking in Incognito mode.

It's hard to make that argument when you control the browsing device that tells users that they are in private mode, but then identify specific devices and users from the other end of the network with your other product.

Chrome's Incognito mode is pretty clear about what it does, and clearly states the fact that websites and ISPs can still track you.

Private Browsing has never been about hiding your traffic from analytics AFAIK. It's about your local browser history only.

Google is not the ambiguous other "websites and ISPs." They are the ones making the claim that you are in private mode with a Google product, even though you aren't.

Users don't know how things work. They read that as if Google is respecting privacy, not tracking everything they do.

Yup. Here's what it says precisely:

> Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won't see your activity. However, downloads and bookmarks will be saved. Learn more

> Chrome won't save the following information:

> Your browsing history

> Cookies and site data

> Information entered in forms

> Your activity might still be visible to:

> Websites you visit

> Your employer or school

> Your internet service provider

Seems pretty clear.

One more to add:

> Google

Last I checked, Google was a website.

Google is a company. Their tracking code isn't a website. It doesn't mention to users that that their private browsing mode doesn't actually protect users from their other products.

Yes, because it is not relevant. The website the user is browsing is what decided to put Google Analytics code on their page. It is their responsibility to tell their users that Google will get this data.

I think that would be a disingenuous argument from Google. Google is directly receiving the analytics data and then feeding only a portion of it to the website. They know that users are easily confused and don't fully understand that one Google product doesn't respect another Google product's "privacy" settings. Most of them probably don't even know what Google Analytics is or how Google makes money by tracking them.

There is no 'privacy' setting being flouted, other than one that's been entirely imagined up by commenters here.

In fact, if anything people should be against this kind of interaction between two completely independent arms of Google. Isn't that what the "Break Google Up" crowd wanted?

Right, just imagine the outcry if Chrome were working on countermeasures for incognito mode detection but also sent a proprietary message to Google Analytics to identity when someone is in incognito mode....

I'm not sure what it has to do with breaking up Google. I'm just saying that they are leading users to think that Google will stop tracking them if they turn on Google's private browsing mode.

The average user doesn't know what private browsing really mode means. If Google says you are in private browsing mode and that some other "websites and ISPs" might still track you, they aren't being clear that Google itself is still knowingly tracking you.

Note that it says that Chrome will not save said information. It does not (even the "learn more" pages, sorry, I couldn't be bothered to dive deep into the ToS over minor internet discussions) say anywhere that Google will not save said data. It does say that it won't be saved to _your_ Google account but that could mean a lot of things.

Of course, it doesn't mean anything, it is just paranoid thinking. A major multibillion corporation with a business based on tracking and advertising wouldn't simply store your "private" data for any reason, especially when there was no way to find out about it, enforce it not to, and punish it, if it transgressed.

Does it specifically say that although Chrome doesn’t save the information Google is saving it? The distinction between “Chrome won’t save information” and “information won’t be saved” is legally important to Google and intentionally unclear/misleading to the average Chrome user.

Firefox's private browsing feature blocks tracking scripts. Edge's doesn't as far as I can tell, and I haven't looked into the behavior of smaller Chromium-based browsers.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...

People are naïve when it comes to this: had a manager some years ago who used to watch porn usin company's phone in private mode.Got asked to attend a meeting in the head office just to be shown pages upon pages of browsing activities he had,while at work. Nearly got kicked out. In my current job I did tell pretty much everyone ( to their surprise) that private mode won't stop me from asking network logs from our IT support company.

I thought the recent revelation was that Chrome tracks you with a unique ID except in incognito mode.

Nothing to do with incognito mode. This is a complaint against browser fingerprinting by using multiple devices to create a unique identifier of a user.

There's almost no information here. Can somebody find a substantive source?

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