Has anyone else noticed random popups on 3rd party websites asking for google sign in?
I even used firefox when it happened:
https://imgur.com/a/JC52lBV (lequipe.fr)
https://imgur.com/a/VSM3Uk9 (reddit.com)
https://imgur.com/a/KpVCYBL (medium.com)
https://imgur.com/a/JC52lBV (lequipe.fr)
https://imgur.com/a/VSM3Uk9 (reddit.com)
https://imgur.com/a/KpVCYBL (medium.com)
This implies that Google already knows that it's you when it shows the sign-in prompt on some 3rd party website and they are already tracking you there even though you are not signed in. Lovely. Not that you'd expected anything else from Google.
A further issue with this is that Google knows you're on that website because the referrer and request headers will have that on the IFrame request.
Edit. I think I replied on the wrong post here.
There's a fundamental conflict between privacy and convenience, because I have to either allow no third-party cookies, which means no one can embed any authenticated content from a third-party context (think Disqus comments on a blog), or I have to allow third-party tracking. The middle ground -- allowing some third-party cookies but not others -- is a UX nightmare. Just trying to explain the situation to an average user, at all, is nearly impossible, much less interrupting every visit to every site with "Can I use cookies from {site 2} here? How about {site 3,4,5...112}?".
Just confirmed this does seem to stop the annoying login popups from Medium, etc.
I tried to figure out how to disable that a few months ago but my google-fu was weak and it seemed like nobody knew how to do it.
I complained to Google. I have a GSuites domain and I don't want my users to be able to sign up via Google. No resolution. I suggest you all complain too
I semi worked around it by adding accounts.google.com to my ublock origin block list but about once a month I have to turn it off to allow me to log into Google.
Note: I'm not against google. I am against this auto-popup. The logical conclusion is you'll go to a page and get 6 of those popups or more. One to sign up with Google, one to sign up with Apple. One to sign up with Facebook. One to sign up with Linkedin, etc...
The design of that system by google is not a good design based on the idea that if everyone did it it would be bad. Google should top it. If I click "sign up" on the sight then let the site offer me "login with X" and don't contect X until I click "login with X"
That is one example of a dark pattern.
||accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select$subdocument
It blocks just the popups and not the login page itself. But Google may change their methods at any time to circumvent it, so your way is more robust.
This is where uBO's dynamic filtering[1] is useful, as it allows you to globally block `accounts.google.com`, and then unblock it only for specific sites by overriding the global block rule with a local noop rule.
* * *
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu...
Happened to me as well. So i guess their plan worked. So glad they care about my privacy.
There is a workaround to add custom addons, though: https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect/issu...
On the desktop it still usable with old.reddit.com.
But honestly it's probably for the best, less time wasted.
This uBlock Origin rule blocks the popups at least:
##iframe[src*="accounts.google.com/gsi"]
I knew that I was being tracked, but that was a bit too "in my face" to ignore it.
It's funny because there's nothing new about those login popups - I already knew conceptually that kind of thing was possible - but seeing your little avatar picture show up where it doesn't belong provokes a much more direct reaction than abstract knowledge.
https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google
Installable from the Firefox extension "store".
I suspect some bizdev people at Google just had a "great idea".
When I first saw it on Pinterest, it took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at as a web developer of 20 years. My girlfriend still didn't get it after I was explaining it to her. How does anyone else have a shot at arriving at "oh, so the site doesn't actually have access to this information that's being displayed on the site."
When I was younger, I thought good UX design was obvious, something all of us had intuition for as users ourselves. All you do is put yourself in the user's shoes and ask basic questions and use basic empathy. Of course, now being in software for so long, I realize it's one of the rarest and most unrecognized skills.