google knows what you browse
facebook knows who you know
amazon knows what you buy
but for a browser company, isn't a browser extension better than some other way to opt out? otherwise they would have to associate you to an account.
Well the better way would have been to honour the browsers 'Do Not Track' headers, but Google pretty much ignored these, presumably because it would have caused too much impact, which is one of the reasons it failed.
But now, Google could support 'Global Privacy Control' by implementing it in Chrome and honouring GPC headers across Google! That's the obvious way to support an opt-out considering there is an emerging standard and that they own a browser. But... again, it's probably better for them to ignore this from a commercial perspective and in their best interests if GPC fails, so better to implement some shitty add-in that discourages people from opting out (if you want to opt out of tracking from 100 companies, are you expected to have 100 different plugins?).
If the GDPR would make ignoring DNT illegal, that would be great. Is there anyone who honours the DNT header?
Apple even pulled support in Safari as pretty much no advertisers were using it to stop tracking, but some advertisers were (ironically) using the header setting for additional fingerprinting.
Sure - creeps. It distinguishes you from other viewers so is used as another vector to abuse your privacy.
It's not. All this stuff should be opt-in: I shouldn't have to tell people to leave me alone.
at least, this is how it's been argued in the US in the past.
Thanks Google.