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Comment by mnw21cam | Hacker News Reader

Just a PSA - I (and probably others) find the "Sign in with Google" pop-over extremely annoying. It annoys me both because it's over the top of stuff I might want to read, and also because it's Google threatening to tell this web site who I am even though I have no desire whatsoever to do that. Please hide it behind a login button or otherwise only show it when the visitor has actually demonstrated a desire to log in specifically using Google.

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Staying logged out off Google at all times is slowly becoming basic web browsing hygiene. Picture a situation:

- You interact with a bot in a mostly-idle, public chatroom (such as !commands on Twitch)

- Bot pastes a url-shortened link that redirects you to a Google doc

- Anyone who had that document already open can now link your Twitch identity to your Google identity (which may include real name+photo)

Granted this particular vector has been open for well over a decade, it may just catch you off guard sooner or later.

How would they be able to link that? Document owners can't see non-domain users who viewed a particular document (and even for domain users, that can be disabled).

My recollection is that, at the top-right corner of the screen, you can see the email addresses of the other people who are currently editing the document (but not those who did in the past). If they aren't logged in, you'll see them as names like 'Anonymous Aardvark' instead.

That is inaccurate. You only see individuals with whom you have directly shared the document with and/or people in your domain (if a business/enterprise customer). For anything link shared, you see the anonymous animal names.

+1. I find it bizarre that so many web designers values their site so low as to sacrifice a quarter of the screen on the off chance of a signup. Stop a minute and think of the UX for people who aren’t Google customers.

It's probably not the designers. In my experience, the pushback is something like

"I know it doesn't make sense, but the VP wants this so just make it happen"

There's a way to disable this! I found this out recently (I've only checked with Chrome, but it's a google setting not a Chrome one):

https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/219332922/how-to-...

On Firefox at least that flow says it's only for Android devices.

> Allow Google to display a sign-in prompt on Android. Learn more about sign-in prompts on Android[0]

with a section below saying Chrome itself has settings as well

> To manage third-party sign-ins on Chrome, go to Chrome Settings. Learn more about sign-in prompts on Chrome[1]

[0] links to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12849458?p=androi...

[1] links to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12849458?p=chrome...

I followed the above link, and it seems that it's a Chrome setting now: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/14264742

Will setting that other than default default give the site one more bit to fingerprint you?

Looks like that only works if you’re a Google customer?

This uBlock Origin custom filter suppresses the popup.

    ||accounts.google.com/gsi/*$xhr,script,3p

It's always the 1st one I install.

If you don't use uBlock Origin, you can also pihole or otherwise block the domain accounts.google.com. This is surprisingly non-destructive to active Google sessions, though you can't create new ones with it blocked.

Go to

chrome://settings/content/federatedIdentityApi

enable: Block sign-in prompts from identity services

See: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/343584523

It's especially annoying how it shows your profile pic, name, and email address on screen.

I've seen the gmail addresses of so many twitch streamers who were capturing their screen without knowing that would happen. Most of them with addresses they'd rather not be public.

>Just a PSA - I (and probably others) find the "Sign in with Google" pop-over extremely annoying.

So much this, it's 100% and antipattern. It often causes me to just close out of page unless the content is actually something I really want to see. I have several google accounts associated with my gmail, so the box is often kinda big and I'm afraid I'm going to accidentally subscribe one of them to something.

This and I also found that this pop up often sort of crashes and is displayed on all tabs and it's not possible to close it...

At least that's me on Chrome.

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