Digital fingerprinting is suddenly back and it will be everywhere—here's what you need to know.
cross-posted from: https://fed.dyne.org/post/343234
Google Starts Fingerprint-Tracking All Your Devices In 8 Weeks
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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The worse, it does not only using Google Apps or Services, but more than the half of existing webpages use one or another Google API (at least googleanalytigs and google-tagmanager.which log and spy the visitors and users.
Hard, very hard to avoid it, Googles eyes are everywhere, even in FOSS.
Time to root and degoogle for the unfortunate.
Just install a ROM without gapps and no they won’t
What exactly is the change being made? I don’t see that the article actually explains it anywhere.
So the e-mail I got with them claiming they will delete my location history is a lie?
To the best of my knowledge - from a spirited but doomed attempt to read Google’s privacy policies - Google is committed to deleting your location history after sharing it with 10,000 or so vendor partners.
Each of those vendor partners have pinky promised to comply with the rules outlined in the same privacy policy that I failed to read.
For context, I’m not convinced any living person has read the entirety of Google’s privacy policies.
Sadly, I’m quite confident - by the law of averages, human nature, and corporate corruption - that not all 10,000 trusted partners also deletes our location data history.
Google does take privacy preserving steps to anonymyze what it shares.
My educated opinion is that no amount of attempted anonymozation is sufficient for the breadth, scope and quantity of data that Google collections.
Shorter answer for you: yes, I believe that is a corporate lie. True only in technicality, but likely false by any reasonable persons expectation of what “delete” means.
Their own lawyers, maybe.
Yeah. Their own lawyers have the best chance, but there’s so many pages, combined, I wonder if even one of their lawyers has read everything
Not to defend Google because they violate privacy in many ways, but they absolutely do not share that level of data with partners. This is not some ethical decision. The data is just far too valuable to Google. Google is extracting as much value as they can from users, advertisers, and publishers, and if they sold access to the data itself, publishers and advertisers could begin cutting out Google. Instead Google gives advertisers a lot of control over what users to target, and uses the data inside a black box to show those ads.
Google is hoarding your data and using it to show you ads with minimal built-in opt-outs. But they aren’t sell your data.
TL;DR - Google makes (arguably insane) claim that it previously acted responsibly with regards to fingerprinting, and says they will begin acting irresponsibility with fingerprinting in February.
Practical take-aways you probably already knew:
That would be an interesting experiment. Maybe cancel culture and public shaming will cease whene everyone realizes no one is perfect and lost people do shitty things from time to time.
Like Google maps:
Exactly. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that Google’s clever privacy engineering isn’t enough to keep any of us safe.
Google’s expectation that we be okay with these practices feels like corporate gaslighting, to me.
Thanks! The article was a bit of a tough read for me. Lol
Ditto!
Opt-out!? That’s not even close to being a good solution.
Your data should not be collected, and you should not be tracked, UNLESS you agree yo it, ie opt-in, AND data collection is proportional/appropriate for the stated goal.
That’s the spirit of GDPR.
I didn’t see anything about the implications of this on the EU and GDPR?
*laughs in LineageOS
*laughs in CalyxOS
Laughs in GrapheneOS.
Pretty sure Graphene doesn’t do much about fingerprinting on its own, it’s nearly entirely up to the browser. They mention some of their plans to address that with Vanadium, but make no claims as to how effective it is now (at least on the features page).
It doesn’t have gapps, so you’re good
But, of course, use Tor Browser
No google on device no tracking, and I don’t use google services anyhow (with first party clients anyhow). I do have google play services installed but no google account so they don’t have an identity to connect the data they might be able to collect from the phone. Only google service I use is youtube but that’s with third party clients only (FreeTube & NewPipe) over vpn of course.
Right – all privacy-positive methods to employ, but not helpful for fingerprinting. In fact, some things can make you more susceptible to fingerprinting because they make you more unique (like using a custom OS). It’s all about your browser and what it chooses to send with HTTP requests, how it responds to queries for you device/browser specs (via Javacript). Your OS, system architecture, hardware details, browser type and plugins, etc combine to make a very unique profile tied to your device. It’s especially nefarious because all those bits are cross-referenced over all accounts and devices to make a global profile on you. Even if you’ve never used Facebook, you probably have a shadow profile. If you’ve ever logged into the same service or website account on your de-Googled GrapheneOS device as another machine that does have Google services tracking, then your new device is likely already tied to your identity.
Try this with different browsers – it tests the uniqueness of your device.
Glad I don’t use any Google services and no apps on graphene OS then for my main computers I run Fedora silverblue with no Google once again.
Yes but do you use PiHole and a solid VPN? Do you spoof your browser’s useragent? Even then, some would argue that you are not safe enough from Google’s prying eyes.
TorBrowser does all of this for you.
Doesn’t matter, your browser will be fingerprinted with some embedded JavaScript that works in all modern browsers.
It doesn’t matter if they detect you’re on a VPN when that VPN is shared by tens of thousands or millions of others. Thats literally the point. It prevents fingerprinting by IP
Map car retreats around corner
Ok, if you say so. I have IceCat and Librewolf on computer and FREE Browser on phone.
Whats a Chrome?
I think you put that on your motorbike’s tubes and stuff
Google it