I imagine you get questions related to Chrome all the time so I apologise for yet another one. It seems people love to hate on Chrome but I never truly understood why.
The main and only issue I see people talking about is the lack of privacy, but how bad is this actually because no one ever seems to go into detail about it? I feel like we naturally lack a certain level of privacy whenever we browse the internet due to websites needing to know where we are in the world and often needing browser/computer specs. I’m mainly curious if the lack of privacy is so severe that Chrome and in turn Google know exactly what I’m doing at all times. Do they track me to such a degree that they know I’m about to submit a post onto this specific subreddit? Or is it more of a case of that they just know I’m on reddit and that’s it?
I was considering switching to Firefox due to this worry but I’m starting to question if maybe people are just overreacting, or there are people out there who really don’t want to leave even a single spec of their presence (The people who also tend to use VPN’s to hide their activities). I honestly don’t mind if websites sorta watch me for advertising purposes. It just depends on how specific the info they get from me is.
Depends on how much you care about it. They track everything you do on one of their services. Chrome itself is one of them. Since it’s not open source we don’t know certainly which is the 100% of the data Google knows about you. They know your name, even you didn’t input it to them, they know your location, your search history, what do you write, the content you like.
Do they track me to such a degree I’m about to submit a post onto a specific subreddit?
Who knows, I don’t think so but that’s my opinion.
My advice: Use Brave or Firefox, the same way you use Chrome, even if you use Google services, at least Google won’t know about your activity on third party places.
You don’t want to be tracked while you search something? Use DuckDuckGo.
No need to use VPNs or similar solutions unless you really have to hide something. That’s another debate.
One of the problems with privacy at least in the U.S. is that it’s based often on an “expectation” of privacy. When you are in your own home, you should be able to expect not to be watched by cameras and microphones. If you work at a bank and handle cash as part of your job, it should ideally be the opposite.
The problem with software like what’s produced by Google is that it chips away at expectations. Poor privacy is normalized while good privacy is time-consuming and expensive. So much that only wealthy people really have it.
So the Chrome browser sets the stage for all other browsers to use invasive tracking of users, selling advertiser data, etc. When governments step in about it, companies can respond that Google’s doing this, why aren’t you suing them instead?
I do believe that the security risk most privacy focused web browser outweight the risk of using a privacy invasive web browser like Chrome.
A lot of less popular web browser are not updating their browser as often as Chrome and you could be using a Chromium version with security vulnerabilities that have been patched in Chrome already.
Also, Firerox security architecture is a lot weaker than Chromium browser on both Windows and Android. I would avoid Firerox and forks for now.
I do understand the privacy thing and the hype for privacy focused services. I do believe that there’s a lot you can apply that would offer you better gain than using privacy focused web browser.
If you absolutely want to avoid Chrome, there’s Brave that is okay and it seems to update fast enough. I don’t like their business model but this is the less worse of this category of browser.
Edge is an alternative to Chrome, but it absolutely does not offer an alternative in term of privacy.
As a user, you have to assume that your browser knows everything that you do in it. Every website you visit, every word you type, every link you click, every image you download.
Of course, Chrome isn’t sending all this information to Google’s servers, but the fact remains that Chrome knows all these things because you browse the web through it.
So the question becomes, who do you trust. If I came over to your house, stood behind your shoulder, and watched everything you do in the browser, would you be ok with that? Of course not. Why not? Because you don’t trust me.
Therefore, when choosing a browser, you have to look at the companies that make browsers and decide which company do you trust most. You can’t trust any of them. They’re all profit-driven companies, but you can trust some companies more than others.
Personally, I trust Mozilla and DuckDuckGo infinitely more than I trust Google, so for me the choice of browser and search engine is an easy question.
If you trust Google, then you have no reason to stop using Chrome. However, if you sometimes don’t want to search something sensitive on Google because you feel uneasy about it, that indicates that you may not trust Google after all. I don’t have this problem. I can search whatever I want on DuckDuckGo because I trust them. “How to make a bomb”, “join neo-nazis”, “swollen penis”, whatever I want. That’s the liberty that you get if you use products by companies that you trust.
if you want to use Chrome just disable third-party cookies and install a reputable adblocker; all the ads google wants to show you about the places you’ve been will be lost
Actually it helps to have a better surfing life in web… it is will show content of your interest.
One of the things Google search results are decades ahead others search services is because they tailored the results for your profile… so it kind knows what are you trying to search.
I don’t think it makes sense to worry about privacy when using Chrome. Most of us are using Google and YouTube anyway and Google provides a lot great free services unlike other companies like Facebook for instance which I’m more concerned about
Chrome has one of the worst browser user interfaces I’ve ever seen and allows little to no customization. This forced minimalism has spread to almost all the other browsers. Even Firefox has been moving towards fewer options and a smaller UI over the years (Look at whatever their current build is relative to say, v3.5).
Meanwhile, Chrome’s monopoly power is so vast that it doesn’t feel it has to offer any extensions on mobile, or even just an adblocker. It would do the same on Windows if it thought it could get away with it. In fact, early Chrome didn’t have extensions on Windows- they were added to compete better with Firefox, which used to have larger marketshare. As we speak, it is already moving to make ad and content- blocking extensions less powerful (Manifest v3).
I use Edge which is certainly no better and probably worse than Chrome in terms of privacy but the main reason to use it is it just works better than all the others on Windows. Both grab tons of personal data but it’s not like they are going to use it against me. Also, I don’t see an ad for many years, even on youtube, thank to uBlock + sponsorblock + clickbait remover (youtube specific).
They can certainly know mouse movements, clicks, history, time spent watching content (not only on youtube), etc, but how does that impacts me if I never see an ad? Of course they can create and they certainly do create a profile of me but it’s not being very useful for the last 10-15 years because I have been using browsers fully loaded with essential privacy protection extensions in terms of cookies, tracking & ads. I just feel that Edge is atm a better product then all the others, as a tool.
And since I use my pc for banking and investigation etc everything I don’t want is to use an unsafe, hype or crypto browser or an old and possibly exploited version. Sticking with the regular choices (Edge, Chrome or Mozilla) is much safer but all of them also want their slice. I earn web protection and performance; they earn my data…
If you don’t care about how much they collect just pick the one that suits you best.
Chrome is certainly open-source. Here’s a link. Having worked in Chrome, the amount of stuff that is actually closed source is shockingly small and majority internal tooling
I can understand why a lot of people would rather avoid Chrome since as you mentioned, how the browser works isn’t as transparent as Firefox.
I’m not really sure how much it makes a difference but I have stopped my actual google account from monitoring my browsing history. I only found out recently about this as I had no idea your browsing and youtube history was saved on your google account.
