Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history

"Enhanced Ad Privacy." That's the technology that, unless switched off, allows websites to target the user with adverts tuned to their online activities

That's some Orwellian shit right there.

every day I'm glad I switched to firefox

Why not just use Firefox (while you still can ...)

This was overwhelming rejected by everyone, including Microsoft, Mozilla, Safari, and others. It's universally disliked, and Google knows this, but they intentionally know they're abusing their monopoly to push anti-consumer bullshit.

"don't be evil" days have been over since forever ago.

2056

Plug DNA access into pc
Google sync my brain chip with my browser page
Start searching new brain plague of 2043
Google show ad pop-up in my eyes, try to close them, but the ads are projected on the optic nerve.
New ideia
scan anti-ad chip that my friend gave me
It works, I'm free
anyway, try to order food
Error the system is not autenticated please install chrome chiplinx 3.8 to continue.
Receive fine of half my salary, new policy under anti-piracy order

That's fine. I'll continue to use Firefox.

It's crazy to think that this level of intrusion is considered fair game. The way these behaviors are normalized is completely dystopian.

So glad I moved to Firefox, fu Google

Firefox

I assumed this was happening for years

I think I'll just invite Google to come get my dna, set up cameras everywhere, and install a microchip in my brain. Then I can be done with this slow-walk of privacy invasion.

Yet the simps still won’t use Firefox

Well that's what to expect from a web browser created by an advertising company.

And yet Firefox marketshare will keep dwindling. Drives me mad!

Let me get this straight:

Until now, Google and other advertisers stored cookies on your device and tracked your browsing history on their servers.

Know, everything happens locally and this is somewhat worse then the old way to do it?

How?

A few years ago, I switched from Firefox to Chrome. A few months ago, I switched back to Firefox. Chrome is rolling out changes which are completely unacceptable, such as making adblockers impossible, and using my private browsing history for their own ads.

In Chrome, start at the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. (Or just type chrome://settings/adPrivacy into your address field.) The ad privacy page lets you turn off Chrome's targeted ads.

As per The Verge

I figured they did this already just without saying it out loud

I'm glad I stopped using chrome / chromium a long time ago.

Everyone talks about Firefox. And that's cause Firefox is good and hands down the best. But I've been using Vivaldi which is chromium based for years. Anyone have any opinion on Vivaldi?

Who knew that using a browser made by an ad agency would result in ads?!
shockedpikachuface.webp

Pihole goes brrrrrrrrrr.

Damn advertisers are finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am is keeping me from being a better consumer and has me resenting capitalism and they'll work to change my sad life, right? Privatize the profits, socialize the losses, isolate the losers. Got it.

It should always be opt in, not opt out. Leave chrome in favor of a non-chrome browser, such as firefox.

FYI, while this is a terrible move, it does not allow advertisers to see your browsing history like you said. Google looks into your history, the advertiser gives them ads and Google serves the ads to the users they think will like it. The advertiser never sees any of your data. Ironically, Google's advertising system is the safest compared to systems like Meta's.

Uhhh.....

"Since your history shows frequent use of ~~pornhub~~, we highly recommend websites like ~~xvideos~~ and ~~redtube~~"

Because that's totally what every 15 year old fellow really needs hey Google?

Fun fact, 86% of the revenue for these big tech (Twitter/Meta/Google/YT) are from ads. 😀

My ad " you like thick women, Stoicism and band tees? well do we have a goth girl for you, limited item sold, not responsible for broken car windows or torched house, all purchases are final.

I now understand late stage capitalism

Sounds like a great and exciting innovation. I can’t wait to see more relevant ads based on my own personal interests!

(uses a different browser)

Have fun with that

Someone needs to make an extension that googles random stuff all the time and floods ones history with so much background noise that the history becomes useless.

Fucking hell I am sick of having to switch browsers every few years.

How would I go about transferring my stored passwords from Chrome to Firefox?

These sneaky foxes should be fired.

EDIT: it seems nobody wants to fire a fox. That almost drives me to the edge but I guess I'll just try to be brave and think of it as a safari.

Time to move most of my browsing to FF. It's already somewhere around 80% FF.

And that’s why I will continue to use Chrome only for work. Yuck.

Literally 1984

I looked up "audiophool" on Chrome and I looked in my ad preferences and it started recommending stuff about speakers

edit: grammar

Jokes on you Google! I delete my browser history every 30 seconds!

Great, can't wait to see ads for take out food, and small appliance repair.

I see a lot of people mentioning that you should just switch to Firefox, but if you're doing that because of privacy, you will not be off that much better by doing just that - unless you fiddle with the settings and get a custom user.js, such as this one, that properly hardens it and a few extenstions, such as Decentraleyes, Cookie Auto Delete or ClearURLs.

But it can get annoying, so instead I'd recommend giving LibreWolf a try. From my experience it works pretty much out of the box, and for the few settings that may be annoying to you they have a quick guide about how to disable them.

But even better than that, I'd recommend giving Mullvad Browser a try. It's basically a clear-net version of Tor Browser, and so far I haven't heard anything negative about them. I also really like their idea about pairing a VPN service (that's optional) with a browser, so now you have exactly the same browser fingerprint as any other user using the same VPN (as long as you don't add any extensions), which will make you more resistant even to the more advanced fingerprinting techniques, since there's basically no way how to tell all of the users of the VPN apart. Some more info and reasoning, along with more recommendations, can be found at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/#mullvad-browser

I've recently started using Mullvad, and was using LibreWolf as my daily browser, so now I'm switching between them randomly. I do run into issued from time to time, mostly because of 3rd party requests or auto-deleted cookies when leaving a domain, which can break some kind of cross-site flows. But whenever there's an issue, I just quickly fire up Brave to do that one task. But all things considered it's an amazing experience, so I do recommend giving some of them a try.