this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Privacy Guides

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In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


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Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

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This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


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[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 39 points 7 months ago

Ok but its to late they've already sold it and used it.

[–] Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 29 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh great they get to collect and make money off of "anonymous technical data" for years, and their punishment for doing all that is to delete the data, and swear they won't collect anymore of it for the next few years??

They already made their money off of people's data! This isn't a meaningful punishment, hell it's barely a slap on the wrist.

[–] FippleStone@aussie.zone 5 points 7 months ago

It's not even a slap on the wrist, it's just saying "don't do this anymore", but they freakin will man

[–] minibyte@sh.itjust.works 27 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That’s not how privacy works.

[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Google: We promise, bro. We swear to delete it bro. No bro, you can't check whether we have actually deleted it. Dude just trust me bro.

[–] Hexarei@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago

Bro we promise bro, we're deleting the data - We know bro, you thought we didn't collect it but bro we're deleting it we promise now we're cool bro just keep using it bro we don't collect more data bro we promise

[–] Ismay@programming.dev 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Or, hear me out, maybe switch to Firefox ?

When caring about the privacy of your data, using a software made by the biggest data collector might be a bad idea...

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Or better yet, Mullvad browser. It's basically Tor browser without Tor.

[–] Vigilante@lemmy.today 16 points 7 months ago

So just a browser ?

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 22 points 7 months ago

"We're sorry we got caught. We'll delete what we shouldn't possess."

Sounds like accountability.

[–] ozoned@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago

And who is going to verify they deleted it and how are they deleting it?

Is it about time we get analysts that monitor these companies from the inside?

[–] syd@lemy.lol 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

hidden: true

[–] kolorafa@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

and must delete the browser signals that indicate when private browsing mode is active, to prevent future tracking.

Thinking how will they do that? Is private browsing sending some additional headers?

[–] kirbowo808@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 7 months ago

Wow, it took them long enough lol

They’re still gonna spy on you regardless if they start deleting your data or not lso makes no difference either way lol

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 7 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The lawsuit [PDF], filed in June, 2020, on behalf of plaintiffs Chasom Brown, Maria Nguyen, and William Byatt, sought to hold Google accountable for making misleading statements about privacy.

But, as alleged in the lawsuit, Google didn't provide the privacy it promised and implied through services like Chrome's Incognito mode.

Chrome's Incognito mode only provides privacy in the client by not keeping a locally stored record of the user's browsing history.

Even so, it was sanctioned nearly $1 million in 2022 by Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen – for concealing details about how it can detect when Chrome users employ Incognito mode.

"Google employees described Chrome Incognito Mode as 'misleading,' 'effectively a lie,' a 'confusing mess,' a 'problem of professional ethics and basic honesty,' and as being 'bad for users, bad for human rights, bad for democracy,'" according to the declaration [PDF] of Mark C Mao, a partner with the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, which represents the plaintiffs.

The settlement [PDF] requires that Google: inform users that it collects private browsing data, both in its Privacy Policy and in an Incognito Splash Screen; "must delete and/or remediate billions of data records that reflect class members' private browsing activities"; block third-party cookies in Incognito mode for the next five years (separately, Google is phasing out third-party cookies this year); and must delete the browser signals that indicate when private browsing mode is active, to prevent future tracking.


The original article contains 670 words, the summary contains 239 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 4 points 7 months ago

yeah sure they will