Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
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They're not stealing browser history. The site requests a list of topics and Chrome parses them based on the local history and returns a list of topics.
It's more secure and private than third party cookies.
The technique they use does not really change to the issue.
It's also not necessarily more secure than third party cookies like you claim? You can refuse those cookies and not all website use them, while all website ends up in browsing history.
I might be wrong but as far as I understand Google's topics API only gives websites access to information like "here is a user who likes the topics IT and gardening", which is a LOT less than what is possible with cookies. With cookies a website can get information like "here is a user who visited your website yesterday and two times last week. Also they recently visited websites A, B and C, and frequently visits website D. On website D they are logged in as X." They make all your visits to a website and, with third-party cookies, also to other websites connectable. Google's topics do not.
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But the website doesn't end up with your browsing history...
And you can opt out of this just like you can opt out of third party cookies.
I would like to watch you opt out of all this every single time you sit down in the next class of your education institute or workplace.
Yes, they merely created the technology that watches everything you do. You can opt out! No worries! This certainly isn’t anything to worry about! They will definitely continue to let you opt out indefinitely. History tells me that that’s how this works.
That's so silly; you can manage all of your data and opt out on your Google account from the start.
The way I see it, that's just browser history exfiltration with extra steps. Whether they're sending the actual history or parsing your history and sending topics, both are equally as objectionable to me as both could reveal information about something private you've been visiting.