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Privacy groups have complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Google is encroaching on user privacy through a policy change in June that allows it to combine personally identifiable information with browsing data collected by its DoubleClick digital advertising service.
The complaint, by Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearing House, alleged that Google has created "super-profiles" as it can track user activity on Android mobile phones, with an 88 percent market share of smartphones worldwide. The information can also be gleaned "from any website that uses Google Analytics, hosts YouTube videos, or displays ads served by DoubleClick or AdSense," according to the complaint.
The combination of data is in contrast to Google's pledges not to combine users' personally identifiable information with DoubleClick's browsing data when acquiring the ad serving service in 2008, according to the complaint filed Thursday but made public on Monday. In October this year, ProPublica reported that Google "quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand" by its policy change in June that allowed the DoubleClick database of web browsing records to be combined with personal user data.
On June 28, Google users were informed of some new optional features introduced for their account that would give them more control over the data the company collects and how it's used, while allowing the search giant to show more relevant ads. As part of the changes, Google struck out the language in its privacy policy stating that it would "not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent," according to the complaint. Existing users were presumably given the chance to opt out, but for new users the combination of personal and browsing data was done by default, it added.
[...] Describing the June move as highly deceptive, the groups said the announcement "intentionally misled users," who had no way to figure from the wording that Google was in fact asking users for permission to link their personal information to data reflecting their behavior on as many as 80 percent of the Internet's leading websites.
(Score: 1) by RS3 on Friday December 30 2016, @09:23PM
Yes, I forgot to mention uMatrix- I have it installed but temporarily turned it off.
Privacy Badger needs a lot of fiddling. It seems to green-light many domains I don't consider safe (trackers) so I keep uBlock origin and uMatrix going when I'm ever on more troubling websites.
I usually use Old Opera with javascript and cookies turned OFF and many trackers in the "Blocked Content" list. If a particular site doesn't work well, Old Opera lets me turn on cookies and javascript on a per-site basis. In other words, whitelisting. I've never understood why Old Opera (v12 and back) did not catch on strongly with tech-types.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 30 2016, @09:48PM
At the end of the day, if you know what you are doing you need a script blocker like uMatrix more than the cookie blocker. Any fiddling around with uMatrix is offset by the time saved loading less ads and other script crap, and that fiddling goes down as you visit less new domains.
I used to use Opera v12 long after the expiration date for a few isolated domains. I think I stopped around a year ago. Chrome is my main browser and I split between Firefox Dev Edition and Firefox Portable for other stuff. Vivaldi may be a potential replacement for Opera v12 but I haven't paid too much attention to its development. I think I only use it to comment on NextBigFuture, and rarely. It didn't launch with all the features Opera v12 fans wanted but there have been some major updates since.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday December 30 2016, @10:53PM
On the subject of Opera12, do try Otter Browser, it has a very similar interface (incl the F12-menu) and you can turn javascript on/off as needed and do per-domain-settings (and has the blocked content feature).
One quirk with Otter is that the F12-menu only affects current tab (and any tabs you subsequently spawn from it).
It is qt5-based, so blink as its engine (and works on bloated pages [but with css-animations in currently displaying tab being a cpu-hog])
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday December 30 2016, @10:56PM
Err. Uses webkit, not blink (I always mix those up)