Some more recent changes in Google practices:
Javascript is now required to sign into Google
The most privacy- and security-aware people do disable Javascript when browsing the web, because of its power and potential to cause security breaches - even though most websites are then broken, do not display as they should.
But Google has made a change that requires you to have JS enabled when you sign in to their services, e.g. to access your Gmail. It is for security reasons, and there is good and bad in the change. It would make it more secure, but with the downside of allowing Google to track your login behavior across the internet in more detail.
Here is the announcement:
And here is the corresponding Hacker News discussion: JavaScript is now required to sign in to Google | Hacker News
New version of reCAPTCHA (v3) introduced
Another feature that has good and bad side-effects. Google introduced reCAPTCHA v3, the technology to fend off bots and automatic scripts from your site, in the login screen (“Please prove you are human”).
In version 1 you had to type in garbled text, in version 2 there were the images to select (“Please select all images with cars in them”), and BTW by using it, you were also training Google AI’s in image recognition, for free (well, in exchange for using their service).
In v3 the experience has become seamless, and you do not necessarily notice the reCAPTCHA process, unless you are determined to be ‘suspicious’ of being a bot:
Now with reCAPTCHA v3, we are fundamentally changing how sites can test for human vs. bot activities by returning a score to tell you how suspicious an interaction is and eliminating the need to interrupt users with challenges at all. reCAPTCHA v3 runs adaptive risk analysis in the background to alert you of suspicious traffic while letting your human users enjoy a frictionless experience on your site.
The negative aspects of this technology are:
- Well, obviously, more tracking and user data collection of your internet behavior (and potentially even measuring your cognitive skills in text/image recognition)
- Google seems to abuse this feature to get more people to use Chrome browser, making the challenges harder on other browsers, or not even working on older browsers
The announcement is here:
And the corresponding Hacker News discussion is here: Recaptcha v3: new way to stop bots | Hacker News
Re @anon51879794 : Android permissions and Google Play.
Permission system is too course-grained and app developers make thankful use of that. I mentioned that before, here.
Samsung itself is an especially egregious privacy invader. All their apps - that you cannot uninstall and often not even disable - contain stuff that connects to the internet and send over unknown data, and their apps also contain hidden advertising. I found that out when GDPR regulation kicked in, in Europe: Privacy issues surrounding your smartphone - #2 by aschrijver
Android being open-source is a bit of a misnomer. The OS that is on your phone is crammed full of proprietary Google and Samsung codes to operate well. In any Android OS - even if you compile it yourself - proprietary closed-source stuff is dragged in. That is why e.foundation and others are developing fully OSS alternatives.
The Google Play service is another thing where Google abuses its monopoly position. It is always-on and tracking you. And they have control which apps are in it, and how easy they are for you to find them. You can’t remove Google Play, but you can install an alternative to Google Play, called FDroid - a crowd-sourced appstore that only offers free and open-source (FOSS) apps. Even then, before installing it helps doing a bit a due-dilligence to see how trustworthy an app is.
A problem with Apps in the Play store is, that there are now companies whose business is to buy software from their original owner, then create a new version, which is automatically updated on your phone if you have the app. This new version can now contain arbitrary malware and tracking software.
More info on Samsung and others privacy invasions, read here