Chrome may soon break Ad-Blockers

[LAwLz]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

You don't understand telemetry, do you? If some problem within telemetry data is repeatedly happening (like repeated errors on bootup or crashes on or after certain event), you want to know whether it's happening repeatedly on same machine or it's happening on different machines. To Microsoft, the ID tells nothing about you, but it tells them if it's same machine or not when telemetry data is aggregated. Which is kinda important thing you know. If one machine is crashing, it could be just a rare weird case. If many different ID's are crashing after certain chain of events happened that correlates with one another, these unique ID's tell them something big is happening and they probably even have alert systems in place that pop up on the screen of the controller in the QA department, requiring further investigation. You know, coz that's the point of telemetry...

 

You know, Microsoft doesn't live off of your data like Google does. They do serve some ads on free services like web Outlook, but that's because it's free. So, their main incentive from telemetry is keeping quality standards up, they don't need to mine your behavior or personal data to make profit. In fact it's of their best interest they don't do that if they want to keep the customers base. Especially in these days when privacy is highly valued thing and people are dumping shit that ain't private up to certain levels or standards.

I think he understands fully well what telemetry is.

 

I also think that you should read the report a bit more carefully. It is not just about an ID that is used for determining if it's one user having 100 issues or 100 users having 1 issue. It's collecting WAAAAY more than that.

 

The problem is that the data submitted to Microsoft, even after being "anonymized" is not anonymous and can very easily be linked and traced back to you.

Think of it as a phone number. It by itself is not that important. It's just a string of numbers. But if you have a phone book you can link that number to a person, and all of a sudden you can get even more details about him/her.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

I think he understands fully well what telemetry is.

 

I also think that you should read the report a bit more carefully. It is not just about an ID that is used for determining if it's one user having 100 issues or 100 users having 1 issue. It's collecting WAAAAY more than that.

 

The problem is that the data submitted to Microsoft, even after being "anonymized" is not anonymous and can very easily be linked and traced back to you.

Think of it as a phone number. It by itself is not that important. It's just a string of numbers. But if you have a phone book you can link that number to a person, and all of a sudden you can get even more details about him/her.

Yes, that is true, but it needs to be qualified that there is conflation between being able to do something and actually doing it after they have said they won't.   The DPA investigation was quite thorough and forced MS to do a lot of things they don't normally do.  But it did verify that MS was not collecting data outside of their official statement on what data was being collected and why.  Which I believe is the point ReJzor raised.

[LAwLz]

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Yes, that is true, but it needs to be qualified that there is conflation between being able to do something and actually doing it after they have said they won't. 

Absolutely. Having the ability to do something, and actually doing it are two different things.

However, if you look at it from the perspective of a person like me, who do not trust Microsoft at all (for a wide variety of reasons), them having the ability but making a pinky promise to not abuse it is not good enough. Especially not since they have been very secretive about what they collect and why. It wasn't until several counties started investigating them that they went "you know, half of the telemetry data we collect is not actually needed, so we'll stop collecting that" and "look, you can now view some of the data we collect on you". If they had done that from day 1 I might have had a little bit more faith (although not much).

 

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

But it did verify that MS was not collecting data outside of their official statement on what data was being collected and why.

Not sure I agree with that, especially not since Microsoft were found guilty in several countries, for example France, for:

Quote

"excessive collection of personal data, track of users' web-browsing without their consent and a lack of security of confidentiality of users' data".

Source: Chair of the French data protection authority

 

Facts are facts. Microsoft has been found guilty of breaking several privacy laws with Windows 10, and have had to make a big amount of changes to Windows 10 as a result.

 

We did not even have a good explanation of what was being collected and why before. We now have it for some of the data collection, but still not everything.

[LAwLz]

12 minutes ago, mr moose said:

How many times do I need to say it, This is one less option for consumers.  I believe it not good for consumers to have less options.

And I disagree.

Here are my reasons why:

1) Moving all Edge users over to a Firefox based browser would have given more control of the web to Firefox, which is the biggest competitor to Chrome (since IE and Edge are no longer being developed). Having two strong competitors is better than one strong and several small ones because developers won't care to program and test their websites for let's say 10 browsers with 2% market share each, but if there was 1 browser with 20% market share they would.

 

2) Less time spent on developing Edge would mean more time spent developing something else, such as improving Firefox. A developer has a limited number of hours each day just like you and I. 1 hour spent developing Edge could have been used developing Firefox instead. Working together is not a bad thing. It's usually very good.

 

3) Fewer browsers means web developers have it easier creating and testing their websites. The fewer browsers that exist, the less risk of one website in one particular browser functioning poorly. I am NOT saying that in the perfect world we would have just 1 browser, but that does not invalidate this point either. Fewer browsers = less to test and less risk of issues.

 

Now, try to argue against those points instead of just going "it's just your opinion that Edge is bad" because none of these arguments has anything to do with if I like Edge or not.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

And I disagree.

Here are my reasons why:

1) Moving all Edge users over to a Firefox based browser would have given more control of the web to Firefox, which is the biggest competitor to Chrome (since IE and Edge are no longer being developed). Having two strong competitors is better than one strong and several small ones because developers won't care to program and test their websites for let's say 10 browsers with 2% market share each, but if there was 1 browser with 20% market share they would.

I see little evidence here that less equals more in consumer options.  Two stronger does not mean consumers are better off.  As I stated in my previous post, we only have two options for GPU's and there is plenty of debate about how good that is for consumers.

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

2) Less time spent on developing Edge would mean more time spent developing something else, such as improving Firefox. A developer has a limited number of hours each day just like you and I. 1 hour spent developing Edge could have been used developing Firefox instead. Working together is not a bad thing. It's usually very good.

How good FF can become against Chrome with more development is speculation and that MS would even work with FF and not try to make their own version from it any way is even further speculation.   Either way we would still have less options without going out and creating our own browser.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

3) Fewer browsers means web developers have it easier creating and testing their websites. The fewer browsers that exist, the less risk of one website in one particular browser functioning poorly. I am NOT saying that in the perfect world we would have just 1 browser, but that does not invalidate this point either. Fewer browsers = less to test and less risk of issues.

It is generally up to the browser developer to ensure it works within web standards, that is why FF and chrome work so well,  Most of MS's issues with youtube stemmed from artificial limitation enacted by google.  So I don't really buy that argument.  As exemplified by this article:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-to-fix-slow-edge-youtube

Google changed the way youtube worked which effected FF and edge who both did things by the open standards book.

 

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Now, try to argue against those points instead of just going "it's just your opinion that Edge is bad" because none of these arguments has anything to do with if I like Edge or not.

Again, that is not what I have said or even insinuated,  why do you persist with this?

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Absolutely. Having the ability to do something, and actually doing it are two different things.

However, if you look at it from the perspective of a person like me, who do not trust Microsoft at all (for a wide variety of reasons), them having the ability but making a pinky promise to not abuse it is not good enough. Especially not since they have been very secretive about what they collect and why. It wasn't until several counties started investigating them that they went "you know, half of the telemetry data we collect is not actually needed, so we'll stop collecting that" and "look, you can now view some of the data we collect on you". If they had done that from day 1 I might have had a little bit more faith (although not much).

 

Not sure I agree with that, especially not since Microsoft were found guilty in several countries, for example France, for:

Source: Chair of the French data protection authority

 

Facts are facts. Microsoft has been found guilty of breaking several privacy laws with Windows 10, and have had to make a big amount of changes to Windows 10 as a result.

 

Facts are fact s are facts, except when they say one thing and people go and make it sound like something else.

 

They reduced the data by nearly half after the french complaint, but they have not been found to be collecting data that they said they weren't.  The DPA investigation only concluded that the data was identifiable when you put enough of it together. not that the data was different to the claims made by MS.

 

The french conclusion was that the people were not adequately informed of the data (pretty much the same finding as the DPA, MS decided it was easier to drop some of the collection than to put new menus in the start to bring it up to scratch with french law.  It does not say how much data they were collecting or that the data was different to the claimed data collection by MS.  Just that the user was not properly informed of that collection.  We don't know how big the changes were.  Do you have a link to the "enormity" of these changes or did it just go from 20KB to 10KB because they decided they didn't need a comprehensive list of installed programs? They simply changed the install screen to better explain advertising ID and stop placing cookies. The security of data had nothing to do with the type of telemetry collected or how it was collected, that was a separate issue with the use pf pin numbers. 

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

We did not even have a good explanation of what was being collected and why before. We now have it for some of the data collection, but still not everything.

Yes we did, MS has had a privacy policy out since 2016 stating exactly what data it collects and why.  As far as I know it hasn't changed much and most of the issues surrounding the DPA et al is that users shouldn't have to go looking for a 20 page PDF in the bowels of the MS website to know what data is being collected.  That I agree with, what I do question is all these claims that MS have been collecting more data than that where multiple investigations have occurred and no evidence exists.  The DPA has not only the full access to the source code for windows (most governments do) but the tools from MS.

[RejZoR]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think he understands fully well what telemetry is.

 

I also think that you should read the report a bit more carefully. It is not just about an ID that is used for determining if it's one user having 100 issues or 100 users having 1 issue. It's collecting WAAAAY more than that.

 

The problem is that the data submitted to Microsoft, even after being "anonymized" is not anonymous and can very easily be linked and traced back to you.

Think of it as a phone number. It by itself is not that important. It's just a string of numbers. But if you have a phone book you can link that number to a person, and all of a sudden you can get even more details about him/her.

So does your nickname, IP address, any photo you post anywhere, basically anything that is generally unique to you.

 

There is also difference what company is using this collected data for. Microsoft's primary gain from telemetry is quality of their product for which they charge money. So, it's in their best interest to make best use of it. But that's it.

 

Google on the other hand always wraps everything in "we collect this to make your X and Y experience better" while handing you over a service for free. So, where is it gain for them? Just making service better doesn't make them money. So, there's your answer where your data goes...

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

I see little evidence here that less equals more in consumer options.  Two stronger does not mean consumers are better off.  As I stated in my previous post, we only have two options for GPU's and there is plenty of debate about how good that is for consumers.

I don't think splitting AMD up into two or maybe even 3 GPU manufacturing companies would help that situation. I am 99% sure that if you took half of AMD's budget and R&D, just to create a new company called AMD2, then the GPU market would be even more terrible than it already is.

 

Since you made the comparison with the GPU market, let's build upon that.

We have three GPU makers for PCs right now. Intel (Microsoft), AMD (Firefox) and Nvidia (Google).

 

What would you think would happen if Intel decided to stop making GPUs and reallocate all their R&D, staff and budget to another company. Do you think we would see more competition or less in the GPU market if Intel gave all their resources to AMD? Because that is what I argue should have happened with Microsoft and Firefox.

Instead what happened was that Intel (Microsoft) gave all that to Nvidia (Google).

I think the GPU market would have been in a better situation if Intel gave all their resources to AMD. Combining the resources of two companies to fight a more dominant one is usually the way to go when one company is very disproportionately larger than the other ones.

 

(and if you say Intel is the biggest GPU maker then you're missing my point. Please reread what I said and stop nitpicking).

 

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

How good FF can become against Chrome with more development is speculation and that MS would even work with FF and not try to make their own version from it any way is even further speculation.   Either way we would still have less options without going out and creating our own browser.

Again, fewer options is not a bad thing. You keep saying that but has given 0 evidence or reasons for why. I on the other hand have given plenty of reasons why it is good.

 

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

It is generally up to the browser developer to ensure it works within web standards, that is why FF and chrome work so well,  Most of MS's issues with youtube stemmed from artificial limitation enacted by google.  So I don't really buy that argument.  As exemplified by this article:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-to-fix-slow-edge-youtube

Google changed the way youtube worked which effected FF and edge who both did things by the open standards book. 

I called it and I knew it. That fucking tweet from Chris Peterson again. I called it way back in this post:

On 1/24/2019 at 2:37 PM, LAwLz said:

(In before that horribly inaccurate tweet about how "Youtube is deliberately ruining Firefox performance" which the author later said he was wrong about his conclusions, but nobody posts that part).

That article on Windows Central is wrong. Flat out wrong.

Here is my response to it, and the TL;DR is that Edge (and Firefox) does not support HTML Import which is a working draft web standard. I am so sick and tired of clueless people repeating that garbage which Chris even backed down from in a later response.

 

No, Firefox and Edge did not do things by the "open standards book". That's why their performance was lower. I explained why Firefox chose not to implement it in my post I linked to, but it's political reasons rather than technical ones.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

Do you have a link to the "enormity" of these changes or did it just go from 20KB to 10KB because they decided they didn't need a comprehensive list of installed programs?

No, the number of events they tracked on your computer were roughly cut in half.

Here is the announcement of it:

Quote

Aside from sharing new information to inform your choices, our teams have also worked diligently since the Anniversary Update to re-assess what data is strictly necessary at the Basic level to keep Windows 10 devices up to date and secure. We looked closely at how we use this diagnostic data and strengthened our commitment to minimize data collection at the Basic level. As a result, we have reduced the number of events collected and reduced, by about half, the volume of data we collect at the Basic level.

 

What this means is that Microsoft collected almost twice as much data as they actually needed for several years. That is by their own admission, not my opinion.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

Yes we did, MS has had a privacy policy out since 2016 stating exactly what data it collects and why.

No it didn't. While you might think a sentence like "we may collect your information" is "describing exactly what they collect", it isn't. That is what's called a high level description. It is not detailed or actually explain exactly what is being collected.

The Diagnostic Data Viewer is what actually tells you exactly what is being collected (assuming it actually shows us everything).

Microsoft's privacy policy does not for example inform you that they get a log message every time you open a new tab in Edge, because the privacy policy only talk about abstract things without clear definitions.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

So does your nickname, IP address, any photo you post anywhere, basically anything that is generally unique to you.

Yes, what is your point? Those things are also personal information, and some of those are things Microsoft can not anonymize. For example they have no way of not seeing the IP of the people they collect telemetry on. You're kind of proving my point here, that "anonymized" is very flimsy and not really anonymous at all.

 

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

There is also difference what company is using this collected data for. Microsoft's primary gain from telemetry is quality of their product for which they charge money. So, it's in their best interest to make best use of it. But that's it.

 

Google on the other hand always wraps everything in "we collect this to make your X and Y experience better" while handing you over a service for free. So, where is it gain for them? Just making service better doesn't make them money. So, there's your answer where your data goes...

They also share it with third parties, and use it for things like ads. Microsoft is really no better than Google in this regard. At least people realize how terrible Google are, and aren't in denial about it.

You're also naive if you don't think a company can double dip and make money both from selling a product, and collecting user data. Just because Microsoft makes money selling Windows licenses does not mean they aren't interested in monetizing Windows in the same way Google monetizes their products.

[RejZoR]

You can opt out of targeted ads. So what if they collected twice as much data than they "actually" need? Imagine you were tracking some crashes and you didn't have enough info because you cut too many sensors off. Ouch. It's why they had them set so broadly, not because they are evil and want to know everything about you.

 

Also, if you haven't noticed yet, they state data collections very broadly in EULA even if they aren't even collected in the end. Like for example memory dumps. They most likely won't contain anything personal, but they might. And they will state that in EULA or Privacy Statement because they have to. And people will instantly freak out like that's the norm when it usually isn't.

[TacoSenpai]

I'm a firefox guy anyways.  Though Brave is a really good privacy oriented browser as well and has a built in native ad-blocker.

 

https://brave.com/

[jagdtigger]

9 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

they state data collections very broadly in EULA even if they aren't even collected in the end

Which should've been made illegal a long time ago... Hiding it in the EULA betting on that no-one is going to read it is no batter than simply hiding it and not mentioning it anywhere(like what they did with VS when it sneaked in telemetry code without consent).

[GoodBytes]

5 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Which should've been made illegal a long time ago... Hiding it in the EULA betting on that no-one is going to read it is no batter than simply hiding it and not mentioning it anywhere(like what they did with VS when it sneaked in telemetry code without consent).

It's not hidden.

Microsoft has put a lot of effort to rewrite the EULA and Privacy Policy in plain English. No lawyer needed. And not buried under links that is under other links and other links, split into parts everywhere and used vague terminology to hide everything (Ahem, Google).

[mr moose]

@LAwLz again, you have gone to the point of proclaiming opinions as facts, they are your opinions.  Good for you if you want less options because you think it is good for consumers. 

 

I have made my points quite clear, I believe less is not better, and unless someone can actually provide a real fact as to when this might not be the case I will continue to believe it.

[Guest]

Just use a different browser, Chrome is nothing special now anyway, all browsers are pretty much the same. 

[Andreas Lilja]

1 hour ago, RorzNZ said:

Just use a different browser, Chrome is nothing special now anyway, all browsers are pretty much the same. 

Dat Google integration tho. 

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, Raskolnikov said:

Dat Google integration tho. 

No thank you  

[hogfather]

On 1/23/2019 at 10:03 AM, porina said:

Been thinking of moving to this type of solution for a while. Would you rate it as easy to use, effective and doesn't break sites you do want to work?

Been using pi-hole for more than a year now and we don't have any ads at home on any of our 10 devices.  I went out bought a cheap Intel Pentium G4560 and stuck it in a case under a shelf.  It runs Ubuntu and is easy to set up.  On average around 30% of traffic gets blocked but of course your millage will vary with your specific blacklists. All in all, I'm super happy with pi-hole.

[Mihle]

On 1/25/2019 at 9:14 AM, mr moose said:

No you didn't, you said you thought having less browsers with more market share would be good,  I beg to differ, we only have two choices of GPU and we are paying through the nose for it,  the less choices you have the easier it is for one of those choices to take the lead and use that position unfairly, MS did it with IE, google are doing it with android and youtube, Apple are doing it with boxed IOS, the list goes on.    More choices is nearly always better for consumers, I can;t think of many examples where it isn't.

 

I can think of one. 

If you have too many is in a industry and people are spread "thin" out over all of them, none of them might get much money to put back in to development, and that make development go slower. But how many that is is different from one industry to another, but when it comes to browser engines it's def space for more than two.

 

The more Google does to take advantage of it, it might be easier for others to get more market share, but that requires the others to exist with a decent  alternative and not have to start from the begging again to try to take advantage... Microsoft should not have switched, especially switched to chromium.

[Drak3]

20 hours ago, Raskolnikov said:

Dat Google integration tho. 

All the more reason to use something else.

[LAwLz]

10 hours ago, Mihle said:

I can think of one. 

If you have too many is in a industry and people are spread "thin" out over all of them, none of them might get much money to put back in to development, and that make development go slower. But how many that is is different from one industry to another, but when it comes to browser engines it's def space for more than two.

  

The more Google does to take advantage of it, it might be easier for others to get more market share, but that requires the others to exist with a decent  alternative and not have to start from the begging again to try to take advantage... Microsoft should not have switched, especially switched to chromium.

That does not address anything I said.

I gave plenty of examples of how the market would be in a better position to combat Google's dominance if Microsoft had switched to Gecko, rather than Blink.

 

You can't just say "more alternatives are better" without justifying why and how my points I raised aren't true or counterbalanced by other arguments.

 

And a decent alternative does exist. Firefox/Gecko.

[JoostinOnline]

On 1/25/2019 at 3:43 AM, LAwLz said:

Absolutely. Having the ability to do something, and actually doing it are two different things.

However, if you look at it from the perspective of a person like me, who do not trust Microsoft at all (for a wide variety of reasons), them having the ability but making a pinky promise to not abuse it is not good enough. Especially not since they have been very secretive about what they collect and why. It wasn't until several counties started investigating them that they went "you know, half of the telemetry data we collect is not actually needed, so we'll stop collecting that" and "look, you can now view some of the data we collect on you". If they had done that from day 1 I might have had a little bit more faith (although not much).

 

Not sure I agree with that, especially not since Microsoft were found guilty in several countries, for example France, for:

Source: Chair of the French data protection authority

 

Facts are facts. Microsoft has been found guilty of breaking several privacy laws with Windows 10, and have had to make a big amount of changes to Windows 10 as a result.

 

We did not even have a good explanation of what was being collected and why before. We now have it for some of the data collection, but still not everything.

Listening to a Microsoft representative speak about all the way he had spied on people, as well as basically saying "we absolutely descriminate, but there's no way you can prove it" made me never want to work for Microsoft and pushed me to take greater measures against their data mining.

 

He even gave us a thinly veiled threat about how quoting him online would hurt our job prospects.

[Blitz4]

I'm new here but I wanted to ask if anybody's in the know.

What does this mean for the future of Brave browser?

[ZacoAttaco]

12 minutes ago, Blitz4 said:

I'm new here but I wanted to ask if anybody's in the know.

What does this mean for the future of Brave browser?

Welcome the Forum! From my understanding, if it's a browser based on the Chromium engine then it would be affected by the same changes. Although as Linus pointed out on the WAN Show, AdBlock Plus does not seem to be affected. So it's still up in the air suppose.