Google has made a significant change to the way the Chrome browser works, a move the company did not advertise to its users that has a serious privacy impact.
According to several reports [ 1, 2, 3], starting with Chrome 69, each time an application user visits a Google-owned Web site, the browser logs the user's Google ID into Chrome Sync.
The Sync system allows users to sign in with their Google Chrome accounts to upload and synchronize (optionally) local browser data (history, passwords, bookmarks and others) on Google servers.
Sync has been in Chrome for many years, but until now the system only worked if you were logged into a Google account. This allowed users to navigate to Internet while logged into a Google account (Gmail, YouTube), but not uploading Chrome browsing data to Google's servers, data apparently associated with their accounts.
With the latest revelations about the new automatic mechanism connectionς, πάρα πολλοί χρήστες δεν είναι καθόλου ευχαριστημένοι με την ύπουλη τροποποίηση που επιτρέπει στην Google να συνδέσει την επισκεψιμότητα κάθε ατόμου από ένα συγκεκριμένο πρόγραμμα περιήγησης και μια συσκευή με υψηλότερη ακρίβεια.
This practice proved to be wrong, as Google technicians clarified in Twitter that this automatic sign-in feature does not start the local data synchronization process on Google's servers but requires a user click.
In addition, they also revealed that the reason this mechanism was added was for privacy reasons. Chrome technicians say the auto-login feature has been added to the browser because of shared browsers.
When one or more users use the same Chrome browser, the data from these users could be sent by mistake to another person's Google account
However, despite the logic behind this move, users are still unhappy because they no longer have the option of deciding when to log in to their browser and secondly why Google did not say anything about the new feature.
Google Chrome 69 was released on September 5, about two weeks ago, and no one knew what the program did in the background.
Matthew Green, a well-known expert encryptionand professor at Johns Hopkins University, reported in a publication on his blog that Google has redesigned the Sync account interface in such a way that it is no longer clear to users that they are logged in or what they need to push to start synchronization.
He calls this change "dark pattern", A term we have described in older publications.
In its current form, the Sync account interface is actually misleading and a user can accidentally click on all of his browser's data on Google.
Chrome 69 was a major release with many new features, such as a new user interface. Some claim that Google hid this change in the version of Chrome 69, hoping that no one would see it among all the features of the new version, and so it took more than two weeks for Google friends to detect the behavior.
However, the influence of a few hot Twitter posts has helped push things forward on Google's HQ and Chrome technicians have announced that Google will update Chrome's Privacy Policy to reflect the new Chrome mode.
Of course this information policy may satisfy some lawyers, but it does not address the issue. Google modified a Chrome feature without notifying users, and this modification can lead to serious privacy violations.
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