Google quietly records users in Chrome, but it's not so bad



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Although the change looks scary at first glance, it might not be too dangerous. The first impression that some users had when they saw the new behavior – namely that the browser would start sending their data to Google's servers immediately – turned out to be wrong. Adrienne Porter Felt from Google clarified in a series of tweets the user must make two extra clicks to be able to upload their data to the cloud. The new behavior, she writes, is there for situations where "people sometimes disconnected from the content area and thought it meant that they were no longer connected to Chrome, which could cause problems on a shared device.

In simple terms, Google says it wants to avoid situations where you could connect to its services on a shared device, while the browser is connected to someone else 's account. This could lead to the synchronization of cookies and other browsing data under an account with which you have nothing to see.

The explanation has left many people wondering again why Google has not mentioned the new browser connection behavior in the ads leading to the launch of Chrome 69. The new version of the browser has brought a host of news features and a redesigned user interface, most of which the content had been described in detail in online documents provided by Google – all but this one.

The discrete insertion of a forced connection to the browser in Chrome, although this can be done for good reason, adds no trust to Google in an environment increasingly focused on confidentiality. Some critics say this step could lead the company to force users to connect to Chrome by default in the future, but there is no factual support for this suspicion.

Google's Chrome team is updating the browser's privacy notice to make the new sign-in process clearer for users, Felt said in his tweets. In the meantime, it is also possible to disable the forced connection by accessing the chrome: // flags // # account consistency page and disabling the account consistency option.

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