I just checked it myself and at least for me all the settings are set to "Off" by default.
EDIT: Just to make it clear, it's likely I mindlessly turned these Off when first time encountering the notice by Chrome when this was first released (see the comment thread below).
>it's likely I mindlessly turned these Off when first time encountering the notice
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who does this. "Do you want to enable-" No. "Help Contoso by-" No. "Personalise your experience by-" No. "Sign up for our-" No. "Try our new-" No. "Let's get started with a brief unskippable tutorial." Sigh.
ON for me, but Chrome automatically popped up the settings page to tell me about it and let me turn it off. Still, I might have to start looking at other browsers.
"Topics of interest are based on your recent browsing history and are used by sites to show you personalized ads"
"Sites you visit can determine what you like and then suggest ads as you continue browsing"
Chrome collects data on everything you visit and sends that info to its "partner" sites when you visit them. IMO, in a properly regulated environment, this should result in jail time for everyone involved.
This appears to be a Chrome "field trial". I believe that you can block field trials in Chrome by blocking the domain tools.google.com. I don't even have the chrome://settings/adPrivacy page.
I turned off the Pocket recs in the settings once and never saw them again. Let FF advertise: at least they don't use app updates to quietly reset app permissions to default the way many others do.
Read the actual words that it actually says. Sites can pay Google to get a profile of you, based on your browsing history, sent to them when you visit their website. Who's keeping anything local?
https://archive.is/yURj8
It doesn't look like this was covered much by the mainstream tech sites, but the official page is here,
https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy-on-the-web/
I just checked it myself and at least for me all the settings are set to "Off" by default.
EDIT: Just to make it clear, it's likely I mindlessly turned these Off when first time encountering the notice by Chrome when this was first released (see the comment thread below).
>it's likely I mindlessly turned these Off when first time encountering the notice
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who does this. "Do you want to enable-" No. "Help Contoso by-" No. "Personalise your experience by-" No. "Sign up for our-" No. "Try our new-" No. "Let's get started with a brief unskippable tutorial." Sigh.
OFF for me, but I fully expect to play whackamole with a stream of future sneaky updates turning them ON 'to improve my browsing experience'.
Mine were also off (Win11). I also usually turn off anything like this, but I don't recall doing it recently.
These were all ON for me. Turned them off.
ON for me, but Chrome automatically popped up the settings page to tell me about it and let me turn it off. Still, I might have to start looking at other browsers.
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Both Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium seem not to have such a configuration page, they redirect to chrome://settings/.
Can someone please explain how this is spyware. Thanks
"Topics of interest are based on your recent browsing history and are used by sites to show you personalized ads"
"Sites you visit can determine what you like and then suggest ads as you continue browsing"
Chrome collects data on everything you visit and sends that info to its "partner" sites when you visit them. IMO, in a properly regulated environment, this should result in jail time for everyone involved.
This appears to be a Chrome "field trial". I believe that you can block field trials in Chrome by blocking the domain tools.google.com. I don't even have the chrome://settings/adPrivacy page.
Mine was on by default for my work browser. This is hot garbage
Why would you fight this fight instead of just using Safari / Firefox?
Chrome cares a lot more about PWAs. WebSerial, WebUsb, etc. aren't supported on firefox.
Are they not supported on the many Chromium browsers out there? This ad Privacy thing didn't show up on Brave browser on Android.
I use Firefox personally but Chrome for work.
Funny how companies dont mind workers sharing company data with others via browsers but make us sign ndas.
Because Chrome has way better security sandboxing than either.
Firefox has containers which is vastly superior.
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Or, you know, go to getfirefox.com and download a better browser.
The browser that shows ads on its starting page? The browser that comes with "Pocket", that you can kinda hide but never turn off completely?
That's the one. The alternative is one that tracks every site you go to and sells that data for a profit. Easy choice in my book
Imo dismissable ads are worth it when the browser doesn't sell your data. Then again, I only look at the FF start page for like 2 seconds at a time
I turned off the Pocket recs in the settings once and never saw them again. Let FF advertise: at least they don't use app updates to quietly reset app permissions to default the way many others do.
about:config extensions.pocket.enabled to false
Or just delete the xpi from your filesystem.
All the ad crap is trivial to turn off.
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By this definition any browser history feature is "spyware." Actual spyware would steal the browser history instead of keeping it device local.
Read the actual words that it actually says. Sites can pay Google to get a profile of you, based on your browsing history, sent to them when you visit their website. Who's keeping anything local?
What are you talking about? Your history is saved locally. Websites call document.browsingTopics() to get topics that the user is interested in.
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