by Tyler Durden
June 24, 2019

from ZeroHedge Website

Google's Chrome is essentially spy software according to Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, who spent a week analyzing the popular browser and concluded that it,

"looks a lot like surveillance software."

Fowler has since switched to Mozilla's Firefox because of its default privacy settings, and says that it was easier than one might imagine.

My tests of Chrome vs. Firefox unearthed a personal data caper of absurd proportions.

 

In a week of Web surfing on my desktop, I discovered 11,189 requests for tracker "cookies" that Chrome would have ushered right onto my computer but were automatically blocked by Firefox.

 

These little files are the hooks that data firms, including Google itself, use to follow what websites you visit so they can build profiles of your interests, income and personality.

Chrome welcomed trackers even at websites you would think would be private. I watched Aetna and the Federal Student Aid website set cookies for Facebook and Google.

 

They surreptitiously told the data giants every time I pulled up the insurance and loan service's log-in pages.

And that's not the half of it...

Look in the upper right corner of your Chrome browser. See a picture or a name in the circle? If so, you're logged in to the browser, and Google might be tapping into your Web activity to target ads.

 

Don't recall signing in? I didn't, either.

 

Chrome recently started doing that automatically when you use Gmail.

Washington Post

When you use Chrome,

signing into Gmail automatically logs in

the browser to your Google account.

When "sync" is also on,

Google receives your browsing history.

(Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post)

Meanwhile, Chrome is even worse when it comes to mobile devices - reporting the precise location of Android users unless location sharing is turned off, in which case it will send out your rough coordinates.
 

Cookie monsters

According to one study, tracking cookies from third-parties are on 92% of websites.

The Washington Post, for example, uses around 40 - which the company said is "average for a news site," and says they are designed to deliver better-targeted ads and track ad performance.

But cookies can also be found on websites with no advertising.

Both Aetna and the FSA service said the cookies on their sites help measure their own external marketing campaigns. The blame for this mess belongs to the entire advertising, publishing and tech industries.

 

But what responsibility does a browser have in protecting us from code that isn't doing much more than spying?

Washington Post

Mozilla to the rescue?

For the past four years or so, Firefox browser has had a built-in anti-tracking feature for the past four or so years in its "private" browsing mode.

Earlier this month, Mozilla activated this feature for normal browsing mode.

While ads will still appear, Firefox is now separating cookies in real time to determine which ones are required for a website to function correctly, and which ones are simply spies.

Apple began to block cookies on their Safari mobile browser starting in 2017, using an algorithm the company calls "intelligent tracking protection."

Chrome, meanwhile, continues to welcome cookies onto your computer and phone with open arms.

That said, the company announced last month that it would require third-party cookies to better identify themselves, which will supposedly allow them to apply better controls.

That said, the company did not offer The Post a timeline or say whether it would employ default tracking blockers.

I'm not holding my breath. Google itself, through its Doubleclick and other ad businesses, is the No. 1 cookie maker - the Mrs. Fields of the Web.

 

It's hard to imagine Chrome ever cutting off Google's moneymaker.

Washington Post

"Cookies play a role in user privacy, but a narrow focus on cookies obscures the broader privacy discussion because it's just one way in which users can be tracked across sites," according to Chrome's director of product management, Ben Galbraith.

 

"This is a complex problem, and simple, blunt cookie blocking solutions force tracking into more opaque practices."

Giving up on Google

In his decision to kick Chrome to the curb, Fowler cites a blog post by Johns Hopkins associate professor Matthew Green, who said last year he was "done" with the browser.

Like Green, I've chosen Firefox, which works across phones, tablets, PCs and Macs.

 

Apple's Safari is also a good option on Macs, iPhones and iPads, and the niche Brave browser goes even further in trying to jam the ad-tech industry.

What does switching to Firefox cost you? It's free, and downloading a different browser is much simpler than changing phones.

In 2017, Mozilla launched a new version of Firefox called Quantum that made it considerably faster.

 

In my tests, it has felt almost as fast as Chrome, though benchmark tests have found it can be slower in some contexts. Firefox says it's better about managing memory if you use lots and lots of tabs.

Switching means you'll have to move your bookmarks, and Firefox offers tools to help. Shifting passwords is easy if you use a password manager.

 

And most browser add-ons are available, though it's possible you won't find your favorite.

Washington Post

Perhaps Fowler can reach out to some of his Washington Post colleagues to see what their many sources in the US intelligence community think of Chrome vs. Firefox...







 

Google Chrome is Tracking

...Your Every Move and Storing it - This is How to Stop It
by Matt Agorist
June 24, 2019

from TheFreeThoughtProject Website

Google is not only

Tracking Your Every Move,

but they are Storing a Record

of Every Place you've Visited...

 

"I knew I was being tracked but naively didn't think they were saving everything in a timeline," says Google user Leslie Morgan Nakajima, of Capitola, California.

 

"But to see everything there was pretty chilling. They had every store, restaurant and bar I had visited, and the exact times I was there.

 

I was so freaked out."

It is no secret that the tech behemoth, Google, is in the data mining business.

From cookies to targeted ads, the amount of specific information they have on individuals is mind blowing.

While these "features" are marketed to users to improve their user experience, the Orwellian tracking systems employed by Google to do so are shocking, especially the location tracking and history.

By default, Google's Location History function is turned off and users must 'opt in' to turn it on. However, many Google users report never turning it on, yet when they check their history, Google has been tracking them for months.

The reason Google users don't remember turning it on is due to the fact that to use certain features and apps on certain devices, you will get a notification stopping you from using it - until you let Google track you.

As Jefferson Graham points out for USA Today:

For instance, Google Maps has a service called "Match," which suggests restaurants based on your past dining experiences and tastes. If you click on it, Google sends you to Settings to allow Location History tracking.

Google also routes people to turn on Location History in exchange for,

"real-time traffic updates based on your current location," or with Google Photos to "help improve auto-organization and search."

The fact is that Google is totally upfront about this too.

It is clearly defined in their terms of service agreement. However, most people never bother to read the dozens of pages of fine print before turning on certain features on their devices.

According to Google's own terms, Location History,

"saves where you go even when you aren't using a specific Google service."

If you want to be freaked out at what Google knows about you, Click here to see what data is on your Timeline.

Now that you are successfully disturbed, it is rather simple to turn this function off and delete the data.

You need to go to your account and click on Data & Personalization and turn off all the ways Google spies on you.
 

To delete your history, on your Android phone or tablet, open your device's Settings app and then Google and then Google Account.

• At the top, tap Data & personalization.
   

• Under "Activity controls," tap Location History.
   

• At the bottom, tap Manage Timeline. Your device will open Google Maps Google Maps.
   

• Tap More More and then Settings.
   

• At the bottom, choose Delete all Location History or Delete Location History range.
   

• If you're on a browser, go to maps.google.com/timeline. You might need to sign in. You can delete individual locations, locations by date, or your whole location history in Timeline.

Now you are finished.

However, according to Google,

"even after you delete your Location History information, some location data may continue to be saved in other settings, like Web & App Activity, as part of your use of other services, like Search and Maps."

So, depending on what apps you have installed, you should sift through them to see if they are holding this data.

"Tracking without meaningful controls for individuals is not good for society and individual freedoms," Aleksandra Korolova, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California says.

 

"Going forward, if information is going to be tracked, then individuals should be given more meaningful controls to opt-out."

We agree.

Not a Google user? To see what data your Amazon device is gathering on you, click here.

Google

-   None Dare Call It Sedition   -
by Patrick Wood
June 27, 2019
from Technocracy Website

Google has now flatly stated its intent to influence and control public perception so as to manipulate and determine national political election outcomes.

It does this by using AI algorithms to skew search results, presenting only their political views, and suppressing dissenting or alternative views.

However, this is not a free speech issue. Google is not a news organization. It does not hire journalists nor does it create original content. Rather, Google is an information utility that simply indexes existing and new journalistic content.

Google's all-powerful and pervasive Internet crawler is able to discover virtually 100% of everything published in the world, on an hour-by-hour or minute-by-minute basis.

In other words, Google knows 'everything' there is to know...

The question is,

will it tell all that it knows or only part of it?

Google is very much a public utility that resembles a telephone company.

When your local telephone company publishes a phone book, it simply indexes people by last name and puts their number next to it.

It is easy for one person to find another and then pick up the phone and make a call.

• What would happen if the phone company started making decisions about who could have a listing in their master directory?

   

• What if they simply dropped out people who were discovered to be Republicans or Democrats?

   

• What if they deleted people because they had a certain skin color?

   

• Or national origin?

   

• Or religion...?

While on one hand, the phone company was willing to connect and charge for service in everybody's home, those suppressed individuals would only be able to make outbound calls and they would seldom receive any inbound calls.

Would America ever tolerate this? Of course not... In fact, it would spark a national uproar of epic proportions.

So, can anyone explain why Google is getting a free pass on hiding the particulars of its indexing algorithms from public consumers of information?

It would be bad enough if Google simply dropped out certain pieces of information, but they have gone way beyond this by rearranging the results it chooses to release and presenting them in such a manner to show an alternate reality that purposely misleads the public.

This is what is called "weaponizing data" to actively and intentionally lead people to false conclusions in order to modify their behavior.

To say this is wrong is an understatement.

 

To say it is illegal is complicated, but it is certainly possible.

Has Google unleashed Project Dragonfly?

On August 1, 2018, the left-leaning journal called The Intercept originally broke the story that Google was creating a censored version of its search engine for China.

The secret project was named Dragonfly...

The U.K. journalist, Ryan Gallagher, created an international uproar with the first report, but has since written 23 additional investigative articles that fully expose Google's activities in China.

Gallagher wrote,

Documents seen by The Intercept, marked "Google confidential," say that Google's Chinese search app will automatically identify and filter websites blocked by the Great Firewall.

 

When a person carries out a search, banned websites will be removed from the first page of results…

 

The search app will also "blacklist sensitive queries" so that "no results will be shown" at all when people enter certain words or phrases, the documents state.

 

The censorship will apply across the platform:

Google's image search, automatic spell check and suggested search features will incorporate the blacklists, meaning that they will not recommend people information or photographs the government has banned.

This is exactly what Google is now doing to the United States, except that it is acting on its own accord and not under the orders of a national government.

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a member of the elitist Trilateral Commission, was recently interviewed by BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis and stated,

"The world is a very interconnected place.

 

There are many, many benefits interacting, among other things, with China… I believed they would be better to stay in China, and help change China to be more open."

Apparently, what is good for China's censorship is good for the U.S. as well.

Will The Intercept call out Google for doing to the U.S. what it intended to do for China?

 

Will the American public be as outraged over domestic censorship as they were about the possibility of China's censorship?

Google's clear agenda

When Google's Head of Responsible Innovation, Jen Gennai stated,

Again it wasn't just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we're rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again?

What does Google want to prevent from happening again? According to Gennai, it is "preventing the next Trump situation."

Social justice warriors like Gennai have obviously discovered the power of Google's Internet machine to practice social engineering according to their exclusive world view, while excluding all other views.

While some lawmakers are already investigating anti-trust measures against Google, they might be missing the more pertinent issue: Sedition.

According to one legal source,

Sedition is a serious felony punishable by fines and up to 20 years in prison and it refers to the act of inciting revolt or violence against a lawful authority with the goal of destroying or overthrowing it.

Whether they realize it or not, Google is deep into the process of meddling with the election process to create insurrection in order to cause the overthrow of our lawful national government established according to the U.S. Constitution.

In short, it is the citizens of our nation who decide national, state and local leadership and not Google!

Virtually every public servant in the United States is required to take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States. It's time to hold some feet to the fire.