Google Chrome makes you roam!

I wasn't sure where to put this. It's not computer help because I don't need help here. It's not quite a rant, because I want to inform on this issue as much as hear feedback from others on their experiences.

What's up

First, let me paint the picture. My set up here is 2-3 monitors, depending on what I am doing at a given time, plus a TV on the wall flipped 90 degrees and set to Portrait mode for display of status screens. At the moment. ATS trending is on that screen but it's just as often Drudge, Breaking News or my own site's server/traffic status. The TV/wall screen is run from the same network but on a Laptop that is 90% dedicated to running that display and whatever I have it showing at a given time.

^^ This is to explain how I have Google Chrome open on two monitors at the same time, yet totally and 100% removed from each other for installs or files. They have NO contact except the LAN....which isn't open to drive sharing right now anyway and Google's main server login for the account.

The Problem

Over the last couple weeks as I've been playing with my wall screen for figuring out how best to use it, I've been adding extensions and dropping them as I test them out for refreshing tabs. I want whatever I have on the wall screen to be updating every few mins, automatically. Hence.......playing with new things.

What this has allowed me to SEE...was cute at first, then disturbing. Now? I'm pissed. ( ) When I update or even change status of an extension installed on the desktop, I can look at my laptop/wall screen and see the icon appear/disappear on THAT chrome screen too. Recall...these are NOT connected except by Google.

What I just had happen was 2 google crashes in a row. No 'sick block' guy..just -C R A S H- and desktop is all I see the next second. Like shooting it dead. Now that in itself was a shock. I've never seen Chrome crash out that way before. What pisses me off? Guess where ELSE it crashed at the same instant...BOTH times? Yup... My wall screen crashed too.

So... Lets think about that for a minute. My wall screen is on ONLY 1 thing. It's ATS Trending Pages on a 5 minute rotating refresh to the tab. Nothing else. Nothing whatsoever. For extensions I have LastPass, Auto Refresh Plus and a well known 'Ad mitigation utility' ('nough said there). Nothing more was functional when this happened.

Creepy is what creepy tracks

Now, take the above.....two browsers on two computers doing two radically different things at the moment they BOTH crash ...not once, but twice. I've turned on another extension I downloaded because this got me to wondering....with a bit of a sick feeling actually... This other extension is a Desktop/Start page helper for Chrome called "Incredible StartPage". What this little gizmo does is make my home page into a tabbed web page with bookmarks, recently visited or favorites by visit number. Handy eh?? You can just see where you've been and click right on it without digging bookmarks....Why, it's the best time saver since Tivo. Or... Wait... There's more.

That fancy, handy and helpful list of all my bookmarks....favorited places...and places most visited by time and click count? Well, it shows up on my laptop too. SAME BOOKMARKS. SAME FAVORITES. SAME MOST VISITED.

Summary

To summarize and close this up, what I have found...if we didn't already know this...is that Google is tracking, recording and storing on their own servers, every site you bookmark, how many times you ever visit your private bookmarks..and by name, how you have it listed in your bookmarks vs. the URL.

Now I've been a bad bunny from time to time and been lazy. Trivial sites like greeting cards or non-subscription graphics stock sites..that sort of thing..I've been known to write login/pass right IN the bookmark title. After all, short of a hacker, who else ever sees MY bookmarks!?

The answer, if you use Google? Anyone who cares to at Google and anyone who'll ever have a reason to learn about you..using what is now stored on their servers. This seemed too important a discovery...confirmed discovery...to not share with everyone.

Solution

Personally? This discovery and the confirmation delivered in a way nothing else ever could by watching the two browsers crash a split second apart across different machines has sealed it for me. Chrome isn't what I'll be using..or ever will use again. For anything. Period. I may find every browser is peeking over our shoulder, server recording every thing we do and everywhere we do it....and if that's the case, I'll be a bunny without a browser until I can WRITE MY OWN. ..until then, I'm off on a hunt for a browser that shows me the net, not shows ME to everyone ON it.

Hope this helps for anyone who may have wondered if this actually was happening. Anyone else have experiences to add? Helpful hints?

I'm gonna be the first to say it.

Shoulda used firefox

Crazy sounding set up you have, I'm kind of jealous, I have a monitor, and my TV can dual as a monitor, I want my room to look like a com link data station to!

Oh.. A factor to add to this that hadn't even struck me until I was reading back over what I posted here. My laptop doesn't need logged into ATS when my desktop has logged in first...and visa versa. When the machines start they have logged into Google as a routine thing. Much of my webmaster stuff if based through Google and Email is running through there for my non-sensitive stuff. It makes sense....

but....again... I DO NOT HAVE TO LOG IN TO ATS...if ANOTHER computer using Chrome already IS.

That tells me...my passwords..ALL of them...are also server stored at Google. This..I DID NOT..give my consent for at any time. Anyone else tell Google they could store everything you have and everything you are online? Hmmm...

Anyway.. Just call me a fly in Google's ointment. After this? Perhaps they need a big bag of sand in their crank case too. Really...I'm stunned. I hadn't realized they'd basically 'clouded' our whole browser data set.

reply to post by eXia7


Firefox is what I am going to play with again tonight after my last final exam. I may spend the whole night on it...but this time, I'm sand boxing it and watching everything it does for data in/out...at least for a short time...to make sure it's not sending big data blocks I didn't tell it to. I'll come back here to update if I find anything on FF that raises flags. After this? I'm a little shaken for trusting anything.

Thanks for the comment about my set up... I've been meaning to take a picture of this whole thing and find the thread on here for Member's Computer Builds. I just recently put the last couple pieces in to making it all work. Time to show off. This thread wasn't for that..but thanks again for mentioning it!

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Oh.. A factor to add to this that hadn't even struck me until I was reading back over what I posted here. My laptop doesn't need logged into ATS when my desktop has logged in first...and visa versa. When the machines start they have logged into Google as a routine thing. Much of my webmaster stuff if based through Google and Email is running through there for my non-sensitive stuff. It makes sense....

but....again... I DO NOT HAVE TO LOG IN TO ATS...if ANOTHER computer using Chrome already IS.

That tells me...my passwords..ALL of them...are also server stored at Google. This..I DID NOT..give my consent for at any time. Anyone else tell Google they could store everything you have and everything you are online? Hmmm...

Anyway.. Just call me a fly in Google's ointment. After this? Perhaps they need a big bag of sand in their crank case too.

Really...I'm stunned. I hadn't realized they'd basically 'clouded' our whole browser data set.

Also remember, if you log into youtube, you're logged into google +. They have such a redundancy on ways to collect your data, I'm amazed people didn't come to this conclusion sooner. I've been using firefox for a very long time now, and no matter how much you try and make yourself invisible, it's near impossible. But in using this browser with a few helpful addons, I've been able to keep tracking down to a minimium.

Oh wow.. I was waiting for something... then it slowly dawned on me.

You're describing a feature of 'google' chrome...

and thinking it's been snuck on you.

If you log into google and use chrome and you log into chrome, it'll sync your bookmarks, plugins, history, with any other chrome browser you log into.

support.google.com...

Why sign in to Chrome
With Chrome's sign-in feature, you no longer need to fret about your bookmarks or apps being "stuck" on one computer. When you sign in to the Chrome browser or a Chrome device, your bookmarks, extensions, apps, theme, and other browser preferences are saved and synced to your Google Account. You can then load these settings anytime you use Chrome on other computers and devices.

--

by default your saved passwords are encrypted on your computer and on Google’s servers using a cryptographic key. You also have the option to encrypt all your synced data. You can remove your synced data from your account at any time, using the Google Dashboard.

Originally posted by winofiend
Oh wow.. I was waiting for something... then it slowly dawned on me.

You're describing a feature of 'google' chrome...

and thinking it's been snuck on you.

If you log into google and use chrome and you log into chrome, it'll sync your bookmarks, plugins, history, with any other chrome browser you log into.

support.google.com...

Why sign in to Chrome
With Chrome's sign-in feature, you no longer need to fret about your bookmarks or apps being "stuck" on one computer. When you sign in to the Chrome browser or a Chrome device, your bookmarks, extensions, apps, theme, and other browser preferences are saved and synced to your Google Account. You can then load these settings anytime you use Chrome on other computers and devices.

--

by default your saved passwords are encrypted on your computer and on Google’s servers using a cryptographic key. You also have the option to encrypt all your synced data. You can remove your synced data from your account at any time, using the Google Dashboard.

edit on 10-12-2012 by winofiend because: (no reason given)

I'm also sure this incorporates all smart phone data as well, such as android devices.

yeah, they snuck it in pretty quick though, people are just comfortable with it i suppose

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Hope this helps for anyone who may have wondered if this actually was happening. Anyone else have experiences to add? Helpful hints?

Have you looked at the settings? Under Sign in > Advanced synced settings... > Choose what to sync.
Or manage your synced data on the Dashboard. I quite enjoy the sync but one needs to be careful, indeed.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Wow so it's not only on my side, my Chrome crashed two times in a row in 5 minutes about two hours ago, WTH happend?
ETA:
Anonymous took responsibility for Google outage today, I'm reading on twitter right now...

Try it without being logged into Google.

it's a feature that can be incredibly useful if you like having access to favourites, cookies, passwords wherever you go. But there are ways of using these features without being tracked by Google.

I only save passwords for sites that I'm not worried about being hacked and once I sign in for the 1st time and it has synchronised the data I need. I then disconnect it from google and I'm good to go.
i also don't use Goggle Chrome but use the open source version of Chromium called Iron Browser, this version is pretty much the same as GC but without the google tracking. Install DNT-ME, ABP & Flashblock and you are good to surf pretty much anonymously.

I also loath Firefox because of their notorious memory leaks. And I would suggest if you are running your laptop as a server and keep it up for 24hrs not to use Firefox or you will have to restart your machine every couple of days to reclaim the memory.

I feel I have to clarify a bit here... I almost feel like I sound like a noob first discovering that my connection is active when I'm not. lol... That was a shock too...years and years ago. It isn't Google keep stats and info that shocks me here. In fact, I do recall agreeing to allowing them to record general stats and such.

What I am shocked about is the depth and breadth of what they are recording server side. Sync is one thing..but the more I got to thinking hard on this...it's not just Sync and it's not simply asking if we want a password saved before we enter it.

Something else hit me while testing awhile ago.....(my mind wanders at the oddest times..lol)...More often than not, chrome is asking if we'd like a password saved *AFTER* the login page is filled out, submitted and past to the next page in line. I.E...they've saved that password in a temporary buffer if nothing else at all. That wouldn't bug me until today, I find out Google is basically data dumping everything Chrome related (Form..PW..Bookmarks...Preferences..everything) upstream whether I like it or not.

I haven't done this to test..but perhaps I ought to. I wonder... If I tell it NOT to Syn anything...anything at all...then log in with a brand new computer and tell THAT one to Sync without changing the NO setting on the machine that all the data sits on? How much would you like to bet....without turning that main system on for Google to change the setting..it will update and sync that new computer anyway?

What I mean here is, what are the odds Google is tracking ALL of that whether you tell it to use Sync or NOT...and it's simply sitting there to be handy if you change your mind?....


You know...something else occurs to me. If Anonymous is off playing with Google right now..and Google has server side storage of everyone's passwords as kept by Chrome....Well...Ask Stratfor how secure password hash files are when Anonymous is around. They ARE good at some things and lets just hope they never hack to wherever Google is storing all this.

(Now I have to change every single PW I have....and some of those are BIG ones! Oh I could kill 'em for not making this uploading of our data VERY VERY VERY clear. I had NO expectation they were both taking AND storing long term...everything I have. )

You aren't forced to sign in to chrome to use it, just click skip for now and that's it, no sync nothing,
It really is that simple, or as I said in my previous post just download srware iron browser and you have google chrome without the google tracking, You can still sign in and sync if you wish but it's disabled by default.

Also regarding the password saving being dumped back to google, that only happens if click save password. it's not a realtime connection between you and google it only sync's when something changes in the databases it's monitoring. So the temp buffer which all browsers have is safe from sync.

reply to post by mclarenmp4

I appreciate all your saying here..but I do want to ask if you are Google trained or work at the Google campus? I'm not being snarky, but literal. I didn't think it did what I've just seen it do. I sure didn't expect to have confirmation that other people were crashing out the same way I was. So these are program crashes originating at GOOGLE...to crash my software, locally running on my system. How else do we get two totally unrelated machines ..in every other way...have a catastrophic crash to desktop at the same instant? Twice...

What does sync or anything I'm telling it I want it to do have to do with crashes to desktop? Naww.. there is TOO much more happening here than I'll put up with any longer. Security isn't a neat idea for me...It's absolute and a matter of making my living and being effective at it. What I now discover means the main passwords for my dedicated server equipment is ALSO stored up on a server I NEVER authorized to store that password.

That one thing by itself is enough to trash their software on the spot and without further question...but taken with the rest I figured it was doing some of....but NOTHING like this level? Umm.. Yeah... Whatever love Google and I shared for a browser? It's history, and they aren't getting any more of mine. I have a final to take in 3 hours and after that? I'll have Google Chrome flushed off my machines in total by midnight. I'll never have anything like that, from them on anything I own again.

Sorry Google....I wanted a Search Engine and Computer Company... If I wanted the N.S.A. in a software package, I'd call Ft Meade and ask them for it.

That's one of the reasons why I use Iron instead of Chrome.

It also does not pre-load pages from the links on a page that it "thinks" you want to visit, something that makes Chrome look faster at loading pages (it has already downloaded them) and makes more hits for Chrome as the browser used to see those pages, even when we don't see them.

PS: In Opera you just have to right-click on a page and say with what frequency you want it to refresh the page.

reply to post by ArMaP


Thanks for the info and thank you to everyone else who had things to share. I am going to look at Iron tonight and perhaps Opera. I really don't want to go back to FF. I was on that when I went to chrome. A few too many times of seeing FF in the 1 gig + range on memory taken and it caused me to leave for that reason. Chrome isn't much better for that....so I'm anxious to find something light weight for a change, since I seem to be in the market for a browser whether I'd planned it that way or not. Hmmm... Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to test I go!

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


hey, wrabbit, this might be related

Google Accidentally Transmits Self-Destruct Code to Army of Chrome Browsers

It's the sync feature google provides as people above have stated. The reason chrome asks to save a password AFTER is because people enter in the wrong password and older browsers would "remember" the incorrect one. Chrome asks after to ensure that you are satisfied with what you have entered.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

App crash sent to two different computers on same account. All I can say is LOL. Nothing like a marketing made program crashing/attacking all sessions on your network right?? You install a marketing firms crap and wonder why you're being tracked. Anything Google related has a tracking code in it. Google Chrome browser, Google voice, G-mail, browser plugins like Google Earth. All that junk are programs that track. Even after uninstalling this stuff there probably is still remaining garbage tracking you. Whenever you run their services you have to have java or flash or some kind of a plugin to run it. Those track too. There really is no way to get around it if you use their services. You either don't use anything and shut off flash and java, or create a bogus account (TOS Violation) and get a proxy to somewhat hide your identity.

A long time ago when G-mail first came out you had to get a friend invite to get an account. You probably started out with something like [email protected] Now that Google has gotten larger the policies suddenly change. Now every time you log-in you are nagged to change that account name to your real name and constantly verify your data and phone. Seriously they talk about security and tell you that they care about your identity, but at the same time they really want you to use your real name for your e-mail. I am telling you man these people are evil.

As a few other have said you are getting paranoid, it seems , about something that is very easy to disable in Chrome.

If you log into any computer, new or otherwise, with your Google account and make changes to how it syncs then yah..your settings will update. If security is paramount to you , as you claim, then I assume you are already using 2 factor authentication? If I want to do something that can't be tracked then yah, their are easy ways to do that but really this is where you see something nefarious?

If you want to sync things then its great. Im a full on Google fan and have my phone, Google+, bookmarks everything syncing. It's great because I can log onto my Nexus7, Phone or whatever and have access to what I need. As you can see below , I enabled everything because anything I am willing to share online is something I would rather have access to from everywhere.