Chrome Privacy

http://mikewest.org/2011/09/chrome-privacy

by czottmann • 15 years ago

200 99 15 years ago

dchest• 15 years ago

According to Chrome help (http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...), only passwords are encrypted, not bookmarks, autofill data, apps, extensions, history, preferences, and themes. Is this still true?

Edit: in Chrome 15 (beta) just found an option "Encrypt all synced data". Yay!

mike-cardwell2• 15 years ago

Confused at why no-encryption would even be an option for this data.

fjarlq4• 15 years ago

Hmm, this feature seems buggy. I just tried enabling the option and it never finished. Had to kill it.

Filed a bug report: http://crbug.com/97939

codecaine• 15 years ago

wow, I was assuming that everything is stored encrypted on Googles servers. Would be cool if someone could clarify this, as the explanation in the Google help is a bit vague IMHO.

zobzu3• 15 years ago

To my understanding they started providing the option to encrypt only very recently. My take is obviously that it's bad for the company policy to have this stuff encrypted (any regular guy would have had built-in encryption when making such a sync service). But on the other hand it would be pretty bad advertising when Firefox always had full encryption. Providing the option (but not making it mandatory) gives the proper advertising/evangelizing arguments.

Slimy• 15 years ago

I thought it was general knowledge that the closed-source Chrome sends (some) data back to Google while the open-source Chromium does not.

Disclosure: I use Chrome (default) and IE9 (whenever Chrome fails).

justinschuh10• 15 years ago

Usage statistics and crash reporting are strictly opt-in (and the default at install is opted out). There's also sync, but you must explicitly enable the feature and log in.

That leaves five other places where data is sent back to Google for things like search suggestions and malware detection. You can find an explanation of those features and instructions on disabling them here: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=11...

fhewifewfjewao• 15 years ago

chromium contains RLZ identifier

justinschuh10• 15 years ago

The RLZ identifier is present only if Chrome is installed through some sort of third-party deal like a system or software bundle. If you install the stock Chrome from Google it's not present. You can find a good overview of RLZ here: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/in-open-for-rlz.html

y0ghur7_xxx• 15 years ago

I tried to look at what chrome sends to google with wireshark, and there are quite a lot of connections made to google servers, but it's all encrypted (ssl). So I actually have no way to know what is sent to google.

Did someone make a detailed analysis of what info gets sent to google on a default install of chrome?

buddydvd• 15 years ago

I noticed awhile back that even if you disable Chrome's safe browsing feature, Google still sends data to their server. I'm not sure if this is still the case today.

http://superuser.com/questions/236637/how-to-disable-google-...

justinschuh10• 15 years ago

That should definitely not be happening. If you're seeing this behavior please provide file a bug with full details at the following URL: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/entry?template=Pri...

huhtenberg5• 15 years ago

Yep, this still appears to be the case. It establishes a long-lived SSL connection to one Google's servers few seconds after the start. If the connection is forcefully killed (e.g. with SysInternal's TcpView), it won't be re-established, but needing to kill it every time I need to use Chrome is really annoying.

It is also the reason why I have Chrome updates permanently disabled - I don't trust Chrome enough to let it run anything in a background.

wslh• 15 years ago

On 2008 we published an article about this using our own hooking tool: http://blog.nektra.com/main/2008/10/15/the-truth-about-googl... don't know what's the state of this stuff on 2011.

This is hooking the application so you don't have issues with sniffing SSL.

pagekalisedown• 15 years ago

This is the tool I use to see SSL traffic:

http://www.tcpcatcher.org/

http://www.tcpcatcher.org/monitoring_SSL.php

It effectively helps you to man-in-the-middle-yourself.

kierank2• 15 years ago

The same thing also applies to Android.

kierank2• 15 years ago

Not entirely sure why I'm being downvoted but the same privacy concerns should apply to Android as well as Chrome.

philfreo4• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure Chrome send URLs to Google at least for indexing purposes. I've put up random pages on my websites, not linked to them anywhere at all but visited them in Chrome and then BAM - indexed soon after in search.

beaumartinez• 15 years ago

IIRC, it has components of Google Toolbar built in. If you accessed those pages with a browser with the Google Toolbar you'd have experienced the same.

philfreo4• 15 years ago

I'm hoping you're offering that as an FYI, rather than as a justification... because it's not a very good justification

aboodman2• 15 years ago

You recall incorrectly. Chrome does not send the URLs of pages you visit to Google for indexing, or for any other reason.

Please see the privacy policy. It answers these questions quite clearly:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/

danmaz74• 15 years ago

What did you visit after hitting those pages? There is also "referer"...

philfreo4• 15 years ago

nope... no outbound links

mikewest10• 15 years ago

Chrome does not arbitrarily send URLs to Google. We go out of our way to avoid doing that, actually.

Look at the implementation of SafeBrowsing, for instance, which does some clever work with hashes to ensure that Google never knows exactly what URL you visited that triggered the warning. It would have been _much_ simpler to just send the URLs, I assure you.

rpearl• 15 years ago

Chrome, or Chromium? One is open source, one really isn't. The set of things that Chrome does is certainly based on Chromium, but Google certainly has the freedom to add some very useful tracking behavior... if they want to.

On one, we have source. On the other, we just have the quote "We go out of our way to avoid doing that, actually." What other evidence?

scott_s• 15 years ago

Try putting up new pages, only visit them in non-Chrome browsers, and see if they still get indexed. If they do, then it's not Chrome.

zobzu3• 15 years ago

and dont forget to disable safe-browsing (which is pinging google) eg in Firefox "block known blah and bleh sites"

blauwbilgorgel• 15 years ago

When I had this happen, or when I heard this happen, there was always a reason that was far less sinister than initially thought.

* Public referrer logs created a backlink

* Somebody (else) published the URL

* Somebody (else) shared the URL

* You pinged the URL to search engines or other services.

* The URL appeared in your RSS feed

* The URL appeared in your sitemap

* Your pages URL ranges are easily guessable (/item.php?id=1007, /item.php?id=1008) and traversed by a search engine.

And more recently, something less innocuous: You simply added a Google +1 button to your pages.

  When you add the +1 button to a page, Google assumes that
  you want that page to be publicly available and visible 
  in Google Search results. As a result, we may fetch and 
  show that page even if it is disallowed in robots.txt.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...

csoghoian6• 15 years ago

2 responses:

1. Chrome is the only major browser not to support the Do Not Track header. Google is also the browser vendor whose bottom line would be most impacted if users could easily opt out of tracking. Coincidence?

While I welcome folks from the Chrome team to weigh in on the reasons for this, my own understanding is that adoption of this feature is being blocked by Google's Mountain View based policy team, and is not a decision that is in the hands of engineers.

Compare this to Chrome's absolutely spectacular record in the area of security, where folks like Adam Langley and Chris Evans have been able to ship innovative features that haven't worked their way through the standards process. Examples include HTTPS certificate pinning (that recently led to the discovery of MiTM attacks against Iranian users using the DigiNotar certs).

In the area of security, Chrome's engineers deploy whatever they think will help users. In the area of privacy, Google's lawyers and lobbyists are calling the shots.

(Also, there still isn't a working API to let others support DNT in Chrome. An API exists, I think, but it is quite buggy, AFAIK)

2. Blocking 3rd party cookies by default. Apple defaults to blocking 3rd party cookies, Chrome does not. Both are derived the same webkit core (yes, I know there is different code now), but when Google decided to create Chrome, they went with a different default than the one that Apple had already used -- one that hasn't led to websites breaking for Apple users.

Again, which browser vendors' bottom line would suffer if Chrome users could not easily be tracked? Google.

Let me be clear - I don't think that Chrome is engaging in any sneaky shenanigans to directly track users. No, that would be too obvious. Instead, Chrome just makes it easy for Google's other services to track users, when they stick with the deaults.

Wilya• 15 years ago

The DNT header is to be implemented by website developers (and they have nothing to gain by doing it). I understand that Google is better off without implementing this header, but I don't really think it would change anything if Chrome had it.

I agree on the cookies issue, though. Things like "Allow local data to be set (recommended)" make me kind of sad.

magicalist4• 15 years ago

as someone working on sites that use the recent browser storage APIs, I very much prefer that to be the recommended setting. Much saner than cookies, and for some type of apps makes for a much better user experience as well

Notice that "allow local data to be set" and "block third party cookies" are not mutually exclusive settings in preferences...which is good, because they can be and tend to be used for very different purposes.

If you want to block all data from being stored, that's fine (and web APIs are great in that they are designed to be individually denied and let a page detect that they have been), but I definitely disagree that first party storage enabled by default (and even "recommended") is lamentable.

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

> 1. Chrome is the only major browser not to support the Do Not Track header. Google is also the browser vendor whose bottom line would be most impacted if users could easily opt out of tracking. Coincidence?

The Chrome team has already addressed this issue. The problem with Do Not Track is that it isn't clear what it blocks and what it does not. It is also pretty useless as most websites that survive using ads will never support the Do Not Track headers, so it's a faux solution to the problem. Google already offers a browser extension (Firefox, Chrome and IE) to block Google Analytics. Last but not least, there is a dashboard on Google to know what Google ads know about you and the possibility to delete this information.

I think what's really bad is that DNT headers offer a false sense of privacy when in fact no websites respect the headers. Google's alternative solutions have the upside of being very clear about what they accomplish for your privacy.

csoghoian6• 15 years ago

Some ad networks already respect DNT. But you are right, many of the big ones don't. While Google can't force most of the ad networks to respect DNT, Google can choose to respect the header, which is currently sent by 5% of Firefox users, when it is received by the Doubleclick and Google Analytics servers.

Instead of supporting a header that millions of consumers are already sending, you instead offer a browser add-on for analytics, and "keep my opt outs" for ad network opt out cookies.

The signal sent by a consumer setting the DNT flag in their browser is just as clear as a consumer installing your analytics opt out plugin, or obtaining the doubleclick opt out cookie.

You could, right now, respect the DNT header as you currently respect your own opt out mechanisms, but you don't.

I get that Google is not a charity. I get that Do Not Track (or any other mechanism that makes it easy for consumers to avoid tracking) threatens your bottom line. What I would prefer though, is honesty.

Please just admit that you want to make it difficult for consumers to opt out, and that a single, easy to use mechanism built into the browser is something you want to avoid at all costs, even if that means you are ignoring millions of consumers' intent.

justinschuh10• 15 years ago

> 2. Blocking 3rd party cookies by default. Apple defaults to blocking 3rd party cookies, Chrome does not. Both are derived the same webkit core (yes, I know there is different code now), but when Google decided to create Chrome, they went with a different default than the one that Apple had already used -- one that hasn't led to websites breaking for Apple users.

Chrome's cookie code isn't derived from other code in WebCore; it's implemented in the platform layer. And it's intended to be as compatible as possible with the majority of the web. As for the privacy implications of third-party cookies, I think Michal covered the reality of the situation extremely well: http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2010/08/cookies-v-people.html

cskau• 15 years ago

If you don't like third party cookies then I encourage you to go to chrome://flags/ and Enable the 'Block all third-party cookies' experimental feature.

Simple as that.

csoghoian6• 15 years ago

Defaults matter. An extensive body of social science research tells us that users stick with the default settings.

In the area of security, Google recognizes the importance of setting safe defaults. See: "99.99% of Chrome users would never change the default settings. (The percentage is not an exaggeration.)"

http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/09/07/convergence.html

Having an option to block 3rd party cookies, but then hiding it in the chrome://flags/ menu is essentially worthless for most users.

Privacy enhancing technologies need to be easy to use, preferably, enabled by default.

bzbarsky4• 15 years ago

> Blocking 3rd party cookies by default

As a Firefox user who disables 3rd party cookies, this actually does break some sites. Signing in with your Google account to various blogs becomes impossible. Buying tickets online to the local puppet theater becomes impossible. That sort of thing.

csoghoian6• 15 years ago

You are a Firefox developer, right? Not a mere user.

Firefox takes a totally different approach to blocking cookies than IE/Chrome/Safari.

Firefox blocks the setting and transmission of cookies by/to 3rd parties.

The other browsers just block the setting of new cookies by 3rd parties.

An example of what this means:

A Safari or Chrome/IE user who has turned on 3rd party cookie blocking visits facebook.com in a 1st party manner (by visiting the facebook home page). He/she then visits CNN, where facebook is present as a 3rd party (via the like button). Even though that user has opted to block 3rd party cookies, their stored facebook cookies will be transmitted to facebook when it acts as a 3rd party, because the cookies were first set as a 1st party.

In comparison, when a Firefox user who has turned on 3rd party cookie blocking visits CNN, facebook has no idea who they are.

No one is visiting doubleclick.net as a 1st party, which means if Google turned on the Chrome/Safari style 3rd party cookie blocking, it wouldn't be able to track users for behavioral advertising (interestingly, Facebook could still do so). Were this to happen, I guess Google could always move away from using doubleclick.net and put everything under the google.com domain, which would get around this.

Mozilla's method of 3rd party cookie blocking does indeed cause collateral damage, which AFAIK, is why Mozilla hasn't turned it on.

Google doesn't have the same excuse for allowing 3rd party cookies, since Apple users don't suffer broken sites when they browse. (If the Flash fiasco has shown us anything, it is that websites will bend to Apple's will, and change whatever breaks in order to allow Apple users to visit their sites).

notbitter2• 15 years ago

For whatever reason, Chrome does seem to make life hard for privacy extensions like Ghostery:

"As Chrome's resource blocking API is not yet comprehensive, some elements may execute." - http://www.ghostery.com/download

mikewest10• 15 years ago

The main dev on the WebRequest API sits right behind me, and is making steady progress. It's the first synchronous extension API that interacts with the network stack, and it's a nontrivial effort to get it running. I can assure you, however, that making life hard for privacy extensions is the exact opposite of what we're being paid to do.

Look at the progress on privacy-related APIs over the last year: WebRequest is coming along nicely, WebNavigation and ContentSettings are feature complete and in the final stages of polish, and Proxy went out to stable in Chrome 13. Privacy and Clear just landed in experimental, and we're iterating on them rapidly.

(Details on the state of each are available at http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/trunk/experimental....)

qjz• 15 years ago

Is it possible to restrict requests to the host in the URL I'm visiting? XSS, DNT, etc. become much less of an issue when you can block all external resources requested by a page.

notbitter2• 15 years ago

Glad to hear it. Chrome is great in every other way.

justinschuh10• 15 years ago

Engineers are actively working on APIs for this, but it's quite a bit more complicated than it may seem at first. Low-level capabilities like these need to be implemented such that they don't conflict with our extension permission model and general security posture. For instance, we don't want an extension with the WebRequest API to be able to prevent you from uninstalling it, or to manipulate other extensions and internal browser configuration.

yellowbkpk• 15 years ago

Star this issue so you can get updates as it progresses through the release cycle: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=60101

natch• 15 years ago

Wow, that was an amazingly skillful non-denial denial. Notice how he never said Chrome does not collect user information. Because, as we all know, it does. I've often wondered how much it collects, by what mechanisms (including via third parties or analytics added by third parties) and to whom the information is available and under what circumstances. The statement from Mike West does not appear to shed any additional light on this; maybe it's answered elsewhere -- does anybody know? I've seen the Google Chrome TOS and wasn't able to get a clear picture from that.

BTW anyone in Mike's position still may not be privy to everything that is done with the data, as some data collection and sharing may be subject to national security orders that that most employees are not allowed to know about. So any statement his team makes about this should be couched with "to the best of our knowledge."

mikewest10• 15 years ago

Chrome does not collect user information, unless you explicitly opt-in to sharing aggregated usage information and crash reports with Google. If you do opt-in to these metrics (and you have to opt-in, it's disabled by default), you can opt-out at any time via chrome://settings/advanced#metricsReportingEnabled

The data collected is available for you to peruse at chrome://histograms/

All the data that Google collects is subject to the privacy policies at http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/, and Google of course complies with SafeHarbor regulations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Priva...)

asadotzler3• 15 years ago

"Chrome does not collect user information, unless you explicitly opt-in to sharing aggregated usage information and crash reports with Google"

OR if you don't opt in to anything and you simply type some things into your Chrome Omnibox which get sent to Google for suggestions, or if you don't opt in to anything and you simply mistype a URL and that send data to Google for more helpful error pages, or if you don't opt in to anything and Google's phishing and malware service collects sites you're visiting. Oh, and where you don't opt in to RLZ, but you get it anyway.

As I said on Twitter, I'm not really bothered by these things, but it's disingenuous to pretend they don't exist or to respond to peoples' privacy concerns by insisting that aggregate usage stats is the only information Google collects.

fjarlq4• 15 years ago

Question for mikewest:

Can Google do anything to help make browsers appear to be less unique, and thus less trackable?

I'm talking about http://panopticlick.eff.org/

I'd much rather find a technical solution to that than a political non-solution.

mikewest10• 15 years ago

Fingerprinting is a problem, and it's difficult to address. There's been some discussion around mechanisms for disabling features to make the browser signature less unique, but it's a very tough problem.

Take a look at https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Fingerprinting for some discussion around what would be required. It's very, very nontrivial.

gbog• 15 years ago

otoh, you need a browser signature if you want to avoid CSRF attacks.

jannes• 15 years ago

Enabling click to play for plugins in Chrome is already possible and makes you much less trackable. You will get much less bits of identifying information in panopticlick because your fonts and some other things can't be read out without Flash or Java.

fjarlq4• 15 years ago

You sure about that?

I already do click-to-play for plugins in Chrome, and it doesn't seem to help much. According to Panopticlick, there are 19.75 bits of data in my Browser Plugin Details, and for the "value" it describes all the plugins I have enabled.

Also with click-to-play enabled, Panopticlick can see my system fonts (20.75+ bits of data, one in 1,769,122 browsers has this value). Apparently Panopticlick is not using one of my plugins to get that data... I haven't whitelisted eff.org or otherwise enabled plugins there.

Looks like Panopticlick is using JavaScript/CSS font detection methods: http://www.lalit.org/lab/javascript-css-font-detect/

Hmm... Panopticlick reports "No Flash or Java fonts detected" when I try it with IE9 on the same system. Is IE9 doing something to block Javascript/CSS detection of those fonts, or does Panopticlick have a bug with IE9 or what? Looks like that method worked for IE6/7...

justinschuh10• 15 years ago

IIRC click-to-play doesn't prevent detection of the plugin; it just prevents it from initializing. And you should also be able to get at fonts by using CSS, SVG, or canvas just to name a few.

As for the larger question, I really don't think there's any way of preventing sites from uniquely fingerprinting a given browser installation. There are just so many places where fingerprints leak through (and the behavior is relied on) that I'd expect it would take a massive overhaul of the web as we know it. Although, I'm a security guy not a privacy guy, so maybe I'm just too pessimistic.

budman2• 15 years ago

Just use Iron.

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron...

aboodman2• 15 years ago

http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam

budman2• 15 years ago

Interesting. Thanks

freshhawk• 15 years ago

Ah, the old "no no, just trust us" defense.

This is just a thing Chrome has to live with, it's a browser developed by a company that makes money selling user behavior to advertisers. You'd have to be stupid not to think this is a possibility.

Must be frustrating to the developers who know what it does and doesn't do though.

Silhouette• 15 years ago

The trouble with privacy comments like this blog post is always the same: no matter what the current situation is or how good the intentions of the person making the comment may be, unless they are an executive with the authority to legally bind the company in question to a privacy policy that has real repercussions if subsequently violated, in the end anyone can still be screwed over on the whim of whoever has the data.

In this case, that "whoever has the data" has been publicly dismissive of fundamental privacy concerns up to and including CEO level, and has a business model built around extracting as much value as possible from that private data without regard for the privacy concerns of any individual.

justinschuh10• 15 years ago

We put the source out there and try to be as transparent as we reasonably can. In the end though, people make their own decisions.

azakai2• 15 years ago

One problem is that Chrome is not open source - Chromium is. But 99% of people use Chrome, and there is no way to build Chrome from source to be sure what code is running.

We have to take Google's word for it that Chrome is identical to Chromium as regards privacy, and as others stated, Google's business interest is clearly to track user information, not to respect their privacy.

huhtenberg5• 15 years ago

Open source != trustworthiness.

This is a very tough cookie to crumble. The counter-argument to "we are open source" is that the binaries can potentially be assembled from an altered source code. Ideally, the binaries should be assembled by multiple independent "build points" and compared against vendor's version. There was a secure smartphone OS vendor (the name escapes me ATM, it was several years ago) and they did just that - an open source project with audited build system - and it was a major hassle by the looks of it.

The only sure way to deal with the trust issue is to not have a conflict of interest to the first place, which is something that seems to be neigh impossible with Chrome.

zobzu3• 15 years ago

Chrome source isnt out there AFAIK. Chromium source is. Not a small difference.

Mithrandir• 15 years ago

Why not just use Chromium?

methodin• 15 years ago

At the end of the day Google is really not the company you have to be worried about - it's the ad networks. They are the ones implementing zombie cookies using the 10 or so methods of storage and the ones that directly sell your information to even seedier companies. I used to work for one so I know what goes on. This will always be a dance between smart developers usurping tracking efforts and smart developers coming up with new tracking methods.

I really don't understand the extreme sentiment that your info via cookies is the worst form of privacy breach there is. Why would you not be more concerned with the companies that charge $.50 per call to access an API that can fetch information on anyone that fills out a form ("Oh I never knew my neighbor only makes $48k a year")? I guarantee you these companies know more about you than Google, Twitter and Facebook (unless you post every thought ever, of course). Case in point, they knew my coworker's wife at the time was 4 months pregnant. Unless you can derive such information from searches (doubtful and completely not worth the effort) then this information obviously came from elsewhere. Perhaps, for instance, like the doctor's office.

asadotzler3• 15 years ago

"At the end of the day Google is really not the company you have to be worried about - it's the ad networks."

Google is the largest ad network on the Web.

poona• 15 years ago

If you don't like third party cookies then I encourage you to go to chrome://flags/ and Enable the 'Block all third-party cookies' experimental feature.

Simple as that.

Chrome Privacy

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