So, just got a notification about google’s new enhanced safe browsing. It says: To help protect your account and data, Enhanced Safe Browsing for your account checks for risky: - URLs - Downloads - Browser extensions - System information - Small sample of pages

How it uses it:

  • Uses information from Enhanced Safe Browsing to improve your security in Google Chrome and Gmail when you’re signed in.
  • Temporarily associates information from Enhanced Safe Browsing with your Google Account when you’re signed in to help protect you across Google apps.

It seems to me as if, whenever they come up with new changes, it’s a double edged sword where they claim everything gets better and safer, while my paranoid mind just sees it as new tricks to get even more data…

  • Eerie187@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    1 year ago

    I’m surprised anyone on privacy guides would still be using Google. That notification alone would make me want to switch

    • Papanca@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      Well, i try to use their services as little as possible, but i still have a play store account. And an old gmail address. Degoogling, for me at least, is more of a process, rather than a one time act of abandoning it.

      • Eerie187@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        That’s fair, it took me a while to get away from Google as well. Everyone’s journey is different and can take a while to completely move away from them. The only difficulty I had was replacing YouTube.

        • Papanca@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I replaced youtube with newpipe and freetube or invidious. Though i think freetube still gives data to google, or so i read somewhere. So, i wonder how people replace the play store. Only use apps through f-droid?

        • nevernevermore@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          The only difficulty I had was replacing YouTube

          How did you go with that? YouTube Premium is the only remaining google service I use, but p2p replacements etc just do not fill the void.

          • Eerie187@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I’ve had some success using piped kavin rocks as a private front end. But I admit I still fall back to YouTube using an Adblock and sponsor block a lot of the time.

  • TairikuOkami@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    It has nothing to do with security, Google Safe Browsing works fine without it and you can use it with alternative DNS services instead.

    It is literally just so Google can see everything you do, type, say, etc and by it you give it consent to alter it, for your protection.

    Like when it was enabled, it filtered out rt news links, literally removed it from emails and messages, as if they never existed.

    What is illegal and immoral changes daily, so it is not just about that particular example. The point is that they can do it.

    • Papanca@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I didn’t switch it on, i hope i’m alert enough to spot all phishing attempts. However, i have to admit that reading about AI getting used more and more for malicious scams, makes me pretty nervous. I can easily recognize scams and also read about them to stay up to date, but i don’t know if i will be able to spot them in the future.

      • franzK@feddit.deEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I think the actual problem is the quantity and not the quality. AI generated phishing attemps won’t be higher quality in my opinion, at least for quite some time. I give you an example what I mean: I ordered products from three different websites and booked two buses. Just for those I got exactly 27! emails from the vendors, the shipping companies and the bus company (one of my bus reservation got changed 4 times). Without paypal! That’s overwhelming! And I think when you just get the “right” malicious mail, in terms of the right faked company, I’m not able to say I’m save, despite I would say I’m totally aware of phishing mails and kinda good in tracking them down.

        • Papanca@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Yes, the quantity can be absurd, though i usually use things like anonaddy. As for being save, i’m just not sure about this. The other day i read about wormgpt - like chatbot, but for malicious hackers - and i think that is pretty worrying. So far, you can check quite some signs that things are phishing attempts, because they are usually quite clunky, but things evolve. I used to read on r/scams to keep up with common scam tactics (also to warn my dad who hasn’t a clue about these things), but i haven’t found an alternative community on the fediverse so far.