Tag Archives: Chrome

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Transparency Coming To Chrome Extension Data Collection

If you employ a number of Chrome web extensions to enhance your browsing experience, be aware that change is afoot. Google recently announced that as of early next year, the company is adding a “Privacy Practices” section on each extension’s listing on the Web Store, which will outline exactly what data they will collect from you if you install their extension, and what they mean to do with it.

The change is slated to go into effect on January 18th, 2021, and has been almost universally lauded as an excellent one. It gives you a much clearer idea of what data developers are looking for from you, and it allows you to make better and more informed choices about which extensions you want to install.

Google isn’t the only big tech company to have made moves in this direction. In fact, Apple is slightly ahead of them here. At the WWDC 2020 developer conference, Apple announced a similar feature that is slated to go live on December 8th, 2020.

Privacy has been a big, thorny issue in 2020, and it will likely continue to be one of the defining issues of our time for many years to come. Any tools that big tech firms give us, as individual users, more control over who gets access to our personal information, the better. Here, both Google and Apple are making solid moves in the right direction.

Granted, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done, but these are exceptional first steps. Kudos to both Google and Apple for taking meaningful action that puts more control in the hands of their users, and don’t forget to check out the new “Privacy Practices” section before you install that extension you’re interested in. The developer that made it might be looking for more information than you’re comfortable with sharing.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Latest Version Of Chrome Is Faster And More Secure

If you’re a diehard Chrome browser user, be aware that as of November 17th, 2020, Chrome 87 has now been ported to the Stable desktop channel, and it’s an upgrade well worth getting.

It adds a raft of performance improvements that will increase your overall browsing speed, in addition to offering some new security features.

The single biggest boost to performance came from some tweaks that were the result of an in-depth analysis of how Chrome was using system resources. In that research, it came to light that the biggest consumer of system resources was the JavaScript Timer, specifically as it related to background tabs, which was responsible for some 40 percent of the total resources Chrome consumes.

The company had the following to say about the matter in a recent blog post:

“We investigated how background tabs use system resources and found that JavaScript Timers represent >40 percent of the work in background tabs. Reducing their impact on CPU and power is important to make the browser more efficient. Beginning in M87, we’re throttling JavaScript timer wake-ups in background tabs to once per minute. This reduces CPU usage by up to 5x, and extends battery life up to 1.25 hours in our internal testing. We’ve done this without sacrificing the background features that users care about, like playing music and getting notifications.”

It’s a big change, but not one that will change the way you view the web or use the browser, and that’s perhaps the best part about the improvement. It’s behind the scenes, so while it makes a big difference, there’s nothing you have to do, or be mindful of, and yet, you should notice something in the neighborhood of a 25 percent overall speed improvement on start up, and a 7-10% boost in speed overall.

In addition to that, if you use Chrome on an Android device, the company has begun to roll out a new caching feature that will store complete screenshots of the web pages you view, including the JavaScript memory, in the cache, which will allow you to instantly go back and forth between sites and return to the exact portion of the content you were reading. It’s a small change, but very convenient. Once you start using it, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.

Also, be aware that a change the company has been talking about since late 2018 has finally been made manifest in this build. When you install Chrome 87, you’ll find that FTP support is disabled by default. If you want it re-enabled, you’ll have to use the command:

“chrome://flags/#enable-ftp”

But be aware that this is only a temporarily solution. As of the release of Chrome 88, even this capability will be removed.

All in all, the latest build contains some great updates. Grab your copy today.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Turns Up The Speed on Chrome

Who doesn’t love a faster and more seamless surfing experience? If you’re a Google Chrome user, you’re going to want to upgrade to Chrome 85 at your next opportunity. It includes a new compiler called PGO (Profile Guided Optimization). PGO was first introduced with Chrome 83 for Windows using the MSVC (Microsoft Visual C++) environment. Now, with Build 85, it’s being rolled out for both Mac and Windows devices using Clang.

Here’s what Max Christoff, Google’s Chrome Engineering Director, had to say about the new technology:

“Because PGO uses real usage scenarios that match the workflows of Chrome users around the world, the most common tasks get prioritized and made faster. Our testing consistently shows pages loading up to 10 percent faster at the median, and even greater speed improvements when your CPU is tasked with running many tabs or programs.”

A ten percent improvement is nothing to sneeze at, and if you like that, you’ll love what’s coming next. The company has another improvement in the works and already appearing in the Chrome 86 Beta build called Tab Throttling.

Tab Throttling is a revised process designed to decrease the impact of idle background tabs. By being able to recover some of the system resources devoted to those tabs and redistributing them to active tabs, overall performance will see another nice boost.

In addition to all of that, when the new Tab Throttling change is rolled out to all users, we should start seeing gains in battery life, which will be a godsend for anyone using Chrome on a laptop or mobile device.

Kudos to the Chrome development team for their continuing efforts to improve the most popular browser in the world. Although the company is far from perfect and has made their share of mistakes, it’s clear that they are committed to an exceptional user experience, and that’s good news for everyone.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Lawsuit Claims Google Private Browsing Isn’t Really Private

Google is in hot water with a complaint filed to the District Court of Northern California.

The complaint alleges that the tech giant tracks users’ browsing data and a variety of other identifying information via Google Ad Manager, Google Analytics, and a variety of other applications. It tracks data even when users are accessing the web via Private Mode (Incognito).

According to the complaint filed, when an internet user visits a page or opens an app that makes use of Google’s services (which covers some 70 percent of all online publishers), that data is tracked. In addition, it is collected and sent to the company’s servers in California. In almost all cases, it is done without the user’s knowledge or consent.

The complaint reads in part, as follows:

“Google takes the data regardless of whether the user actually clicks on a Google-supported advertisement – or even knows of its existence. This means that billions of times a day, Google causes computers around the world to report the real-time internet communications of hundreds of millions of people to Google.

Google’s practices infringe upon users’ privacy; intentionally deceive consumers; give Google and its employees power to learn intimate details about individuals’ lives, interests and internet usage’ and make Google ‘one stop shopping’ for any government, private, or criminal actor who wants to undermine individuals’ privacy, security, or freedom.”

The class action suit seeks to collect $5,000 in damages per user (or three times actual damages, whichever is greater). The money would be for anyone who accessed a page containing any service that relies on Google’s services, and who did so using a non-Android device in private browsing mode.

It will no doubt be a long fight, but the plaintiffs may well win. In September of 2019, Google was forced to settle a case with the US Federal Trade Commission for $170 million for collecting the personal information of children via YouTube. So it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility that the courts could decide against Google in this case.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Apple Update Blocks Safari Third Party Cookies By Default

In May of 2019, a Google blog post encouraged all web browsers to adopt the approach of blocking third-party cookies by default. Google announced their own plans to do so, outlining a development strategy that would see Chrome and all Chromium-based browsers defaulting to that by 2022.

The TOR browser was the first to make the switch, and now, Apple’s Safari browser is the second with the release of Safari 13.1.

Although the change has raised a few eyebrows in the user community, in general, privacy groups and security analysists regard it as the right move.

As Apple software engineer John Wilander explains:

“This update takes several important steps to fight cross-site tracking and makes it more safe to browse the web.

First of all, it paves the way. We will report on our experiences of full third-party cookie blocking to the privacy groups in W3C to help other browsers take the leap. 

Second, full third-party cookie blocking removes the statefulness in cookie blocking.

Third, full third-party cookie blocking fully disables login fingerprinting, a problem on the web described already 12 years ago. Without protection, trackers can figure out which websites you’re logged in to and use it as a fingerprint. 

Fourth, full third-party cookie blocking solves cross-site request forgeries. This is one of the web’s original security vulnerabilities and discussed in communities like OWASP for well over a decade. Those vulnerabilities are now gone in Safari.”

All true, and if third-party cookies is something you’ve been concerned about, be sure to download Safari 13.1 today. Chrome users, sorry, but you’ll have to wait. While Google is still forging ahead with their plans to block third-party cookies by default, they are quite some distance from actually rolling anything out to end users.

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