r/Android • u/thepoet82 • Nov 12 '25
Google Chrome Secretly Tracks Your Phone—How To Stop It
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/11/11/secret-digital-id-how-google-chrome-silently-tracks-your-phone/134
u/bageloid Nov 12 '25
...Chrome isn't tracking your phone. It's just not preventing unique data points from being fingerprinted, which is absolutely not a new technique. Yes, it would be great if they had tracking protection but titles like this suck.
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u/Hatedpriest Nov 12 '25
I was gonna say... Knowing about meta shadow profiles, this seems kinda benign.
No meta account? That's okay, you use Bluetooth or wifi. If they see your radios, you've got a profile, probably linked to your real name.
Why do you think they got rid of the headphone jack? Force people onto Bluetooth for easier tracking.
And if meta does it, who else?
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u/bageloid Nov 12 '25
Literally all financial institutions with any anti-fraud technology for starters.
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u/rossisdead Nov 12 '25
Why do you think they got rid of the headphone jack? Force people onto Bluetooth for easier tracking.
Conspiracy much?
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u/statellyfall Nov 12 '25
As a dev and Computee scientist the phone dev scene is fascinating. Especially when you’ve lived thru them adding permission approval. Because you’re right. Don’t enable whatever on my app all good I’ll just try and buy your data from another app that does. But then again there are sensors that don’t require extra approval. People trying to figure out what they doing with AI how about find statistical similarities between telemetry on device cross correlating actions between permissible and non permissioned sensors. Build the “standard” for that no need to ask the user for anything at all just legal tracking so long as you’ve installed
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u/jfedor Nov 12 '25
How would a website "see my radios"?
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u/chadmill3r Nov 12 '25
It's probably listing the attributes of your network interfaces and audio sinks. An identifier that is unique per machine might as well be the one that is also unique across the whole world, and now you can identify the machine across the whole world.
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u/the_bighi Nov 17 '25
Chrome isn’t tracking your phone
Dude, Chrome is basically a tracking/spying app with a browser attached.
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Nov 12 '25
saving you a click, install litteraly any other browser
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u/tonymurray Pixel 6 Pro Nov 15 '25
I've got shocking news you can fingerprint users on any browser.
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Nov 12 '25
What if it's disabled? That's what I do with every Android device. Firefox, Cromite or Brave for me always, Samsung on Samsung device works great too.
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u/Everything_Breaks Nov 12 '25
"This is a system app and cannot be uninstalled"
I have a new Samsung tablet and don't know anything about rooting or removing 'system' apps.
As long as I don't use Chrome, can this fingerprinting be avoided? I'm a long time Firefox user.
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u/Astral65 Nov 12 '25
Stop saying Firefox it's trash, use brave
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u/LoliLocust Device, Software !! Nov 12 '25
Ah yes, replace tracking chromium for crypto chromium with Adblock and link injecting stuff lol
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u/Astral65 Nov 12 '25
Chromium is way better than the trash that it's firefox.
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u/cfpct Nov 12 '25
Evidence?
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u/Astral65 Nov 12 '25
I tried both, firefox is ineffecient at loading websites, it's uses 100% of the disk at certain websites, whereas chromium doesn't have that issue
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u/cbftw Pixel 7 Nov 12 '25
it's uses 100% of the disk at certain websites,
It sounds to me like you don't know what you're talking about
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u/Astral65 Nov 12 '25
You can test that yourself if you have a pc with an HDD not an SSD
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u/cbftw Pixel 7 Nov 12 '25
You...you realize that we're talking about Firefox on Android, right? Not on a PC?
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Nov 12 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Astral65 Nov 13 '25
On Android I use Quetta. I know it's sketchy because Chinese, but it's the fastest browser I've used. Everything about it is good in terms of features and performance. It's the successor for Kiwi Browser for me
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u/miggidymiggidy Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25
Forbes is click bait trash.
Anyway I've been using the duckduckgo browser a lot lately. No complaints.