How is Google getting my web history?
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I go to bitchute and click on a video link. I watch about 30 secs of it. Later that day Youtube recomends videos on that very obscure topic that I have never expressed interest in. I did not search for anything at Bitchute. I simply selected what was shown on bitchute and it magically becomes an option on youtube.
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Most likely with cookies.
Change the default setting to block 3rd party cookies.
Log out of any google account before using another site you don't want connected to a certain user ID.Make sure Vivaldi is set to block all trackers by default in the privacy settings, and you can then exclude each site as needed.
Also in the privacy settings disable the google powered lookups.
2 privacy extensions worth trying and picking the one you like
https://github.com/Privacy-Managers/Privacy-Manager
https://add0n.com/privacy-settings.html -
Most likely the cookies plus that exponentially improving algorithm. But i am way more freaked out when something like this happened to me twice: I was just thinking of something, haven't searched up for it, haven't clicked on any page remotely related to it, heck, I haven't said it out loud and haven't told anyone, then about a few hours or days later, I see the same exact thing (whatever it is) on Facebook! Ultimately just the creepiest and most irritating thing.
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Any time Google has an ad or tracker on a page (including if the site uses Google for stats or even web fonts) they will know you visited. And if you use a block list that blocks everything Google, you have to live with the page not looking right (because you blocked the web fonts).
They try to make sure they are everywhere and that you won't block them, in other words.
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Or, it could just be our good old pattern-finding brains playing tricks on us again
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@JohnConnorBear I'll add Trace and uMatrix to that list.
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@JohnConnorBear said in How is Google getting my web history?:
Those scripts use cookies but they can access a lot of other information runtime like your client configuration, your "history"
Apparently they thought of that in O12 and earlier.
Users could disable scripts reading the 'History' file.
It was enabled by default.This is from the latest O12 but I remember it from previous versions. Not sure how far back, or how effective it was.
Sadly no browser has this setting today. -