Can access people/profiles/apps data from other people? (tracking, privacy,.)

[Vfan]

Hi, I like the quite new feature of different people/profiles inside the Vivaldi browser.
They can be handy to not log in all the time and store a series of login-in related open tabs.
For example one person can be used for the youtube account with some open tabs for videos you want to watch.
Another people can be used for banking stuff which should not be related to other log-ins.

I'm fine with profiles, tracking for a single people/profile. But they should not gather data across them.

How far are those peoples separated? Can web pages simply track a user across those profiles/people?
Do run other people tabs in background (while not open as browser window)?

For example I once got a notification from a new post at one of my YT videos while not using my Vivaldi-YT-people browser window.
Do all logins across all people run in background of Vivaldi?

I also use one people for twtich login with tabs of streamers I like to watch. Another for my normal Discord login. While both of them were closed - I used my general browsing people profile - I opened Mozialla Firefox to open a Discord invite link - I planend to do a 2nd Discord account there - those invite links can be used without a Discord account - However Discord made me a guest-account which had the same name as my twitch account inside a closed Vivaldi-people-browser window (but I had to insert a mail and a phone number for verification ).
How the hell could they access this data? Can web pages in other applications access data from closed vivaldi people browser window???

I'm not storing logins inside the browsers or any other app at my (linux) PC. I never used that login name for Discord or in Firefox. All history and cookies were cleared in FF before doing that. The logins are just stored inside the session cookies of the related Vivaldi-browser-people.

[Pathduck]

@vfan Hello and Welcome to the Vivaldi Community

I moved this topic to Security & Privacy as profiles are not specific to Vivaldi and your questions are of a general nature.

I will try to answer your questions, but most are already documented in the Help files:
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tools/user-profiles/

How far are those peoples separated?

Profiles are completely separate entities with their own data. They have their own cookies, bookmarks, history, settings etc.

Can web pages simply track a user across those profiles/people?

Each profile will have their own cookies and since cookies are used for tracking it will not be possible. So answer is no - unless the site uses device fingerprinting based on information like IP, browser version and other identifiers, which of course is the same across the profiles.

And obviously if the user logs in to a site in both profiles using the same user ID, the site can set the same cookies in both profiles, making tracking between profiles possible.

I once got a notification from a new post at one of my YT videos while not using my Vivaldi-YT-people browser window.

If the YT profile window is still open, even if in the background, notifications will of course still be shown. Some sites like YT also use Service Workers that might be able to show notifications even if the profile is closed (not sure).

However Discord made me a guest-account which had the same name as my twitch account inside a closed Vivaldi-people-browser window

Hard to say. Maybe the Discord invite code contained information about your Twitch account? It's difficult to know as I don't use any of these services myself.

Can web pages in other applications access data from closed vivaldi people browser window

No.

I never used that login name for Discord or in Firefox.

Again, difficult to answer what happened. Remember it's easy to see something you do not fully understand on the web and automatically assume something is wrong or you are being "tracked", when there is most likely a simple explanation for what happened.

[guigirl]

@pathduck said in Can access people/profiles/apps data from other people? (tracking, privacy,.):

Profiles are completely separate entities with their own data

With respect, & sadness, i slightly demur. Afaik all the Vivaldi-created browser elements are separated across profiles just as you wrote, but alas, V is built upon chromium, & can't escape its tentacles entirely, eg Flags:

I only modified Flags in my Default, yet annoyingly other profiles also inherit said changes.

Though accessing & using profiles is much easier + faster in V/chromium than Firefox, the latter's profiles are genuinely separate in every aspect.

[Pathduck]

@guigirl Yes, flags are global, they live in Local State. It's a strange design decision in Chromium for sure.

It also means the general advice to test in a clean profile is out the window if any flags are changed. That's why I keep several Standalone installs for testing instead. Much faster to whip up a completely clean profile by just deleting User Data.

[guigirl]

@pathduck said in Can access people/profiles/apps data from other people? (tracking, privacy,.):

also means the general advice to test in a clean profile is out the window if any flags are changed

Exactamundo, Cunningham. When i came to know this unfortunate design outcome a few years back i was shocked, not least for the realisation that the advice i had given myself, & others in the forum for years, to troubleshoot perceived Default profile problems in a virgin profile, was grievously incomplete by omitting flags. Oops!

[npro]

@pathduck said in Can access people/profiles/apps data from other people? (tracking, privacy,.):

It also means the general advice to test in a clean profile is out the window if any flags are changed.

"Casual" users don't mess with the flags though, so it's a pretty safe official advice. Also a truly clean profile can be achieved "outside" the profile path, as most of us already tell to test via terminal vivaldi-snapshot --disable-extensions --user-data-dir=/tmp/vivtest to cover their usual nonexistent system-, browser- reports.

[guigirl]

@npro said in Can access people/profiles/apps data from other people? (tracking, privacy,.):

their usual nonexistent system-, browser- reports