No, ChromeOS isn’t impervious

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Just so you know, Google awarded a $100,000 bug bounty to an anonymous contributor for finding a security hole in a beta version of ChromeOS. Accordin
[See the full post at: No, ChromeOS isn’t impervious]

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Elly, AJNorth

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Da Boss needs to get more sleep!

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woody

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You know I tried a couple Chromebooks when they first came out. Never had a issue with the OS itself but at the time apps were not so plentiful and wasn’t close to offering Android apps. But my biggest issue was the weak hardware or a over priced Pixel notebook. Not much in between in price. Actually running Neverware on a older notebook for someone I realized if you can find a decent size Chromebook with a good core i3 or i5 you really have a  good notebook.  Before I would buy a Windows 10S notebook I would buy a Chromebook for sure. I still believe the OS is better at protecting users then Windows will ever be.

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_Reassigned Account wrote:

Before I would buy a Windows 10S notebook I would buy a Chromebook for sure. I still believe the OS is better at protecting users then Windows will ever be.

In terms of malware, that’s very likely true.  In terms of privacy, though, I would have to cautiously give the benefit to Microsoft, at least for now.  Yes, they’ve got telemetry all over the place these days, but so far, it seems that what it is being used for is just what they claim– to find and fix Windows bugs.  Of course, the rest of the story is that they need the end users to find bugs because they saved money by not finding them in-house prior to release, which kind of puts a darker shade on the “we’re just using the data to fix Windows to make it better!” claim.  While ostensibly true, it wouldn’t be so important that they would have to force updates and not allow telemetry to be turned completely off if they bothered to test it themselves.

In contrast, Google slurps data by the terabyte to target us with advertising.  While MS has no specific incentive (as long as the current paradigm of using the telemetry to fix bugs holds) to slurp up personal data and to create a detailed profile of every person in the world, Google is doing just that.  That’s bad enough in and of itself, but by definition, any data that exist can possibly be stolen by leakers, hackers, or be “requested” by a government.  Data that don’t exist do not present that risk, and Microsoft’s data are less likely to have that kind of detailed record than Google’s.

People assume that MS is going to use the data for ads, whether they use it in-house or sell it to eager advertising companies (in an era where Google dominates nearly everything, it just seems “normal” that slurped data be used in that way), but that so far remains only a possibility, as far as I know.  It’s a real concern, and with the way Microsoft has been conducting business lately, I wouldn’t swear on a stack of dictionaries that they would never do that.  It’s just a “maybe” for the time being.

Google, though, actually (and undeniably) does collect vast amounts of data about everyone it can, and they do use it to target people with ads.  Advertising is how they Google makes their money, and they have never tried to hide this.  It’s long since been accepted by most people, even if with a shrug and a “what ya gonna do.”

MS, on the other hand, tried to use Google’s data slurping habits against them in the “Scroogled” campaign, only to turn around and turn into slurpers themselves.  That, along with the various other aggressive moves MS has made toward Windows users, gives a sneaky, sinister kind of vibe when it comes to their telemetry.  For that, they have no one to blame but themselves.

I wonder if MS would have ended up getting more telemetry data if they had just given people the “off” button in Windows 10 from the very start.  The hullabaloo over the “can’t turn it off” telemetry never would have happened, and a lot of people who avoided 10 or who migrated to 10 but took measures to defeat the telemetry might not have ever thought to worry about it.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Elly

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Just now received the chrome update. Seems to work fine.

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This week’s stable channel release was noted in the Chomebooks and ChromeOS for Windows wonks topic recently, as it was a security update:

Kirsty wrote:

Stable Channel Update for Chrome OS
https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/search/label/Stable%20updates

Friday, November 3, 2017

The Stable channel has been updated to 62.0.3202.82 (Platform version: 9901.66.0) for most* Chrome OS devices. This build contains a number of bug fixes and security updates. Systems will be receiving updates over the next several days.
*Devices with the Play Store will be rolling out over the next few days.

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