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Why isn't it off by default! We always get mad at all these companies invading our privacy by default, or why aren't we notified and given the chance to turn it off from the start.


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Because the feature is ON by default. Naive users will not know to turn it off. That doesn't mean they don't care about privacy.

It should be off by default, rather than on by default, so you can choose to have it, and we don't accidentally go to prison for going to a doctor who was legal to visit last week and forgetting to alter one of a million privacy settings on one of fifty devices.

Huh? That's the easiest one of all - anything that is privacy invading should be off by default. Most of us are not super aware of what the hell is 'on and off' in this nutty world.

It's exceedingly nuts to me that I would start doing something and all of a sudden random strangers could hear me or interact with me.

Default off for everyone, probably by law.

Anyone can just turn the default to be 'on' it's not a big deal.


More importantly, why is "on by default" supposed to be "bad" when the entire system is designed to protect people's privacy?

Microsoft don't sound like the problem.


The default setting should be to respect the privacy of the user first. Since they know most users will blindly go with the default, it's an asshole play.

Not having it enabled by default means most people will never enable it at all. That's just plain reckless.

Privacy is a human right; it shouldn't be part of any "trade-off", just like you can't sell yourself into slavery, even if you really wanted to.


How bout you NOT collect this information. It's just creepy that this is turned on by default.

I went searching through the Settings page to no avail before I gave up and Googled (irony) how to turn it off.

Besides the point though. They opt you into a service you didn't sign up for, and require you to take measured steps to preserve your privacy.

It's good for Google, whether its a good default or not is debatable.


That's good and I had it turned off already but one ongoing issue is that I have to crawl through all the various settings every couple of months since there's always new privacy invading stuff found and it's obviously turned on by default.

As far as I can tell, it is an optional feature. It's the default option, but still an option. On top of that, a fair argument could be made that most people who don't care enough to change their privacy settings probably do prioritize convenience over maximal privacy, so this might even be a reasonable default.

Default on is outrageous. It's clear the average person doesn't know how to access and manage even some of these settings, much less understand what they do or be able to understand what privacy violations will continue despite turning something off in one place.

It's off by default. I've made the informed choice to opt in because I read their blog and understand how they work and I like the product. There could be no less offensive way of collecting data.

Sync is off by default, how is that not privacy friendly?

They will be deleting all cookies by default, how is that now privacy friendly?

The core feature itself, setting it off by default defeats the whole point of the feature, because it's for the 99.99% of users that are not power-users. It's also not a privacy issue because, again, sync is off by default.


They are careful about privacy when you are careful of your own. There are millions of users who do not change the default settings.

default to privacy though, please

It was turned off by the entity paying for the service, and that choice is being ignored in the ever growing search for more personal data. Title’s perfectly accurate IMO.

On-by-default is a terrible security and privacy approach.

I think you are conflating two problems - setting to off by default is also setting a default user preference - that the user wants to be tracked. This may or may not be the case - whether the default is on or off that will be the majority setting since most people don't know / dont't care enough to change it.

I think a couple other posters here have pointed out the larger problem - without ads like this, the free internet dries up and suddenly you need to start paying for everything from gmail to facebook (or whatever other tools/blogs/webcomics any of us visit).


And default off, for privacy.
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