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mb3581 t1_j4e4qmc wrote

They’re hoping to annoy you enough to convince you to log in so they can track your history to serve you targeted ads.

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mbrellaSandwich t1_j4e7pi8 wrote

The horror! Having all my stuff everywhere on every device is wonderful, but having ads that are tailored to my needs and desires is just too high a price to pay!

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welcome2mycesspool t1_j4e85gu wrote

>but having ads that are tailored to my needs and desires is just too high a price to pay!

Having your stuff on one device isn't the price you pay. Forfeiting your privacy and allowing google to know everything that you do is.

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wicklowdave t1_j4e6mmw wrote

A website can have a number of options in terms of user management. Authentication is a difficult problem to get right and sometimes a website might delagate that problem to someone who has it nailed down. Google lets sites use their authentication service (typically underpinned by a protocol called Oauth), for other sites to manage their users. Other times a site might let users have the option of storing their account on their servers or Google's servers. For me, it's convenient to use my generic google account when arbitrarily logging into a site that requires an account to use it.

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Representative_Pop_8 t1_j4e85bi wrote

its a way to log in, instead of developing their own authentication system they use Google's, and you get to remember one less password

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Fake_William_Shatner t1_j4erfuz wrote

Yeah -- clever of them.

It really is convenient, but it also means you are more stuck with Google and they know more about you.

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TechIsSoCool t1_j4e9mre wrote

I am a little fuzzy on the details, but it's something like this:

It has to do with advertising tracking. By using your Google account, Google is not then considered a third-party and can use cookies to track data about your visit to that site, evermore. Because of new laws (or rules?), sites which sustained themselves with ads cannot show those ads unless you opt in. If you're "logging in" with Google and not actually going through an account creation process, you are probably opting in.

EDIT: what r/wicklowdave says is also true, some sites use it for convenience to actually log in. On this type of site you will have things like a username and profile you set up, a logout menu option, etc.

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trtlclb t1_j4ee98g wrote

All sites that use it do so because managing user authentication is an enormous PITA and if you don't have any special requirements it fits the bill nicely.

That's also not how cookies or ads/ad permission work... OAuth allows third-party websites implementing OAuth access to your Google account. Unless you are blocking cookies and/or configured something to block ad scripts, you're getting cookie'd. The UK & EU has the GDPR, which really just means you need to inform users of what data you store, how you use it, and what you track and why you are.

Some of the nicer websites ask for your permission for the more superfluous cookies, but they are not restricted from using cookies as long as they are disclosing that they are somewhere. GDPR is more about ensuring user data is handled in a responsible manner, not to restrict websites from storing cookies or anything similar necessarily.

Think more along the lines of those checkboxes stating, "I'm alright with letting you send me sales emails" — that's GDPR in action. That and the cookie disclosures, which are usually just legalese jargon like privacy policies or terms of service pages.

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TechIsSoCool t1_j4egzlh wrote

I do not know the current regulations but have done some research on the advertising connection. With GPDR and CCPA and Apple's change to default disallow advertising IDs, advertisers are looking to means other than cookies to track users. By asking you to "log in" with Google, in cases like a blog where you are not actually authenticating to anything but Google, they are using it to associate your traffic with your ad ID. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it explains why you get prompted to log in with your Google account, and if you don't, nothing changes for you on the site.

There are also cases where you actually do have an account on that site, and you log into it using your Google account as your credentials. As you say, this is because OAuth is a pain in the butt to code and manage, and when it has nothing to do with what you're trying to code, why reinvent the wheel, just use Google's solution. This also makes logging in more convenient to users.

I had to go back and refresh my memory. It's not related to cookies, but can be related to the absence of cookies. There are a couple of reasons sites might decide to do this.

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bsd8andahalf_1 t1_j4e3svc wrote

yeah, let me know when you find out.

every goddam website doesn't need to see my google log in.

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paleo_joe t1_j4e5y9x wrote

It makes google even more billions when people are dumb enough to do it.

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