Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings
A researcher has identified a bug in Google Chrome that exempts Google-owned websites from user-configured settings to automatically delete site data upon closing the browser. Despite previous reports of similar issues, the behavior persists, raising concerns about privacy and data persistence.
Why it matters
This highlights ongoing privacy concerns regarding how major browser developers handle user data settings and potential conflicts of interest when their own sites are involved.
Six years ago I published a blog post Chrome exempts Google sites from user site data settings that received quite a bit of attention: Michael Tsai , Hacker News The Register , The Verge , and Gizmodo , among others. The blog post was about a Google Chrome bug that mysteriously exempted Google-owned sites from the setting to automatically delete all site data. Eventually, spurred by my report, Google did fix the bug.
You can probably guess why I’m writing about the bug again: I’ve noticed Chrome doing something similar now. I’ve reproduced this new issue on two different Macs with Chrome version 152.0.7977.83. For testing purposes, I changed the default search engine in Chrome from Google to DuckDuckGo, just to make sure that this setting was not the cause.
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