Yet another privacy concern for Google Chrome users! Previously, we talked about Google’s auto-login mechanism which is hijacking our local Google Chrome data. Now, another Chrome 69 setting has come to light which is risking our freedom to remove data.

Spotted by Jan 🇪🇺 Wildeboer, now Chrome won’t remove cookies and other site data of its own services in the “Clearing browsing data” prompt. In other words, data saved by Google services like Gmail, Google homepage, YouTube won’t get affected in the process of clearing browsing data from Google Chrome.

Moreover, if you try to remove the Google services cookies, the browser will automatically re-create them, making it impossible to remove data stored on Google servers. Thankfully, you can fix it by logging out of the Google services and then clearing out the browser history. But we are not sure it actually does something concrete, given Google’s desperate nature.

In "Clear browsing data" there's at least a notice that I won't be signed out of Google. In chrome://settings/siteData?search=cookies however, there's a "Remove all" button which doesn't remove all. See screenshots before, after click on "remove all" and after refresh. pic.twitter.com/rTkFWmCmWP — Christoph Tavan (@ctavan) September 25, 2018

The new setting is being seen on Google Chrome 69– the latest version of Chrome which has revamped the whole design of the browser, Omnibox, and added a Password Manager.

Of course, this change only affects the users who have logged into their Google accounts. But since logging into any Google service automatically logs you into the Chrome Browser (courtesy of Google Chrome 69), it is challenging to protect yourself from this practice.