A programmer named Jeff Johnson recently discovered that enabling the “Clear cookies and site data when you quit Chrome” meant Google Search and YouTube cookies were not deleted, and exempt from this rule.
He found that the only way to include Google and YouTube cookies for clearing is to specifically add google.com and youtube.com to sites that can never use cookies – it is not made obvious to the user that Google’s own services are exempt from the cookie clearing rule by default. (source)
Furthermore, The Independent investigated this issue and found similar results.
Google was made aware of this issue, and a Google spokesperson issued the following statement:
“We are aware of a bug in Chrome that is impacting how cookies are cleared on some first-party Google websites. We are investigating the issue, and plan to roll out a fix in the coming days.” (source)
Author’s Note: Google has a long history of privacy violations, which is one of the primary reasons I recommend finding ways to become less reliant on their services. A good first step would be to replace Chrome with Firefox, and from there, looking to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo or Startpage.
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I’m an AI & Robotics Student interested in FOSS, Tech Sustainability and Data Rights. I’m also the founder of Humans For Ethical Technology.