Is anyone concerned about privacy using a Google laptop? I noticed recently that for years I've relied on Chrome's private browsing feature only to learn that it does not disable geolocation (unlike Safari) and websites always know where I am located even when browsing privately. And turning this off can change depending on the version of Chrome (in fact I cannot figure out how to turn it off in my current version). I wonder how much intrusion these chromebook's make into your privacy? User data is a core of Google's business model, so that is a big problem for me.
My company uses Chromebooks as primary computers with our own fork of ChromiumOS. Our build excludes Google keys thus hypothetically offers reinforced privacy.
Our fork is called NayuOS ( https://nayuos.nexedi.com ) and is a true system for hackers. It erases user folders on every restart and no extensions are allowed. It is very hard to track and since the Chromebooks are very cheap it is easy to exchange devices often.
It has to be run in Developer Mode thus you have writable /usr/. Chrome Brew is fully functional thanks to that but it is a security hazard.
My company moved everything to cloud so we access everything via browser. It was hard to get used to it but in the end it is a huge time saver. Google went the same direction.
At least for desktop chrome you can set location access. Most websites geolocate using ip addresses if location is disabled. Works quite well, unless you use a VPN.
I cannot find any option to disable geolocation in my current Chrome version on Mac, and when I use a VPN and connect via a different country, sites I visit in Safari are in that country's language, but sites I visit in Chrome, even when private browsing, know the language to use based on my actual country location.
