Google has caused a stir over the weekend with a change introduced in Chrome 69. Users who signed into Google’s web services now see their account picture in Chrome without actually being signed in.
Google recently released version 69 of its popular Chrome browser with a completely refreshed design. One feature that appears to have slipped under the radar is that the browser will now show the Google account picture in the browser when users log into other Google services during the session. To be clear, while you’ll see your profile picture in Chrome, the browser won’t sync all your information such as bookmarks or passwords, nor is the browser signed in.
The new feature is called account consistency and is designed to provide a level of consistency between signed in services and the browser; as mentioned before, this is simply a display change, and the Chrome browser does not automatically sign in and sync with your other Chrome browsers.
Adrienne Porter Felt, an engineer and manager for Chrome, posted a thread on Twitter explaining that the feature was designed to let you know that you are still signed into Google services in the session. She said this would help “prevent surprises in a shared device scenario” if a person thought they were signed out of their Google account but actually weren’t. She made the series of posts after users lashed out against the change, initially they thought this feature would constitute the same amount of tracking as the Chrome browser does that has a fully signed in account, but this is not the case.
Most users probably don’t have to worry much about the change as it appears to be just a graphical change. However, if you’d like to disable the feature and return Chrome’s behaviour to how it was previously just head to chrome://flags/#account-consistency in the address bar and switch the option to « Disabled » and relaunch your browser.
Via Bleeping Computer
