Chrome "forced" upgrades

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 19:53:24 -0700, John R. Sowden wrote:
>Woops, there's more:
>
>When I received the upgrade from Ubuntu, I clicked on Settings, then
>on Ubuntu Software and unchecked "Software restricted by copyright or
>legal issues (Mmultiverse)", but they kept a cummin.
>
>I checked "Other Software", but the only thing there were PPAs that I 
>personally added.
>
>John
>
>On 04/09/2017 07:28 PM, John R. Sowden wrote:
>> Interesting situation:
>>
>> I received an update notice from Ubuntu (v16.04) including "Extra 
>> ffmpeg codecs for the Chromium Bro...".  I declined the Chromium 
>> update, as I have never installed Chrome or Chromium on my computer
>> as they are both not open source nor completely open source, and
>> they were created by a very large, well funded company that collects 
>> personal information and sells it to others.  Due the the security 
>> nature of mu business, I do my best to minimize my company's
>> exposure to privacy violating data collectors.
>>
>> Now comes the fun part.  I used Synaptic Package Manager to remove 
>> Chrome and Chromium from my computer, but Synaptic Package Manager 
>> told me that these programs were not installed. Then I searched for 
>> the file names with Chrome and Chromium and found many entries with 
>> those names, including executables. Hmmmmmm.
>>
>> I deleted them.  Now I continue to get Updates from Ubuntu re:
>> _only_ Chromium.  I declined by unchecking the box for Chromium and
>> executing the program (clicking on the install button), as opposed
>> to ignoring the update, but it keeps coming.
>>
>> I like to think that I am not a 'conspiracy' kinda guy, but ...... 
>> hows the duck theory go?
>>
>> John
>>
>>  
>
>
>

Hi John,

you aren't completely mistaken, but OTOH you seem to make decisions
based on half-truth. I dislike Google, as well as the Google browsers.
However, regarding security they belong to the best browsers available
and in regards to privacy you should be aware that other browsers not
necessarily are better. By default Firefox for example does share
everything you type into the address bar with Google.

I wonder what browser is installed. In the subject you mention "Chrome"
and in the message body "Chromium".

It might sound rough, but I need to write this: If you are in a
security sensible business you should understand how to handle your
package manager and how to troubleshoot issues and to provide more
useful information, if you request help. You need to know the package
manger very well, since you need to be able to resolve CVE
related issues that affect you in a very sensible manner. If you are
unable to do this, you need to hire somebody to do it for your
business. Security requires to learn each day and to actively maintain
a system.

Are you using some tool that automatically informs you about available
updates? Are you using third party repositories?

It might be my broken English, but I don't understand what actually the
problem is. Seemingly something has got a dependency to some ffmpeg
codecs and IIUC some GUI claims "Extra ffmpeg codecs for the Chromium
Bro...". We neither know how the sentence continuse, maybe "...wser and
another package that is installed". Please, find out what packages
should be upgraded.

  sudo apt update
  sudo apt full-upgrade

copy and paste the output.

Apart from this, is a Google browser installed or isn't one installed?
Are you using third party repositories?

Regards,
Ralf