No, I do not want to sign in with Google. (Or Facebook, or Microsoft, or any other big tech firm offering me this fantastic favour.)
Apparently, the way to stop the “Sign in with Google” prompts that many big websites have decided to allow Google to pester their users with (Quora, TripAdvisor etc) is to – wait for it – sign in with Google!
Yup, you really do have to do that (as in, sign in to a Google account in your browser to drop the cookie/s), and then once there, you have to go to the security settings in said account, and tell Google that you want it to stop prompting you to sign in with, you know, it.
There are two problems with this (three, if you count being made to do it in the first place):
- I do not want to be signed in to Google when using my browser. Or ever, if I can fucking help it.
- Just for fun, I tried it. It doesn’t work. (At least not for me, even when I am signed in to my little-used Google account.)
Next step then, ad blocker. I’m no programmer, coder or web expert, but I did figure out that it seems I cannot add some convenient Google subdomain to my DNS service’s custom settings (I use NextDNS) that would block this element on web pages.
Even Reddit didn’t seem to have the answer.
While it didn’t specifically promise this, it seemed to want to make the web a better place for users, and also to be be written and maintained by a decent chap. I went for it.
And guess what? It has an option to “Hide some banners” – one of which is the pesky Google signup box.
So thanks, StopTheMadness. A bit of blind faith paid off. And I do like to celebrate a little win.
I hope this post helps anyone else who’s not managed to solve this and who cares enough about their internet experience to have dug this far.