That Google spies on users is nothing new. Advertising has always been the company’s main business model, especially user-directed advertising. Using Google services (such as the search engine, Chrome, Gmail, Android, etc.) is very comfortable since it allows us to have all our data in one place. But if we stop to think about it, the price we are paying for it is too high. And more than it will be with this new change that will soon come to Chrome, your web browser.
Google has been working on a concept called ” Privacy Sandbox ” for more than a year. In theory, the company’s goal is to allow users to browse the web much more privately using open standards and by removing third-party cookies used to track users across the Internet.
Currently, the company has already activated this privacy measure, in the testing phase, to 0.5% of total Chrome users. And furthermore, he has plans to increase it up to 5% very soon before activating it for everyone by default. However, although in theory this new standard promises to better protect the privacy of users, it may in theory do so towards third parties, but in practice it will only give Google more control over the data.
Privacy Sandbox issues
As we can read in the extensive report published by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), the first of the privacy problems that we are facing right now, since the new Privacy Sandbox is in the testing phase, is that, right now, this method serves to spy twice on users. Although the objective of the Privacy Sandbox to replace cookies, during the tests it will only complement them, facilitating espionage and the collection of data from all users who participate in the tests.
Another important aspect to bear in mind is that Google will not allow you to voluntarily participate in the tests, but will force you to do so. This implies that 100 million users will begin to release even more data to Google about their activity and how they use the browser. This data will also be analyzed as it will be used to verify that the feature works well.
The websites that are prepared to work with this feature will not only be able to know a unique user ID, but, thanks to that ID, they will be able to know all the history of the last week by simply being able to execute JavaScript, something that all websites can do today in day.
It is true that Google wants to audit FLoC before enabling it for all users in order to find out if it can be used to identify sensitive categories of users (race, sexuality, diseases, etc). But to do this, you will need to collect and analyze even more user data, at least during the testing phase.
Chrome’s missing option to really protect privacy
For now, the only way to avoid participating in these tests is to block all third-party cookies. And that will cause us to lose usability in our browser, since, for example, we will not be able to save the sessions of the webs. And many pages won’t even work without these cookies.
We complain a lot about the privacy of Windows 10 and how this OS has started to collect more data from users. However, the operating system offers us an option that allows us to delete our advertising ID . By doing so, we are again being private and anonymous to Microsoft.
The operation of the new Chrome Privacy Sandbox is also based on an ad ID. This identifier which, although apparently not named after us, can easily be used to identify us, just like any other ID.
If Google wants to protect the privacy of users, it should start by including a button like the one above in Chrome. Thus users could choose whether they want to see personalized ads, at the cost of their privacy, or prefer to browse anonymously with generic ads. But of course, that would go against Google’s business model.
