Internet users increasingly want more anonymous surfing experiencewhich is having a huge impact on advertising, e-commerce and the online economy as a whole. When a company cannot track you with third-party cookies, it’s harder to make money. Google is testing a new cookie replacement technology called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which Google says will help protect user privacy and current business models for online businesses.
You can Read Google’s overview of the technology here, but the essential thing is that users have a unique FLoC ID. Your ID is technically anonymous, but you are grouped with other users with similar internet history – your “cohorts”. Instead of selling someone’s data, companies like Google sell cohort data to advertisers.
But while “private” on paper, there we explained it before, that is not completly correct. In fact, FLoC is likely just as intrusive – if not more – than third-party cookies. Depending on the size of a cohort and the number of cohorts to which a person belongs in the database, a person could plausibly be identified under other serious concerns.
The good news is that FLoC is only implemented in Chrome – no other browser will use FLoC, not even other Chromium browsers like Brave, Edge, or Vivaldi. It’s also not ready for full implementation just yet. In fact, Google delayed the introduction of FLoC for Chrome. However, it is currently in its early testing phase and may just be available as a new feature called Privacy Sandbox in your browser. To be fair, less than 1% of Chrome users take the Privacy Sandbox test, but the test can expand over time, and it’s possible you signed up for this new form of tracking without it to notice.
Fortunately, it’s easy to check that Privacy Sandbox is enabled and if so, you can block it or log out.
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How to check and disable Privacy Sandbox (FLoC) in Chrome
Privacy Sandbox is only active for a tiny fraction of Android and desktop Chrome users in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and the Philippines. It’s not (yet) on iOS devices.
Nevertheless, it is worth checking whether the function is active. These steps apply to Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome:
- Open Chrome and go to Settings> Privacy & Security> Privacy Sandbox.
- This will open the Privacy Sandbox landing page even if you are not participating in the trial.
- If the “Privacy Sandbox Trials” Switch is on, FLoC is activated. Click / tap to disable it – just don’t turn it on if you don’t want Chrome to use FLoC.
Alternatively, the “Am I FLoCed?” The website quickly searches for the Privacy Sandbox trial in Chrome. If the test is positive, use the steps above to turn off FLoC tracking.
If you don’t see the option in Chrome settings, then you’re not taking the test. However, that does not mean that you will no longer be added to the Privacy Sandbox trial in the future. Fortunately, Chrome users can preventively block FLoC tracking using this DuckDuckGo browser extension.
[ZDNet]
