DuckDuckGo is rallying users against Google's latest cookie replacement.
In general, huge businesses make money on the internet by tracking your web behaviour with cookies and selling adverts based on that information. Google has been hunting for something better than cookies to enable tracking, but has yet to find it. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, would prefer to see Google simply give up. In the meantime, competitor DuckDuckGo hopes to empower users with an upgraded tracker blocker.
DuckDuckGo is advising Google Chrome users to reject Google's latest experimental monitoring APIs, Topics and FLEDGE, in its Spread Privacy blog. The former is intended to acquire information about the user by correlating specific subjects from the sites they visit and searches they conduct, and then determine an ad to offer them. The latter would allow for "remarketing" or ongoing, personalised ad campaigns. Both are the result of Google's Privacy Sandbox project.
Users are instructed to go to Chrome's settings, look for Privacy Sandbox toggles in the Privacy and security section, and then uncheck the box for Privacy Sandbox trials. DuckDuckGo, on the other hand, is marketing its Chrome plugin, which prevents both Topics and FLEDGE.
IIn its opposition, the corporation claims that nothing precludes third-party website trackers from using Themes and other "fingerprints" to build more thorough profiles of their targets, and that certain of the suggested topics may be particularly sensitive to some people. DuckDuckGo is likewise opposed to the practise of retargeting adverts.
Google characterises Subjects as a tracking mechanism with enough obfuscation to avoid individual profiling, and it says it's working with stakeholders to figure out which topics are too sensitive to include in the API.
Privacy-focused groups were also up in arms last year against Google's first try at a cookie replacement called FLoC over many of the same concerns.
( Details and picture courtesy from Source, the content is auto-generated from RSS feed.)
Join our official telegram channel for free latest updates and follow us on Google News here.
