Google Chrome is testing new privacy sandbox features

Previously, under pressure from the browser industry, Google set out to improve browser privacy issues. At that time, Google began testing privacy sandboxes to reduce the risk of user privacy leakage.

The privacy sandbox also collects user information but transfers it to advertising networks for use. Compared with Google’s previous collection of data, there are fewer data available to advertising networks.

On this basis, Google is studying new privacy security policies to improve the privacy sandbox function, the most important of which is not to upload user data to the server.

Normally, the real-time bidding system adopted by the advertising network needs to upload user data to the server, so the system can bid normally only after matching the data.

Due to privacy protection and anti-monopoly issues, Google Chrome does not want to share user data with advertising networks.

So Google is currently testing a new thing called the Federated Learning of Cohorts, which aims to analyze user data locally and then group it.

Each group can accommodate thousands of users, these users belong to the same interest category, and Google will only share these categories with advertising networks for advertising.

This means that user data has not actually been uploaded or directly exposed to the advertising network. The advertising network can only see specific categories of users and cannot be targeted.

At the same time, tests have shown that this model can “see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising.”

According to Google, Google Chrome will start testing the new privacy sandbox in March but will test it with customers on the Google advertising network in the second quarter.

If all goes well, the new privacy sandbox will be widely launched in the future, which can greatly reduce the ad network’s acquisition of user data and continuous tracking.

Of course, this is only for advertising networks. As for whether Google and Google Chrome itself will continue to collect data and store it on Google servers, it is still unknown.

In addition, Google is also testing a new feature called Trust Token, which aims to store the collected data on a trusted server and output it through a trusted token.

Ad networks can only read trusted tokens and cannot track users continuously, which will help users avoid ad networks to track them in various ways.