Google Chrome to add the same site cookie policy and anti-fingerprint tracking
At the Google Developers Conference, the company emphasized that Google Chrome will receive more privacy protection in response to the current variety of ad network tracking. The main focus of these privacy protections is same site cookie policy and anti-fingerprint tracking, which are also widely used in current advertising networks.
In front of Google Chrome, Firefox has done a good job in this regard, providing options to decide which level of anti-tracking to use. Google’s browser, which has the highest market share in the browser, can’t fall behind, so Google also decided to enhance Google’s browser privacy protection strategy.
TL;DR: `SameSite=Lax` by default. Folks who require cross-site access can opt-into the status quo via `SameSite=None`, but doing so will require asserting `Secure` as well.
— Mike West (@mikewest) May 7, 2019
The Internet Engineering Task Force has launched a new network standard, which is actually the standard adopted by Google Chrome and Firefox. This standard allows websites to set new properties in HTTP headers, which can be used by webmasters to specify whether the current website allows other website cookies. The other websites here mainly refer to the ad network and statistical analysis tools. If the browser is not allowed, the cookies used by these tracking will be automatically filtered. If the site settings allow or are not set, the browser will allow other sites to load cookies to prevent the ad network from tracking the user.
We also know that Google is going to cancel cookies in 2023. To replace them, they initially introduced Federated Learning of Cohorts. At first glance, the FLoC alternative seemed like a less intrusive solution for user privacy. But since cohorts meant tracking thousands of technical identifiers, it raised many questions from European authorities after it was revealed that Cohorts could be used for fingerprinting.
Therefore, FLoC was replaced by Topics to protect users’ privacy.. Google’s Topics (do-follow link) are a bit different. This method effectively targets relevant users based on their recent interests rather than detailed identifiers.
The above strategy is mainly set by the webmaster, and from the perspective of the website, the tracking user is allowed to help the advertisement network push the user-associated advertisement. This may increase the potential advertising revenue for the website, so most websites should not actively set up to prevent ad network cross-site tracking. In response to this problem, Google also mentioned that it will provide different user policy panels. Users can manually set strict protection mode or regular protection mode.
As the world’s largest advertising company, Google will naturally be affected by various privacy policies, but Google has to take the initiative to resolve conflicts. Because too many advertising companies now abuse various technologies to track users, more and more users will also install ad blocking tools to intercept ads. For large advertising companies with good ad quality and privacy controls, such as Google, those that abuse tracking technology can ruin the entire industry. So the same is true for Google Chrome’s previous formation of Initial Better Ads Standards. The advertising and user experience must be balanced to achieve the best results.
Via: ZDNet
