The great Google Chrome cookie cull begins today - here's what you need to know

Those data-hungry Google Chrome cookies may finally be a thing of the past

News By Benedict Collins published 4 January 2024

People like privacy and are not a fan of cookies, so Google is publicly testing a new version of Chrome that completely removes third-party cookies.

This new version of its browser is being released to around 30 million people for testing and aims to cut down on the privacy concerns surrounding third-party cookies, which are traditionally used for targeted advertising.

This 30 million however only represents around one percent of Chrome’s total users, so you may have to keep opting out for much of this year before its released to a wider audience.

Chocolate, raisin, or… third party?

Third-party cookies are used to identify the interests and habits of a website's user to determine what adverts may match their interests and be more likely to result in the user clicking on an advert.

This targeting can occur across websites building a very intimate cookie-understanding of what you like and don’t like, and generally forming a detailed demographic profile that is stored externally from the client.

This latest privacy-oriented version of the Chrome browser offers a Privacy Sandbox which - while still allowing targeted advertising to occur - instead stores your internet interests locally on your client. This list of interests is then auctioned to advertisers attempting to target specific audiences.

One potential difficulty pointed out by Dr Lukasz Olejnik from the University of Edinburgh law school, is that this new Privacy Sandbox could violate Europe’s ePrivacy Directive if the targeted adverts are shown before user consent is given, as the browser would now be collecting and storing “information” rather than “personal data.” The ePrivacy Directive is currently being updated under the ePrivacy Regulation, Olejnik points out, due to some of the Directives outdated protections. 

Google is slightly late to this party in removing third-party cookies, as other browsers such as Firefox and Safari disabled these data-sucking cookies long ago. 

Via The Register

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