Google: Chrome browser improves privacy, but advertisers continue to follow you



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Google announced Thursday that it would create a "privacy sandbox" for Chrome, in order to give users more control over the web browser. Advertisers, however, will still be able to follow consumers, as a technology giant's engineer says that "blocking cookies on a large scale" violates privacy.

"Confidentiality is paramount for us, in everything we do," said engineer Justin Schuh, an engineer at Google, said Thursday. "Today, we are announcing a new initiative to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally improve web privacy." We call this Sandbox confidentiality. "

With Google's "Privacy Sandbox," advertisers will find it harder to keep track of search history, giving consumers more choice about the types of data they send to businesses, which will also help users avoid not show some ads.

But Schuh says that "large-scale blocking of cookies" actually undermines privacy, which in turn encourages "fingerprints".

"With the fingerprint, developers have found ways to use tiny information that varies from user to user, such as their device or the fonts they have. have installed, to generate a unique identifier that can then be used to match a website user ". the Google engineer.

"Unlike cookies, users can not erase their fingerprint and therefore can not control how their information is collected," added Schuh. "We think this compromises the user's choice and that it is wrong."

"Blocking cookies with no other way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers' core funding, putting the future of the dynamic Web at risk," said Schuh. "If this funding is reduced, we are afraid to see much less accessible content for everyone."

"Over the past few weeks, we've started sharing our preliminary ideas for a Privacy Sandbox – a secure environment for customization that also protects users' privacy," said the engineer, who added that Google was working on New standards "that advance privacy, while continuing to support free access to content."

"Our goal is to create a set of standards that is more consistent with users' expectations of privacy," Schuh added.

Technology giants are now trying to be more cautious about handling consumer data, while users are outraged by privacy concerns and past incidents.

Facebook, for example, recently announced its new "Off-Facebook Activity" tool that, as proposed by Google, will allow users to find out which companies have followed them and remove companies with whom they do not want to share their data. Facebook.

"Google is an advertising agency, not a group of worried altruists," said Web developer Mat Marquis at Recode. "There are no tables at stakeholder meetings showing the amount of their" web backup "during the last quarter. They are known to have abused and abused the personal data of the users in order to earn money as an advertising agency. "

"Their business model – which allows all these truly brilliant and truly well-intentioned designers and developers to be employed – depends on the company's belief that users can view their ads," added Marquis.

According to Sebastian Bicchi, a security researcher and consultant, the changes proposed by Google will give the technology giant more control over the information of its consumers.

"Google is doing the right things for the wrong reasons," Bicchi told Recode. "It will make a difference, but it will also boost Google's power of information, because Google is already pretty much on all sides with its data followers. The difference will be that only Google will have data and that a growing number of website providers will have to rely on Google. "

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @Armastrangelo, on Speaking on @alana and on Instagram.

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