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All good points, but they don't change the conclusion I wrote though, you effectively further specified the lengths to which Google is going to prevent any pote
by dialtone 6y ago
All good points, but they don't change the conclusion I wrote though, you effectively further specified the lengths to which Google is going to prevent any potential bad correlation to sensitive categories. Of course there will be correlation of some sort, they aren't random groups, but so long as you can't tell sensitive categories, you can only observe that a group seems more interested in a particular advertiser products. You can't tell their browsing history, just their interests.
Regarding the trial, yeah I know that origin thing is up, and the minutes for yesterday's W3C IWABG meeting aren't going to be out until next week, but the team working on this stuff at Google said that the trial up there is kind of fake and the code isn't merged in Chrome yet and won't be until 91, at some point I have to trust the engineers working on this stuff more than the rest.
[edit]: To be clear, I don't mean that there's no experiment going on, I just mean that it's not the browser running it, that the removal of 3rd party cookies as a way to opt-out likely is due to the fact that they may be relying on server-side computation to do this experiment rather than the browser, I wouldn't see why the browser would care about cookies to track your history, it's already stored in the browser.
- krageon 6y ago> Of course there will be correlation Yes, and given enough data this: > so long as you can't tell sensitive categories will not be true. > I have to trust the engineers The engineers that work for a giant corporation whose entire reason for existing is mining and collating as much data as possible on you? Why would you trust them at all?
- dialtone 6y agoBecause they aren't lying... The source code of this stuff is available in the open and you can verify it. There's no FLoC in the merged code in the main branch.
- Varriount 6y agoThe point, I think, isn't that this is currently in Chrome, but rather that there are plans to add it to Chrome in the future.
- leereeves 6y agoEven with Google's auditing, there are sensitive things that Google (hopefully) can't detect, but others can. For example, insurance claims. I hope Google isn't tracking enough information to test for correlations between FLoC cohorts and insurance claims, but insurers will have access to that info when customers visit their site to pay bills. Perhaps they'll find they can more accurately anticipate customer's claims from their FLoC cohort, and use that to price new policies, thus indirectly pricing policies based on browsing history.
- dialtone 6y agoThe FLoC cohort changes pretty frequently with your history, I don't think you will be tagged for life with "insurance claims", but you could, for a period of time, show up as part of a group that looks interested in insurance, it will hardly go much deeper than this.
- leereeves 6y agoTo offer just one of many possible examples that come to mind: the FLoC cohort might cluster people who read articles about becoming parents, which, though not visible in the data Google has, correlates with future claims for fertility treatments, pregnancy, etc. The insurance company has the data, and it doesn't even need to know any of the details, it just needs to realize that certain cluster numbers correlate with future claims. Perhaps Google will think of some of these correlations, and flag articles about becoming parents as sensitive, but how many unexpected correlations might be overlooked?