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With the death of third-party cookies Google is trying to force browsers to add enough bits of entropy so that the same level of user tracking can be achieved t

by ajnin 5y ago

With the death of third-party cookies Google is trying to force browsers to add enough bits of entropy so that the same level of user tracking can be achieved through fingerprinting instead. Simple as that. The fact that Google is rolling this out right now but their plans to reduce fingerprinting move much more slowly, if at all, is telling. This absolutely needs to be treated as the massive privacy leak that it is.

jimbob45 5y ago
Can’t you just switch to a Chromium fork without the FLoC? If they were closed-source, I think I would agree.
- thisarticle 5y ago
  How many people who use Chrome can or will even know to do so? Tech oriented people already have alternatives.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  Sure, "you" - as a reader of hacker news - can use Firefox (or a chromium fork). The problem is that most normal users have no idea about any of this stuff, and no understanding of why they might want to switch.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    Realistically most people just don't care the same amount that the subset of privacy-obsessed+techies do.
anchpop 5y ago
> Simple as that. Not quite? Maybe this will add more bits that will be useful for fingerprinting, but this seems like an absurd way for google to go about making it easier to fingerprint browsers, considering that most browsing happens over Chrome where Google can see what pages everyone visits anyway. And Google is currently proposing adding anti-fingerprinting measures [0] that observe how many bits of information a website has gathered and block API access after it reaches a certain threshold. A straightforward analysis of Google's motivations makes sense here: they want to keep their ad business profitable while improving their reputation on privacy. FLOC allows targeted ads, keeping their business profitable, and doesn't rely 3rd parties observing your browser history, improving privacy. From https://web.dev/floc/ https://web.dev/floc/ : > With FLoC, the browser does not share its browsing history with the FLoC service or anyone else. The browser, on the user's device, works out which cohort it belongs to. The user's browsing history never leaves the device. > There will be thousands of browsers in each cohort. A further privacy improvement is that they're designing it to avoid leaking whether you're a member of a "sensivitive category": > The clustering algorithm used to construct the FLoC cohort model is designed to evaluate whether a cohort may be correlated with sensitive categories, without learning why a category is sensitive. Cohorts that might reveal sensitive categories such as race, sexuality, or medical history will be blocked. In other words, when working out its cohort, a browser will only be choosing between cohorts that won't reveal sensitive categories. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/google-proposes-new-privacy-and-anti-fingerprinting-controls-for-the-web/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/google-proposes-new-privac...

by ajnin 5y ago

jimbob45 5y ago

Can’t you just switch to a Chromium fork without the FLoC? If they were closed-source, I think I would agree.

thisarticle 5y ago
How many people who use Chrome can or will even know to do so? Tech oriented people already have alternatives.
JeremyNT 5y ago
Sure, "you" - as a reader of hacker news - can use Firefox (or a chromium fork). The problem is that most normal users have no idea about any of this stuff, and no understanding of why they might want to switch.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Realistically most people just don't care the same amount that the subset of privacy-obsessed+techies do.

anchpop 5y ago

> Simple as that. Not quite? Maybe this will add more bits that will be useful for fingerprinting, but this seems like an absurd way for google to go about making it easier to fingerprint browsers, considering that most browsing happens over Chrome where Google can see what pages everyone visits anyway. And Google is currently proposing adding anti-fingerprinting measures [0] that observe how many bits of information a website has gathered and block API access after it reaches a certain threshold. A straightforward analysis of Google's motivations makes sense here: they want to keep their ad business profitable while improving their reputation on privacy. FLOC allows targeted ads, keeping their business profitable, and doesn't rely 3rd parties observing your browser history, improving privacy. From https://web.dev/floc/ https://web.dev/floc/ : > With FLoC, the browser does not share its browsing history with the FLoC service or anyone else. The browser, on the user's device, works out which cohort it belongs to. The user's browsing history never leaves the device. > There will be thousands of browsers in each cohort. A further privacy improvement is that they're designing it to avoid leaking whether you're a member of a "sensivitive category": > The clustering algorithm used to construct the FLoC cohort model is designed to evaluate whether a cohort may be correlated with sensitive categories, without learning why a category is sensitive. Cohorts that might reveal sensitive categories such as race, sexuality, or medical history will be blocked. In other words, when working out its cohort, a browser will only be choosing between cohorts that won't reveal sensitive categories. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/google-proposes-new-privacy-and-anti-fingerprinting-controls-for-the-web/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/google-proposes-new-privac...