Farewell to cookies? Chrome's new privacy settings seems to do that
It is known that Google has been working on different ways to get rid of cookies, mainly for security and privacy purposes. The latest reports show that the company has come a long way and offers new privacy settings in Chrome Canary and Chrome Dev apps.
Sometimes cookies can be frustrating as they share users' interests with online ad buyers and, in a way, disrupt their privacies. This has been one of the main security issues Google has been working on for a while now. Finally, we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. For now, the new feature is only available for Chrome Canary and Chrome Dev users. There is still more to update and work on to improve it. Soon other Chrome users will also be able to use the new feature and keep their privacy.
According to Android Police, a new pop-up titled "Enhanced ad privacy in Chrome" welcomed Canary and Dev users once they tapped on the app. There are three sub-features under the "ad privacy" section, with the first being "Ad topics." Once you turn it on, the topics will be shown based on your recent browsing history, and sites will use it to show you personalized ads. It allows you to block topics, and the app says: You can block topics you don't want shared with sites. Chrome also auto-deletes your topics older than 4 weeks."
Right below ad topics, you will find "Site-suggested ads." Chrome's explanation: Sites you visit can determine what you like and then suggest ads as you continue browsing." Again, you can block some of the sites you don't want, and sites older than four weeks get auto-deleted from the list.
The last option is "Ad measurement." Site owners and advertisers can measure their ad's performance on the back end. Data is shared with sites to measure their ads when it is on. These data include the time of the day an ad was shown to the user. Like the previous two, ad-measurement data is also regularly deleted from your device while keeping the users' browsing histories private and safe.
Google Chrome's latest critical security update was introduced around a week ago, and it is possible saying that the company is working on privacy and security issues more than ever. If you want to learn more about Google Chrome's privacy settings for regular users, you can visit the official website!
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What a vague, misleading, and contradictory puff piece!
1) Google is NOT trying to get rid of cookies entirely, despite what’s implied here.
2) The body of the article doesn’t even touch on how ad targeting/tracking cookies are to be reduced/eliminated, or how that ties into Chrome’s ‘feature’ rollout. Without that, this reads like nothing more than an expansion of privacy invasion, not a reduction.
3) You say the problem with cookies is “they share users’ interests with online ad buyers,” but then laud the new approach where, wait for it, “they share users’ interests with online ad buyers.”
4) You completely ignore the fact that the deceptively-titled ‘enhanced ad privacy’ system expands the scope of ad targeting from individual sites/services to entire browser history, increasing the browser’s own complicity in the process.
5) The entire article reads like a paid promotion for Google/Chrome and seems to use verbose filler just to boost the word count.
There is an argument to be made that Google’s new implementation is better for privacy than the current wild west approach. However, that’s a pretty tough sell even if you do present a roadmap for eliminating ad targeting/tracking cookies and explain the nuance of the implementations, which were omitted here. Definitely need to put more thought/effort into these articles!
Compare this article to one Martin wrote on the same topic last year:
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/28/google-delays-the-end-of-third-party-cookies-to-2024/
Personalized ads means tracking means privacy abusing. I wonder why Martin do not leave and write only in his blog. There is so much sponsored articles lately.
I don’t care about cookies, I always delete them when exit automatically in Edge and Firefox. However Chrome does not allow to clear privacy traces automatically when exit, and it does not have the option to prevent multiple tabs closing accidentally. Thanks for the article.
News flash: “Google implements privacy in its browser. Says now no longer Evil”
LMAO
(eyeroll)
If they had an option to simply disable ads (ha ha), then I might be tempted back….
Wow, sharing your browser history directly with advertisers. Only Google (and Ghacks apparently) would try to sell this as a privacy and security enhancement. I’m sure that Google is busy stuffing this into chromium so that every chromium based browser soon will broadcast all browsing history to advertisers.
@Andy Prough
Chromium is open source, which means browsers aside from Chrome are free to remove or disable it as they see fit. I’m sure you are aware of this too – at this point I am convinced that you are just trolling here.
>”Chromium is open source, which means browsers aside from Chrome are free to remove or disable it as they see fit.”
Oh yes, just like they are all free to keep developing Manifest v2, and not implement v3. Except none of them are lifting a finger, despite their protests. In the chromium world, Google says “jump” and the chromium-based browser devs say “how high”?
@Andy Prough
Zero proof coming from you that this component can’t be disabled or removed. Instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt, you resort to spreading misinformation and propaganda.
Manifest V3 is something you have to worry about when you rely on extensions. As a Brave user, I don’t rely on extensions for my adblocking needs. Mozilla will include Manifest V3 as well btw., because they are using Google’s WebExtension APIs since 2017 (haha).
>”Manifest V3 is something you have to worry about when you rely on extensions.”
So you admit that the extension ecosystem on chromium will soon be dead, which is what I warned you about months ago.
@Andy Prough
> So you admit that the extension ecosystem on chromium will soon be dead, which is what I warned you about months ago.
And I told you months ago that I view built-in adblockers as a solution. Stop misrepresenting things in the name of propaganda. Do they tolerate your shite on the Pale Moon forums or do you save it all for gHacks?
>”And I told you months ago that I view built-in adblockers as a solution.”
And I told you that that’s only going to be workable until Google decides that built-in adblockers need to be squashed as well.
@Andy Prough
> And I told you that that’s only going to be workable until Google decides that built-in adblockers need to be squashed as well.
Built-in adblockers directly interact with the network stack. You know what happens when you remove the network stack? The browser goes completely offline. You have no clue.
I’ve been away for over a month but came back to see if the site had come back to its senses. But, yeah, this one is hard to believe. I can only assume that it was written by Shaun using a new alias.
@Herman Cost
> “I can only assume that it was written by Shaun using a new alias.”
No idea, really. True that there’s no biography mentioned for this article’s author, which isn’t per se relevant need to say. “Onur Demirkol” sounds as a Turkish name. Dug a bit on search engines and found several occurrences of the name on Instagram, but also :
* [Editor: personal information removed.]
The first looks more plausible :=)
Dear @Onur Demirkol, are we anywhere close to the truth? LOL.
Before some months, chrome disabled the option to see the cookies cration date, in options menu. Now we can only see how many megabytes took space, that is each cookies page. So, that isnt privacy disrupt ? We need to know the best about each website we go on, not only we really got into sometime, mr. chrome ..
Another incredibly vague message that is of no use.
Why didn’t you mention whether it involves all types of cookies? Or that e.g. that it does not concern all cookies and that e.g. can still be placed the:
1.) Silvercookies
2.) First-Party Cookies
3.) Session Cookies
4.) Third-Party Cookies
5.) Flash Cookies
6.) Zombie Cookies
7.) Secure Cookies
8.) HTTP Cookies
And I could go on and on!
Those all are same, just different categorization. All of those are called HTTP Cookies.
Session Cookies is not even stored in device.
Don’t just spewing things you don’t know.
@Paul(us). Thanks for this list. Very informative! To add to your list: I came across another cookie type (nameless at the time) in 2018 via this blog post.
SuperCooKey – A SuperCookie Built Into TLS 1.2 and 1.3
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/supercookey-a-supercookie-built-into-tls-1-2-and-1-3/
Quoting the article, “Soon other Chrome users will also be able to use the new feature and keep their privacy.”
Is this a joke? There is NO privacy when Google is allowed/invited to the party.
Moreover the switches mentioned in the article are op-outs and, considering the proportion of users who run a browser out-of-the-box, tracking and mainly advertisement tracking will carry on : it’s the very business of Google.
Avoid Google, that’s all there is to it.