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Chrome is getting Tracking Protection, but don't get your hopes up

Martin Brinkmann
Sep 18, 2023
Google Chrome
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Google is in the process of switching on its euphemistically named Privacy Sandbox in Chrome, which, depending on who you ask, is either a step in the right direction, or, the first advertising system baked into a web browser. Next to that, Google is also working on Tracking Protection.

A new experimental flag is available in Chrome Canary that moves the Third-Party Cookies section in the Settings to a Tracking Protection section. Many users, those who have used other browsers such as Firefox, know that these browsers support tracking protection features already.

chrome tracking protection

Google Chrome's implementation, on the other hand, has little to do with these advanced protective features. For now, it is mostly a name change. A click on Tracking Protection in Chrome displays almost the same options as the Third-Party Cookies section of the settings in Chrome Stable.

There are some differences though. In Chrome Stable, users could set the default third-party cookies behavior to "allow third-party cookies", "block third-party cookies in Incognito mode", or "Block third-party cookies".

Tracking Protection changes this to the two options "Standard" and "Custom". Standard "limits third-party cookies" automatically and blocks third-party cookies in Incognito mode. Google does not reveal the list of exceptions, but explains that users may add temporary exceptions.

Custom contains the option to block all third-party cookies and to send the "do not track" header. These need to be enabled.

The remaining options, preload pages, see all site data and permissions, and customized behaviors, on the Settings page are identical.

chrome block cookies

The experimental flag hints that it prepares the browser for the next step in Google's plan to deprecate third-party cookies in Google Chrome.

Google plans to disable third-party cookies for 1% of the entire Chrome traffic in January 2024 with the release of Chrome 120. The test excludes most Enterprise end users, unless administrators set policies. Additional information on the planned deprecation is available on the Chrome Developer website.

Old wine in new skins, or something new?

One reason for changing the name from Third-Party Cookies to Tracking Protection may have to do with the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome. When the browser stops supporting third-party cookies, it does not make sense to have a setting about Third-Party Cookies anymore in the browser.

Renaming it to Tracking Protection and changing the available options makes sense in this regard. Chrome users who have hoped that Google would implement improved privacy protections may be disappointed though, as it does not look as if this is going to be the case.

Chrome is one of Google's mightiest weapons in advertising and the company will do anything in its power to keep it that way.

Using a different browser, such as Brave, Vivaldi or Firefox, is, from a privacy point of view, the better option.

Summary
Chrome is getting Tracking Protection, but don't get your hopes up
Article Name
Chrome is getting Tracking Protection, but don't get your hopes up
Description
Google is integration a Tracking Protection feature into its Chrome web browser. Find out why it is lacking when compared to other browsers.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on September 24, 2023 at 5:04 pm
    Reply

    “Privacy Sandbox in Chrome, which, depending on who you ask, is either a step in the right direction, or, the first advertising system baked into a web browser.”

    More specifically, going towards the removal of third-party (3p) cookies is the step in the right direction, while the new advertising system baked into the web browser is the horrible spyware. That’s quite simple.

    They are two *completely independent* changes technically, but Google tried to play with the confusion by bundling those two contradictory moves under the same name. And it works, apparently. Now authors hesitate to call the spyware part spyware. Well done, Google. The solution is simple: separate the two when talking about this.

    Some people tried to push the lie that it’s not really possible to remove 3p cookies without replacing them with some sort of equivalent, because then web trackers would use fingerprinting to replace the 3p cookies. But if that was true, those Google competitors who rely on 3p cookies would still be able to use fingerprinting after Google pushed its adware replacement in all browsers. So either fingerprinting can’t be fought efficiently and 3p cookies removal is illusory, we’ll just get an extra adware ; or it can be fought efficiently, and then we don’t need a new adware just because we’ve killed 3p cookies. Replacing 3p cookies with a new local adware is only necessary for web tracking to continue, which is not something the billions of ordinary human beings who don’t live from surveillance would want to happen.

    “Using a different browser, such as Brave, Vivaldi or Firefox, is, from a privacy point of view, the better option”

    Of course, Firefox will at the end embed the Google tracking systems too. They already showed official critical support for the idea, just disagreeing on minor technical questions, playing their official role of the Google sponsored opposition to Google (around half a billion dollars each year from Google in exchange for user personal and sensitive search data, and for nearly total submission). The funny part is that not being the majority browser, they will have even less excuses than Chrome for embedding that spyware. Their behavior will not be the one that decides the tracking industry to switch from one system to another, even if that was a good thing. They could happily sit on blocking 3p cookies and being the ethical competitor to Google without the new adware system, but that’s not Mozilla’s style. They already had so many equivalent experiments of their own anyway in their browser (like Suggested Tiles in 2015
    https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data-privacy-principles-into-action/
    and many other still today like Pocket suggested stories), even before Google tried them…

    As for Brave, it is since the beginning centrally built on a spyware concept for the ad industry that is very similar to Chrome’s. They have like Firefox pioneered the idea for Google long before the new Chrome adware components arrive into production. So it’s also ridiculous to call it a private alternative to Google’s new adware component.

    “When the browser stops supporting third-party cookies, it does not make sense to have a setting about Third-Party Cookies anymore in the browser”

    I’m not even sure that this is going to happen. Even if Google finally makes it a default, they will probably keep some undisclosed whitelist because of the usual excuses, like unbreaking sites because of necessary trackers, but also “fighting fraud or abuses” from us, third-party logging provider or whatever. At least for a time, since it looks like they made some sort of “trust tokens” part of their “privacy sandbox” to replace such “more legitimate” 3p cookies functions, that will obviously rely on people using Google software (or at least Google-compliant) to be able to access web sites. Which is also very bad news on its own.

  2. upp said on September 18, 2023 at 7:22 am
    Reply

    Lmao, Chrom with Tracking Protection, will it block itself ?

  3. Russ said on September 18, 2023 at 7:17 am
    Reply

    I’m just fed-up with the level of Alphabet/Google’s deception. Chrome just fell off all my devices last week. Yay!

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