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Millions of people cookies are part of a global experiment to permanently eliminate them. Google has been testing it for the past month new browser-based technology Chrome can kick off the global advertising industry. Most of the people involved in the trial probably don’t even realize it, but as the project progresses, critical voices are sounding the alarm.
Regulators in Germany, France and Belgium are examining Google’s proposals. At the same time, some of the world’s largest websites have decided to skip Google’s testing altogether, with several companies developing ways to bypass the system.
The system, known as Federated Cohort Study (FLoC), Is part of Google’s larger Privacy Sandbox a plan that will bring an end to third-party advertising cookies in early 2022. There are three ways for websites to show which ads. You’d see an ad for a pair of shoes because you got into the shopping cart last week; if you’re reading an article about cars, ads can also be about cars; or the ads you see may depend on your interests. FLoC, like third-party cookies, deals with advertising according to what you like.
Today, cookies show advertisers that are specific to you because they are based on your historical crawl. Expanding the FLoC network is designed to eliminate this individual targeting. If you use FLoC, Chrome will collect your web history and compare it to the habits of others. You will meet a group or cohort with thousands of other people like you. Advertisers can then target all groups of people rather than specific people.
Not only the size of the change, but also what is behind it. Google, which led the parent company Alphabet recorded revenue of $ 55 billion over the last three months the global advertising industry has dominated. Regulators are scarce.
“FLoC technology raises a number of questions about the legal requirements of the GDPR,” says Johannes Caspar, data protection commissioner in Hamburg, Germany. “Implementing users in FLoCs could be seen as an act of processing personal data. This requires clear and transparent consent and information about these operations. “In short, Google needs to ensure that people actively choose to use FLoC instead of having Chrome enabled by default. “how they can do it and how the exact FLoC cohorts will be.
And it’s not just German regulators who are concerned about FLoC. A spokesman for the Commission National de l’informatique et des libertés or the CNIL, France’s data regulator, said it was “particularly vigilant” about technologies that could replace cookies, as it could require access to information already stored on people’s devices. The CNIL is clear that such a system would require “accurate, informed and unambiguous consent”. If Google doesn’t, it could be expensive. In December 2020, the French regulator He has fined Google $ 120 million for not obtaining public consent before using cookies.
Other regulators are more concerned with antitrust. In Belgium, officials want to understand how competitive future systems are, as well as how they comply with data protection laws. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority and data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, have been investigating Google’s proposals since January. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which is responsible for many of Dublin’s European-based technology companies, says it has been consulting with Google on the proposals.
Google is well aware of FLoCs potential errors. In this case, the technology has not yet been tested in the European Union. “EU privacy legislation sets high standards for transparency and control over users, which is what we anticipate for FLoC,” says Marshall Vale, Google’s Chrome product manager. “We know that the input of data protection authorities is key to achieving this, and that’s why we’ve started initial conversations about technology and our plans.” Google has previously said it intends to include tools that will allow people to choose to join the FLoC cohort.
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