Google itself maintains detailed profiles of users, built up over time from what they've learned about users (including through passive trackers lurking on most websites), but with FLoC they're now exposing your derived interests and demographics from this profile to the websites you visit via FLoC IDs. It's like walking into a store where they already know all about you! In addition, while FLoC is purported to be more private because it is a group, combined with your IP address (which also gets automatically sent to websites) you can continue to be tracked easily as an individual. Websites you visit will immediately be able to access this group FLoC ID and use it to target ads or content at you. With FLoC, by simply browsing the web, you are automatically placed into a group based on your browsing history ("cohort").
The company explains some of the concerns about the new method: DuckDuckGo points out that FLoC is bad for privacy because "it puts you in a group based on your browsing history, and any website can get that group FLoC ID to target and fingerprint you".īut with the privacy-focused search engine's DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension for Chrome, it is possible to block FLoC.
Google has already enabled the new technique for millions of people without either informing them or giving them a choice in the matter. What is particularly concerning about FLoC is the opacity of what it does, how it works, and the difficulty of opting out of it. For anyone who would like to block Google's new tracking method, DuckDuckGo's Chrome extension is here to help. The cookie-free technique uses fingerprinting which the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy groups have expressed great concern about. While Google is insistent that FLoC is "privacy-preserving mechanism" and one that " enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behavior of individual users", the algorithm remains controversial for many. But the search giant recently started testing a new technique for delivering targeted ads to people called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), and it's now enabled for millions of users by default. That Google tracks internet usage is hardly news - it how the company has operated for years, and it is central to its business model.
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