Soon the third-party cookies will go away because people are fed up with being tracked by the advertisers, that’s very bad news for advertisers. Until or unless there’s something to replace them.
So as we all know that Google never stays behind in the race of technology. So here comes Google with its magical sword of f l o c: federated learning of cohorts. Google proposed this solution to targeted advertising without tracking. But privacy geeks hate it, And many browser makers also.
Google recently published the statement to stop allowing advertisers to track users online with third-party cookies it was intended to improve user secrecy.
Its new technology floc (federated learning of cohorts), in Chrome, will let the user be at a safer level. But that was not the case as Google expected, many of the Great privacy wonks and organizations rejected the use of the f l o c system. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) already discouraged Google’s f l o si tracker system, saying that this technology behavior surveillance tool can still harm users’ privacy and data. According to the advocacy group, f l o c is a terrible idea. And said that Google should cancel the project right away!.
The different reports explained how users can opt out of floc tracking. It’s simple that you have to block third-party cookies in Chrome, Google hasn’t mentioned the f l o c tracking system in the browser settings.
EFF has gone a step further by creating a website that tells you whether they have been indulged in the Google limited f l o c testing.
Am I floced? The website has only one purpose, which’s to tell you whether you are involved in tracking the trial of Google or not. Which involves 0.5% of users in various countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States.
The site would deliver an immediate answer to the question above that might present itself like this, if you’re not “FloCed”
You can even use another browser like Mozilla Firefox, Safari. If you’re not willing to stop Chrome or disable cookies, you might want to check out EFF’s website often to determine if and when Google adds you to the FloC trial. The EFF also published another blog post to explain the downside of using FLoC tech to track users, saying that Google’s initiative is still misleading because the company might convey a false sense of improved security to the user when selling this idea. To get more technical: your browser uses an algorithm called SimHash to calculate your FLoC ID.
The current version of the trial places each user into one of over 33,000 behavioral groups. You can view the code for the FLoC component here. Google has said that it intends to experiment with different grouping algorithms, and different parameters, along the trail.
The privacy debate will continue to rage on as an increasing number of internet users appear to care about privacy more than ever.
Apple is at the pinnacle of that fight, and its planned iOS 14.5 update will bring a Drastic change to the user-tracking business.
If you wanna know more do check this video down below:
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