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Specifically, the web giant’s Privacy Sandbox APIs, a set of ad delivery and analysis technologies, now function in the latest version of the Chrome browser. Website developers can thus write code that calls those APIs to deliver and measure ads to visitors with compatible browsers.
That is to say, sites can ask Chrome directly what kinds of topics you’re interested in – topics automatically selected by Chrome from your browsing history – so that ads personalized to your activities can be served. This is supposed to be better than being tracked via third-party cookies, support for which is being phased out. There are other aspects to the sandbox that we’ll get to.
While Chrome is the main vehicle for Privacy Sandbox code, Microsoft Edge, based on the open source Chromium project, has also shown signs of supporting the technology. Apple and Mozilla have rejected at least the Topics API for interest-based ads on privacy grounds.
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“The Privacy Sandbox technologies will offer sites and apps alternative ways to show you personalized ads while keeping your personal information more private and minimizing how much data is collected about you.”
These APIs include:
- Topics: Locally track browsing history to generate ads based on demonstrated user interests without third-party cookies or identifiers that can track across websites.
- Protected Audience (FLEDGE): Serve ads for remarketing (e.g. you visited a shoe website so we’ll show you a shoe ad elsewhere) while mitigating third-party tracking across websites.
- Attribution Reporting: Data to link ad clicks or ad views to conversion events (e.g. sales).
- Private Aggregation: Generate aggregate data reports using data from Protected Audience and cross-site data from Shared Storage.
- Shared Storage: Allow unlimited, cross-site storage write access with privacy-preserving read access. In other words, you graciously provide local storage via Chrome for ad-related data or anti-abuse code.
- Fenced Frames: Securely embed content onto a page without sharing cross-site data. Or iframes without the security and privacy risks.
These technologies, Google and industry allies believe, will allow the super-corporation to drop support for third-party cookies in Chrome next year without seeing a drop in targeted advertising revenue.
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“Privacy Sandbox removes the ability of website owners, agencies and marketers to target and measure their campaigns using their own combination of technologies in favor of a Google-provided solution,” James Rosewell, co-founder of MOW, told The Register at the time.
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Controversially, in the US, where lack of coherent privacy rules suit ad companies just fine, the popup merely informs the user that these APIs are now present and active in the browser but requires visiting Chrome’s Settings page to actually manage them – you have to opt-out, if you haven’t already. In the EU, as required by law, the notification is an invitation to opt-in to interest-based ads via Topics.
Source: How Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox works and what it means • The Register
Robin Edgar
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