Google FLoc is just another bag of cookies
Toldya…
Three months ago I explained how FLoC, Google’s new method to profile people online,
- basically just asks you to do yourself part of the profiling
- but is not much better than cookies, privacy-wise
Now, privacy watchers confirm those concerns, says Digiday.com. With little effort, FLoC may end up being just as effective as browser cookies to “identify and access information about people online”:
For details of how FLoC works, see my previous post. These quotes from DigiDay.com explain why you should read it:
- “If your behavior doesn’t change, the algorithm will keep assigning you in that same cohort, so some users will have a persistent [identifier]associated with them - or could."
- Advertising companies are working hard to get advantafge of FLoC. One of them is quoted in the article as saying “Our advertiser clients will be able to associate a FLoC ID to their first-party identity like an email when a user authenticates on their web properties”
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
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