Usability, speed, features, seamless cross-platform options, all are factors. If they really cared about privacy, they would just stop spying on billions of people.”Choosing a browser is a highly subjective matter. They care about protecting their surveillance business model. “You don’t become a multi-billion-dollar company without grabbing as much data as you can then monetize,” Cyjax CISO Ian Thornton-Trump told me last month, just after (genuinely) privacy-first DuckDuckGo warned that “Google doesn’t care about protecting user privacy.And while I’m sure this wasn’t designed to be confusing, it does come across as Pythonesque when explained. Google is replacing cookies with Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which is now under trial without impacted Chrome users knowing about it. How Google plans to protect your privacy while mining your data to sell you more stuff—or rather to enable its business customers to sell you more stuff.Unfortunately, that’s going to become very confusing. But unlike Apple and Microsoft, the other two tech giants in the browser business, Google doesn't generate its revenue from products, it generates its revenue from data, your data, targeting ads.And so, you’re about to be hit with complex and conflicting messages on how all this reconciles.
![]() ![]() This week, Facebook has blamed a user-centric convenience behind its latest data mishap , with that feature’s exploitation by “bad actors.” And so, the fear with FLoC is that the anonymized group IDs will soon be recognized and interpreted, that your IP address will be captured and linked. The FLoC origin trial is an early but important step toward the Privacy Sandbox's goal of an open web that is both private by default and economically sustainable.”With data harvesting and tracking, history tells us to beware the unintended consequences of even well-meaning developments. Using the web, DuckDuckGo warns, will be “like walking into a store where they already know all about you.”In response to this story, Google told me that “we strongly believe that FLoC is better for user privacy compared to the individual cross-site tracking that is prevalent today. You won’t be tracked as 45-year-old accountant, John Smith, of 101 Acacia Avenue, but the algorithm will be pretty specific about your interests and will readily share that with websites. EFF warns that “a switch has silently been flipped in millions of instances of Google Chrome: those browsers will begin sorting their users into groups based on behavior, then sharing group labels with third-party trackers and advertisers around the web.”And while I’m sure that as this rollout hits the mainstream, there will be easy ways to toggle a switch and opt out, it will be exactly the same as with cookies. And while each FLoC only tracks online activity from the last week, before resetting, you shouldn’t want to be tracked in this way.Google has already come under fire for the obfuscation around its so-called “incognito” browsing, and with FLoC, most of you won’t know anything about them. Dating sites, personal services, and worse. As EFF warns, “if a tracker starts with your FLoC cohort, it only has to distinguish your browser from a few thousand others (rather than a few hundred million).”When you surf the web, you betray the most intimate details about yourself. Combo cleaner mac activation numberAnd yet, as proven with FLoC, the other side of that equation is that the data harvesters have never been more sophisticated. There is a stark irony right now, in that we have never had more information available to us on the exploitation of our private information, the good and bad actors when it comes to tracking us, the tools we can use to protect ourselves. While FLoC is eventually intended to replace tracking cookies, during the trial, it will give trackers access to even more information about subjects.”Google told me that “as implemented in the origin trial, FLoC uses significantly less data than what can already be accessed via third-party cookies, and FLoC is designed to prevent websites from reverse-engineering an individual's browsing activity.” But privacy advocates have been roundly dismissive of this.And so to Apple. MORE FROM FORBES Stop This 'Secret' Location Tracking On Your iPhone-3 Critical Settings You Need To Change Today By Zak DoffmanAnd so we have reached a fork in the road, a pivot point. But Apple has adopted privacy as a USP, and has gone toe to toe with Facebook and the ad industry with the crackdown on browser and app trackers and those privacy labels. The risk is that this puts too much control in Google’s hands.Apple is on the right side of this battle—it has no direct interest in fueling the ad industry, albeit it’s clearly not immune from data collection and advertising itself. The issue is that Google sits both sides, as platform and advertising sales machine. This will throw the ad industry into a spin. Google Chrome Install And UseSimply put, don’t let the fox into the chicken coop. And because this is Apple, you’ll likely trust this more so than other platforms and use it more than you might a dedicated password manager.There is no point in Apple securing your data and your privacy, creating a walled garden around your online experience, if you then install and use Chrome on your iPhone or iPad or Mac. Furthermore, it will even store your passwords and warn you when one has been reused or breached. If you’re using the Apple ecosystem, it works seamlessly cross-device and already has the anti-tracking tech built in. Because Safari is a perfect compromise. As good as DuckDuckGo is, as good as Signal is, as good as ProtonMail is, you’ll want to use a mainstream browser, WhatsApp or iMessage, and standard email apps.And that’s okay. Browsers like Safari and Tor have engaged in years-long wars of attrition against trackers, sacrificing large swaths of their own feature sets in order to reduce fingerprinting attack surfaces.” EFF warns that FLoC is “a new fingerprinting risk,” and that Google shouldn't put that risk in place “until it’s figured out how to deal with existing ones.”EFF has launched a website where you can check if your Chrome browser has FLoC enabled. EFF cautions that “fingerprinting is notoriously difficult to stop. And so, you need to be mindful as to its true value to Google.Using your digital trail to identify you as a unique user is called fingerprinting. Remote desktop connection client for mac 2The company is at the forefront of AI-based surveillance and works closely with flagship government agencies around the world on the appropriate and proportionate use of such technologies.As well as analysing security and surveillance stories, Zak is co-creator of Forbes’ award winning Straight Talking Cyber video series. He is frequently cited in the international media and is a regular commentator on broadcast news, with appearances on BBC, Sky, NPR, NBC, Channel 4, TF1, ITV and Fox, as well as various cybersecurity and surveillance documentaries.Zak has twenty years experience in real-world cybersecurity and surveillance, most recently as the Founder/CEO of Digital Barriers, which develops advanced surveillance technologies for frontline security and defence agencies as well as commercial organizations in the US, Europe and Asia.
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