Comment by judge2020
3 years ago
Is there a write up examining the replacement (cohorts I guess) and showing how it is worse for user privacy?
3 years ago
Is there a write up examining the replacement (cohorts I guess) and showing how it is worse for user privacy?
It's arguably not, depending on how you slice "worse."
Google's philosophy on this sort of thing has been pretty consistent for over a decade: they trust themselves with user data. It goes in a vault, it's very hard to access inappropriately, and they have some of the best security possible on the modern web. Practically speaking, yes, it's still a risk; if the data collections get breached, that's all the data. But they don't see themselves as more of a risk than anything else out there, so for them it's not philosophically inconsistent to claim other companies doing what they are doing should be considered a privacy threat.
... And honestly, I think there's a good case to be made that if you don't trust Google to respect your privacy and secure your data, You shouldn't be using Chrome period, because the organization you don't trust controls the source code of that browser.
I guess my question is: how is Google getting that data now? Is FLoC or Topics beamed to Google ad preferences? Is it included in chrome sync?