Hey Friends,

You may have heard the news that Google is ditching its use of third-party cookies in a move towards a more privacy friendly direction. On the face of it this may seem a win for privacy since cookies are heavily used to track the web activity of billions of people. But it's not that simple. While Google advertise the move as a privacy innovation some fear it may have the opposite effect and allow them to tighten their grip on the advertising industry and web as a whole.

At present, whenever you visit a website both first-party and third-party cookies are added to your device which track your browsing history and display adverts based on this activity. The first-party cookies send this information back to the owner of the website you have visited. Third-party cookies use the gathered data to build a profile about the things you like to buy, the topics which interest you, including your political and religious beliefs and activities you engage in online. These detailed profiles are sent back to data brokers who sell this information onto third parties and is the main reason why you can view an item on amazon one day and keep seeing adverts for the same item on other websites days later. You are now being tracked wherever you go on the Internet.

The proposed change by Google will likely result in very little change for the end user. The browser will continue to function as normal with individualised tracking and profiling still taking place. However, much of the tracking will now take place in the browser, with machine learning used to analyse a users browsing history and group people with similar interests together. It is unclear what these groups will be but advertisers will now be able to send users adverts based on the group they are in. Like me, I am sure this raises a lot of questions in your mind to say the least.

So is this really a positive step forward for privacy?

Well, it is too early to tell, however, the question we should probably ask is:

Is more centralised control of data by a smaller group of very large companies a positive step forward? Especially, if some of these companies have a questionable history of data use.

I will leave you to make up your own mind, but I will keep you updated once more information is available and we have a clearer picture of what the future Internet may look like.

For now, my advice as always, is to consider an alternative browser (Discussed here) as your daily driver.

Have a great week.

Take care,

Chris

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Things I've found interesting this week

\\ One Link: The Cyber Threat the lurks beneath the waters

\\ Two Link: Education once again targetted for attacks

\\ Three Link: There will literally soon be an app for everything

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