Privacy Sandbox | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Google's plans to deprecate third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser with Privacy Sandbox has run into fresh trouble after Austrian privacy non-profit noyb (none of your business) said the feature can still be used to track users. "While the so-called 'Privacy Sandbox' is advertised as an improvement over extremely invasive third-party tracking, the tracking is now simply done within the browser by Google itself," noyb said . "To do this, the company theoretically needs the same informed consent from users. Instead, Google is tricking people by pretending to 'Turn on an ad privacy feature.'" In other words, by making users agree to enable a privacy feature, they are still being tracked by consenting to Google's first-party ad tracking, the Vienna-based non-profit founded by activist Max Schrems alleged in a complaint filed with the Austrian data protection authority. Privacy Sandbox is a set of proposals put forth by the i...

Google has once again  pushed its plans  to deprecate third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser as it works to address outstanding competition concerns from U.K. regulators over its Privacy Sandbox initiative. The tech giant said it's working closely with the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and hopes to achieve an agreement by the end of the year. As part of the new timeline, it aims to start phasing out third-party cookies early next year, making it the third such extension since the tech giant  announced  the plans in 2020, postponing it from  early 2022 to late 2023 , and again to the  second half of 2024 . Privacy Sandbox refers to a  set of initiatives  that offers privacy-preserving alternatives to tracking cookies and cross-app identifiers in order to serve tailored ads to users. While Google has since  enabled  the features to a subset of Chrome browser users...

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Google on Thursday announced that it will start testing a new feature called "Tracking Protection" beginning January 4, 2024, to 1% of Chrome users as part of its efforts to  deprecate third-party cookies  in the web browser. The setting is designed to limit "cross-site tracking by restricting website access to third-party cookies by default," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox at Google,  said . The tech giant noted that participants for Tracking Protection will be selected at random and that chosen users will be notified upon opening Chrome on either a desktop or an Android device. The goal is to restrict third-party cookies (also called "non-essential cookies") by default, preventing them from being used to track users as they move from one website to the other for serving personalized ads. While several major browsers like Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox have either already placed  restrictions  on third-party cookies via features ...

Google has officially begun its rollout of Privacy Sandbox in the Chrome web browser to a majority of its users, nearly four months after it  announced the plans . "We believe it is vital to both improve privacy and preserve access to information, whether it's news, a how-to-guide, or a fun video," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox initiatives at Google,  said . "Without viable privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies, such as the Privacy Sandbox, we risk reducing access to information for all users, and incentivizing invasive tactics such as fingerprinting." To that end, the search giant is initially leaving nearly three percent of users unaffected by the change in order to conduct sufficient tests. General availability is expected to encompass all users in the coming months. Privacy Sandbox is Google's  umbrella term  for a set of technologies that aim to eliminate third-party tracking cookies on the web and replace them...

Google has announced plans to officially flip the switch on its twice-delayed  Privacy Sandbox  initiatives as it slowly works its way to deprecate support for third-party cookies in Chrome browser. To that end, the search and advertising giant said it intends to phase out third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users globally in the first quarter of 2024. "This will support developers in conducting real world experiments that assess the readiness and effectiveness of their products without third-party cookies," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox at Google,  said . Prior to rolling this out, Google said it would introduce the ability for third-party developers to simulate the process for a configurable subset of their users (up to 10%) in Q4 2023. Google further emphasized that the plans have been designed and developed with regulatory oversight and input from the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority ( CMA ), which is overseeing the implementation to...

Google announced on Tuesday that it's officially rolling out  Privacy Sandbox on Android  in beta to eligible mobile devices running Android 13. "The Privacy Sandbox Beta provides new APIs that are designed with privacy at the core, and don't use identifiers that can track your activity across apps and websites," the search and advertising giant  said . "Apps that choose to participate in the Beta can use these APIs to show you relevant ads and measure their effectiveness." Devices that have been selected for the Beta test will have a Privacy Sandbox section within Settings so as to allow users to control their participation as well as view and manage their top interests as determined by the  Topics API  to serve relevant ads. The initial  Topics taxonomy  is set to include somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand topics,  according to Google , and will be human-curated to exclude sensitive topics. The Beta test is expected to star...

Internet behemoth Google on Tuesday said it plans to roll out Privacy Sandbox for Android in beta to mobile devices running Android 13 starting early next year. "The Privacy Sandbox Beta will be available for ad tech and app developers who wish to test the ads-related APIs as part of their solutions," the company  said . To that end, developers will need to complete an enrollment process in order to utilize the ads-related APIs, including  Topics ,  FLEDGE , and  Attribution Reporting . Topics, which  replaced  Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) earlier this year, aims to categorize user interests under different "topics" based on their device web browsing history. These inferred interests are then shared with marketers to serve targeted ads. FLEDGE and Attribution reporting, on the other hand, enable custom audience targeting and help measure  ad conversions  without relying on cross-party user identifiers, respectively. Organizations ca...

Google on Wednesday said it's once again delaying its plans to turn off third-party cookies in the Chrome web browser from late 2023 to the second half of 2024. "The most consistent feedback we've received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox,  said . In keeping this in mind, the internet and ad tech giant said it's taking a "deliberate approach" and  extending the testing window  for its ongoing Privacy Sandbox initiatives prior to phasing out third-party cookies. Cookies are pieces of data planted on a user's computer or other device by the web browser as a website is accessed, with third-party cookies fueling much of the digital advertising ecosystem and its ability to track users across different sites to show targeted ads. Privacy Sandbox is Google's umbrella term for a set of technologies ...

Google has officially  released  the first developer preview for the Privacy Sandbox on Android 13, offering an "early look" at the SDK Runtime and Topics API to boost users' privacy online. "The Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview program will run over the course of 2022, with a beta release planned by the end of the year," the search giant  said  in an overview. A "multi-year effort,"  Privacy Sandbox  on Android aims to create technologies that's both privacy-preserving as well as keep online content and services free without having to resort to opaque methods of digital advertising. The idea is to limit sharing of user data with third-parties and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising ID, a unique, user-resettable string of letters and digits that can be used to track users as they move between apps. Google originally  announced  its plans to bring Privacy Sandbox to Android earlier this February, followin...

Google on Wednesday announced plans to bring its Privacy Sandbox initiatives to Android in a bid to expand its privacy-focused, but also less disruptive, advertising technology beyond the desktop web. To that end, the internet giant said it will work towards building solutions that prevent cross-app tracking à la Apple's App Tracking Transparency ( ATT ) framework, effectively limiting sharing of user data with third-parties as well as eliminating identifiers such as advertising IDs on mobile devices. "The Privacy Sandbox on Android builds on our existing efforts on the web, providing a clear path forward to improve user privacy without putting access to free content and services at risk," Anthony Chavez, vice president of product management for Android security and privacy,  said . Privacy Sandbox , launched in 2019, is Google's umbrella term for a set of technologies that will phase out third-party cookies and curb covert tracking, like  fingerprinting , by redu...

Google's sweeping proposal to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome browser is going back to the drawing board after the company announced plans to delay the rollout from early 2022 to late 2023, pushing back the project by nearly two years. "While there's  considerable progress  with this initiative, it's become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right," Chrome's Privacy Engineering Director, Vinay Goel,  said  Thursday. In buying extra time, the search giant said it hopes to arrive at a consensus on the right solutions, while simultaneously engaging with regulators, and enabling publishers and the advertising industry to migrate their services to privacy-preserving technologies that prevent "alternative forms of individual tracking, and discourage the rise of covert approaches like  fingerprinting ." The revised timelines comes close on the heels of a fresh regulatory setback in the European Union, after the Euro...

Google today announced a new initiative—called Privacy Sandbox —in an attempt to develop a set of open standards that fundamentally enhances privacy on the web while continuing to support a free, open and democratic Internet through digital advertisements. A lot of websites on the Internet today, including The Hacker News, rely on online advertisements as their primary source of funding to operate and keep their professionally created content open and freely accessible to everyone. However, with the evolution of online advertising, the targeted advertisement technologies have become too much invasive because of involved intrusive practices and more prudent approaches to accurately curate users' personal information, thereby raising serious privacy concerns among Internet users. In its latest blog post , Google acknowledged that ad tracking is "now being used far beyond its original design intent," but also highlights that unplanned attempts to address privacy con...