google is trying to change something big about the internet the way websites
track our activity google says it'll be a more robust way to protect user
privacy but how much can we trust a company whose main source of revenue is
you guessed it advertising so here's the deal google is putting a new tracking
scheme into their chrome browser called flock no not that one nah not that one
either flock stands for federated learning of cohorts which surprisingly
is not the name of an academy from star trek instead flock is meant to be a
replacement from the much maligned and frankly super annoying third-party
cookie system we use today third-party cookies are from sites other than the
one you're using and are very common tools for advertisers to track what
sites you visit and serve you relevant ads based on your browsing habits but
because it's rather easy for websites to personally identify users with the help
of third-party cookies there's been growing concern about them from both
consumers and governments which led google to announce in early 2020 that
these cookies would be phased out of chrome enter flock the idea here is that
instead of allowing advertisers to track users individually users will instead be
assigned to cohorts made up of several thousand people by default chrome will
track your browsing habits and once it comes up with a list of topics that
thinks you're interested in the browser will put you in a cohort with people who
share the same interests each cohort will get an id number which
is then shared with third-party advertisers so the idea is that if your
browsing habits put you in a cohort that enjoys ice cream pc building and
renaissance era art you'll get ads geared toward those things but they
won't be as specific to you so the advertisers won't know that you like
eating butter pecan ice cream while screwing in a cooler master aio and
staring at the mona lisa so less targeted to one person but still
specific enough for advertisers to use and although this is obviously a
lighthearted example the hope is that flock will prevent advertisers
especially the more unscrupulous ones from discovering sensitive personal
details by forcing them to target thousands of people at once rather than
just you additionally chrome will auto-generate cohorts and is supposed to
assign you to a new one each week hopefully making it even more difficult
to track users but flock has plenty of detractors who are warning that it isn't
a panacea for privacy issues there are other ways for sites to figure out who
you are other than just browsing habits and one big concern is that flock gives
sites another data point the cohort id that could be used in conjunction with
identifiers like your ip address your screen size and even the way your
specific machine handles audio in order to work out who you are and even though
flock is supposed to discourage this sort of behavior by making it unnecessary there's no guarantee that
the ad industry is going to be happy with this form of less specific
targeting and since it isn't clear how complicated the flock algorithm is
there's also the possibility that the whole thing could be reverse engineered
allowing advertisers and miscreants to work out your browsing history
backwards now google has tried to mitigate concerns in a few ways although
chrome won't show you a list of interests flock has collected it will
give you an option to opt out of it altogether google has also said it will
not serve any generated cohort ids that correlate with sensitive topics like
domestic abuse mental health or politics nevertheless much remains to be seen
regarding flock's staying power and whether it will actually end up making
browsers more private other major browsers have no plans to implement
flock but with how much market share chrome enjoys it may still have a
profound impact on privacy flock is already rolling out to a small
percentage of chrome users so remember to check to opt out if you don't want to
take part or of course you could just try living off the grid
hoping that no one sends you ads for the camping equipment via drone drop big
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