Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Privacy

Google Delays Phase Out of Tracking Tech by Nearly 2 Years

Google will delay by nearly two years the phase out of Chrome web browser technology that tracks users for ad purposes, saying that it needs more time to develop a replacement system.

Google will delay by nearly two years the phase out of Chrome web browser technology that tracks users for ad purposes, saying that it needs more time to develop a replacement system.

The tech giant on Thursday moved its deadline to remove so-called third-party cookies to late 2023 rather than January 2022 as was initially planned.

“We need to move at a responsible pace, allowing sufficient time for public discussion on the right solutions and for publishers and the advertising industry to migrate their services,” Vinay Goel, the director of privacy engineering for Chrome, said in a blog post.

Third-party cookies are snippets of code that log user info and are used by advertisers to more effectively target their campaigns, thereby helping fund free online content such as newspapers and blogs. However, they’ve also been a longstanding source of privacy concerns because they can be employed to track users across the internet.

Google is retiring third-party cookies as it overhauls Chrome to tighten privacy, but the proposals have shaken up the online advertising industry, raising fears that replacement technology will leave even less room for online ad rivals. European Union and British regulators have been investigating Google’s plans, known as Privacy Sandbox.

To resolve the U.K. probe, the company has offered the country’s competition watchdog a role overseeing the cookie phaseout. It has also promised not to discriminate against rival digital advertising companies when designing the new technology and pledged to give the U.K. competition watchdog 60 days notice before removing third-party cookies.

Goel said Google aims to have the new technology available by the end of 2022 for developers to start adopting, which would allow third-party cookies to be phased out of Chrome over three months “ending in late 2023.” That timeline is in line with the commitments Google has made to the U.K. competition watchdog, Goel said.

One of the leading ideas to replace third-party cookies is a technique that hides users in large online groups based on their interests while keeping web browsing histories on devices to maintain privacy.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Written By

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Understand how to go beyond effectively communicating new security strategies and recommendations.

Register

Join us for an in depth exploration of the critical nature of software and vendor supply chain security issues with a focus on understanding how attacks against identity infrastructure come with major cascading effects.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Artificial Intelligence

Two of humanity’s greatest drivers, greed and curiosity, will push AI development forward. Our only hope is that we can control it.

Cybersecurity Funding

Los Gatos, Calif-based data protection and privacy firm Titaniam has raised $6 million seed funding from Refinery Ventures, with participation from Fusion Fund, Shasta...

Privacy

Many in the United States see TikTok, the highly popular video-sharing app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, as a threat to national security.The following is...

Privacy

Employees of Chinese tech giant ByteDance improperly accessed data from social media platform TikTok to track journalists in a bid to identify the source...

Application Security

Open banking can be described as a perfect storm for cybersecurity. At one end, small startups with financial acumen but little or no security...

Mobile & Wireless

As smartphone manufacturers are improving the ear speakers in their devices, it can become easier for malicious actors to leverage a particular side-channel for...

Government

The proposed UK Online Safety Bill is the enactment of two long held government desires: the removal of harmful internet content, and visibility into...

Cloud Security

AWS has announced that server-side encryption (SSE-S3) is now enabled by default for all Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets.