Online privacy is getting a shake-up. Some of the world’s largest technology companies are starting to offer a new type of privacy on their platforms. It will appease some customers’ concerns around online advertising, but shouldn’t be to the detriment of the companies.
Last month, Apple announced that it will offer a form of anonymous browsing in which third parties will no longer be able to track you from website to website and build an archive of your habits, preferences and circumstances – as long as you are willing to pay a monthly fee.
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The firm had already begun warning its customers how each app was tracking them and asking whether they wanted to allow it in April. Many companies reliant on tracking for revenue were less than keen on the policy – and it is understandable when you consider the size of the online advertising industry. Google and Facebook, which dominate this market, brought in about $182 billion and $86 billion of dollars of revenue respectively last year.
While neither Facebook nor Apple has released data on how Facebook app users chose when they were prompted, it is safe to assume that at least a subset of users opted to cut Facebook out of the loop – and some reports at the time suggested .
Facebook declined a request to comment on this story, but said that the move was “more about profit than privacy” and was aimed at pushing app developers towards Apple’s own advertising products.
Privacy Sandbox
Google, too, is working on measures that it says are protection for customers. The company has pledged to stop supporting cookies – tiny files left on your computer to track your browsing – and replace them with its Privacy Sandbox (though the move has been delayed until 2023).
The Privacy Sandbox platform will allow the same tracking to take place, but only Google will see the data. Google’s paying advertisers will then be able to target you based on that data, but not identify you. You will be hidden among a group of other people who, say, live in London, enjoy cycling and have cats. Facebook’s advertising works in a similar way, although it has led to embarrassing scandals in the past where third parties were able to .
“Instead of sharing (or making it possible for advertisers to reconstruct) your browsing history, what Chrome [Google’s web browser] has done instead is try to put you in a cohort of tens or thousands of other people [with the same habits or circumstances],” says at Google.
Many people are increasingly uncomfortable with the extent to which they are tracked, analysed and marketed to. A revealed that 64 per cent of people clear their cookies and browser history and 41 per cent turn off cookies in their browser, but many people don’t have the technical knowledge to take those steps.
Any timely and insightful adverts you may have seen online highlight just how extensive and accurate these personal profiles are. For example, one woman who had a miscarriage later discovered that and were unthinkingly serving her adverts for baby products.ĚýSo the move by internet giants to improve privacy is certainly understandable. But how substantive are the changes?
at Harvard University is sceptical that the moves are genuinely going to make a difference. “I think anything that tries to add privacy is largely a PR move. Every app spies on you,” he says.
at digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation agrees with the old adage that if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. We are able to have free email, social media and video platforms because advertising – made efficient by personal data collection – supports them.
Apple is the exception to the rule, says Budington, as most of its income is made by selling expensive devices. Its privacy features seem to be the strongest of all – but there is a catch, in that they are only available to those who can afford them. This risks a future of privacy haves and have-nots. Apple declined a request to comment on this story.
Budington says that people can take steps to protect themselves and that a little bit of effort can go a long way. A simple ad blocker can stop 90 per cent of the tracking that goes on online, he says. But even without cookies and with an ad blocker, there are ways to track you.
Fingerprinting, for example, is a technique that takes advantage of the dozens of little bits of information that your browser gives to websites to make sure they display and work properly: the resolution of your screen, the type of browser and computer, what time zone you are in and so on. Together, they allow companies to track you with surprising accuracy.
Owning data
at Microsoft Research, who is the author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, believes legislation is needed to give people ownership of their data and to require companies to pay to store or analyse it.
“Then you create a financial disincentive for the kind of constant manipulation that people are being subjected to. It just becomes too expensive,” he says. “And then the business model has to be about adding value that people are willing to pay for instead of manipulating people.”
There is currently no sign of politicians banning internet giants from harvesting data, although lighter measures could be introduced. The EU has put forward draft legislation called the Digital Services Act, which wouldn’t stop firms gathering data but would force them to explain how they are using it to serve you adverts. In fact, it could actually see your data shared more widely, as it would also compel companies to provide data to academic researchers.
The Biden administration in the US could pass proposed legislation that, again, wouldn’t prevent companies collecting data, but would . In the UK, a new body called the Digital Markets Unit is being set up to investigate issues in the technology industry, but no firm policy has been put forward yet.
