Google Explores Alternative To Apple's New Anti-Tracking Feature (bloomberg.com) 54
Google is exploring an alternative to Apple's new anti-tracking feature, the latest sign that the internet industry is slowly embracing user privacy, Bloomberg is reporting, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: Internally, the search giant is discussing how it can limit data collection and cross-app tracking on the Android operating system in a way that is less stringent than Apple's solution, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private plans. Google is trying to balance the rising demands of privacy-conscious consumers with the financial needs of developers and advertisers. The Alphabet unit is seeking input from these stakeholders, similar to how it's slowly developing a new privacy standard for web browsing called the Privacy Sandbox. With more than $100 billion in annual digital ad sales, Google has a vested interest in helping partners to continue generating revenue by targeting ads to Android device users and measuring the performance of those marketing spots. "We're always looking for ways to work with developers to raise the bar on privacy while enabling a healthy, ad-supported app ecosystem," a Google spokesman said in a statement.
[...] A Google solution is likely to be less strict and won't require a prompt to opt in to data tracking like Apple's, the people said. The exploration into an Android alternative to Apple's feature is still in the early stages, and Google hasn't decided when, or if, it will go ahead with the changes. On the iPhone, Google offers developers a framework so they can monetize their apps using Google ads. In a recent blog post, Google said Apple's ad-tracking update means developers "may see a significant impact" on their ad revenue. To keep advertisers happy while improving privacy, the discussions around Google's Android solution indicate that it could be similar to its planned Chrome web browser changes, the people said. Further reading: Google's iOS Apps Haven't Been Updated in Weeks. Could Apple's Privacy Labels Be the Reason?
Facebook Warns Advertisers on Apple Privacy Changes
Apple's Tim Cook Criticizes Social Media Practices, Intensifying Facebook Conflict
Facebook Looks To Take its Fight With Apple To Court.
[...] A Google solution is likely to be less strict and won't require a prompt to opt in to data tracking like Apple's, the people said. The exploration into an Android alternative to Apple's feature is still in the early stages, and Google hasn't decided when, or if, it will go ahead with the changes. On the iPhone, Google offers developers a framework so they can monetize their apps using Google ads. In a recent blog post, Google said Apple's ad-tracking update means developers "may see a significant impact" on their ad revenue. To keep advertisers happy while improving privacy, the discussions around Google's Android solution indicate that it could be similar to its planned Chrome web browser changes, the people said. Further reading: Google's iOS Apps Haven't Been Updated in Weeks. Could Apple's Privacy Labels Be the Reason?
Facebook Warns Advertisers on Apple Privacy Changes
Apple's Tim Cook Criticizes Social Media Practices, Intensifying Facebook Conflict
Facebook Looks To Take its Fight With Apple To Court.
I remember (Score:1)
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-- Larry Page
Sundae Pichai (Score:1)
Sundar: We will find a way around iOS!
Tim Cook: Imma bout to end this fool's whole career.
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Pepperidge Farm Remembers.
They will absolutely need to address privacy on An (Score:1)
Re: They will absolutely need to address privacy o (Score:1)
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So Apple's business practice is selling hardware and content and as a premium feature striving to protect the privacy of their customers, their real world Bosses. Google's business practice is invading the privacy of their users, hmm, more used than users and manipulating their choices with saturation advertising and censoring content, to promote right thing and prevent wrong think.
So who will I trust with my privacy, let me think, really quite a hard decision, one corporation sells privacy as a special fe
Not serious (Score:5, Insightful)
A Google solution is likely to be less strict and won't require a prompt to opt in to data tracking like Apple's
If it doesn't require opt-in, it's not meant to be any kind of serious attempt at protecting user privacy overall.
Without opt-in, it's just a mechanism to silence the handful of whiners that actually pay attention to security and privacy so they can opt out while the rest of the world lives in ignorance under whatever default rules Google applies.
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Indeed. But it is clear Google will _never_ make any serious attempt at user privacy. Targeting is what makes their ads "valuable" to customers, because it keeps up the illusion of ads having any positive value at all. And targeting is and will remain fundamentally ad odd with user privacy. Even their feeble attempts to get rid of tracking cookies by somehow grouping users into "anonymous" groups with similar interests (requiring a Google browser add-on, no less) is essentially just a lie by misdirection.
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what do you target. I mean , in the 'old days' google would tune it's adds ( and search results) based off of a 'finger print' taken from the browser. That was mostly OK.( and easily defeated if you cared). It was when they started attempting to join that with all kinds of other cross product info that they really started to be 'uncool'.
nice line (Score:5, Insightful)
"We're always looking for ways to work with developers to raise the bar on privacy while enabling a healthy, ad-supported app ecosystem,"
I do understand that the point of this statement is not to answer any questions, but to massage my brain with carefully chosen words to suggest or give the illusion of answering something; there's nothing definitive, just a bunch of vague nonsense
wtf does 'healthy' mean? for example, in a parasite/host relationship, the parasite finds it 'healthy' but the host is considered 'infected' or 'unhealthy'
I also know that the world needs all types, but I'm glad it's not my job to practice deceit as part of my job description
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Healthy is just there just to mask the 'ad-supported' wich comes next.
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"Healthy" and "as-supported" do not go together. Ads are the very embodiment of low-grade insanity.
You are right, they are just trying to confuse you. Same as any evil company with a business model that is detrimental to society as a whole.
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I think the statement is a push to developers to abandon iStuff and work on Android stuff (aStuff?). Google's always had it in mind to own the phone market so they can surreptitiously ad our brains into silly putty.
Re:nice line -- symbiosis? (Score:2)
Not all parasites make the host unhealthy.
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symbiosis is when both benefit; now the question becomes about the definition of 'benefit' and who gets to define it
you got the idea, your point seems pedantic
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Like zombie caterpillars?
https://nationalpost.com/news/... [nationalpost.com]
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Will google really do anything? (Score:1)
Error in the fundamentals (Score:4, Interesting)
while enabling a healthy, ad-supported app ecosystem
What if we don't want, or if it is not possible to have, a healthy ad-supported app ecosystem?
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Error in the fundamentals (Score:4, Insightful)
False dichotomy much?
If your business model can't survive without ads then you are doing it wrong.
Ads are a visual vomit and cancer upon society.
Disrespecting the user's time and space is the not the way to forward.
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Agreed. The problem in this particular case it that ads *is* the business model of Google.
financial needs of developers and advertisers (Score:2)
Since we're talking about "financial needs" as it relates to my personal data - screw them.
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Indeed. If these people all starve that would be a win for the rest of us.
The financial needs of advertisers? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry but your need to make profits is not compatible with my rights to privacy.
Create something where people can voluntarily build their own damn profiles instead of trying to spy on us and track our every damn move on the Internet just to %$#@!*& guess what my interests are. I'm really tired of having to clean up my ads preferences in my Google profile to remove crap that I happened to look at once because I was curious about something but not enough to actually spend money on it. Before you post something about ads blockers, I have to say that sometimes I do get relevant ads about things that may interest me. As long as it's script-less, not-overlaying-the-content-I'm-trying-to-read, static images doing the advertising, I don't mind.
Let's assume that control has to be on the browser side. It's the one part you can be at least partially be sure to be in control of, or at least more in control of than the server side of things). I'm not sure how that particular idea could be implemented but surely it can't be that difficult.
Maybe an extension to something that already exists, so it would be relatively painless to implement both for the browsers makers and for the programmers? What about the Web Storage API [mozilla.org] for example? There's already sessionStorage and localStorage, we could add a new read-only adsPrefsStorage maybe? Surely Google and all the other advertisers can sit down and agree on a fixed list of advertising topics? (ex: "Computers", "3D printers", etc). Maybe update that list once per year like they do with the freaking emojis for example.
/* display ad for a 3D printer */
if ( adsPrefsStorage.getItem('3D printers') )
{
}
It doesn't have to be an extension to the Web Storage API though, that was only an example. Maybe create "Web Advertisement Preferences API" on its own which work in a similar manner.
And in the browser, give the user the ability to pick his own preferences for ads. After all, he should be the one who knows what he likes and doesn't need to spy on himself to know such things.
And to prevent fingerprinting, have the javascript calls for adsPrefsStorage limit the number of requests per days/weeks, per domain.
And now, let's see replies about why my idea is impossible (though I think it can work with my simple suggestion above) and/or how advertisers will find a way to break/abuse it (this is what I'm interested in).
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That only works if each category is randomly distributed, and independent of all the others. If not, then you're liable to get clusters of identical persons, where identical person means having all the same values for each category.
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So we need a method to cut off the advertisers from the selected categories, which are only stored in the browser.
Between and rock and a hard place... (Score:2)
Google is in a bit of a bind. Their entire business is built off advertsiing, the kind that takes your data and sells it to someone else. I would be willing to bet that the majority of non /. users are not aware of this. They just think wow this is great...I get all this free stuff.
Anything less than a full Opt-In model is not a serious attempt at user privacy. Having users explicitely concent to having Google snoop around their data and sell it to the highest bidder is going to result in a lot of them sayi
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If Apple doesn't sell their (our) data to other companies, what good does it do them? They know I have an iPhone, and maybe they know I don't have any other Apple products. But they don't need to track me to know that.
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Well, if you are using Apple Maps they need to know your location so they track that. They probably keep track of the songs you buy or the movies you download so they can suggest ones you are likely to want. Things like that.
I could be wrong but I don't believe they share any of that with other companies and that's what sets them apart from Google and Facebook.
All About The Differentiators (Score:4, Interesting)
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft aren't in the "advertising" business, not as we know it. They are the leading experts in "mass, targeted, psychological manipulation". The advertisements are only part of the story - and have become almost misdirection... Alongside that you have to think about their "curation" - whether it's what Facebook puts in your daily feed, what Amazon puts on "the page you made", what Firefox or IE paste in to the home page of your browser when you launch it. These are deeply targeted advertisements tuned to the nth degree and based upon hundreds or thousands of data points you have generated for them.
The problem we face is that these companies have been able to attract vast amounts of advertising revenue precisely because of their ability to intelligently target ads at you. They can out-bid their competitors with claims of "more views-to-clicks-to-purchases" than any other delivery mechanism - and thanks to their intrusive spying, they have the data to prove it.
By contrast, the closest that, say a TV or newspaper advertiser gets to do when buying advertising space/time on those platforms is to decide which city or state to run their advertisement and [for TV or radio] what time of day.
What we need our lawmakers to do is to outlaw certain practices from all advertising:-
1. Any tailored advertising that has the potential to identify a single individual or appliance to which advertisements are delivered
2. Any tailored advertising that has the potential to identify or target any minor, for any reason [for example, by explaining to potential advertising clients that an advertisers services are by law prohibited from using *any* profiling for individuals not legally an adult
3. Perhaps by preventing any advertiser from tracking users away from the user's host platform - i.e. by outlawing technology like web beacons, or through the use of cookies that answer content embedded across hundreds or thousands of web pages that allow a company to track a user between sites
4. By outlawing "profiling" of users through technologies such as browser meta-data [the sort of stuff that the EFF's Panopticlick uses to show you that your browser fingerprint is unique
This would bring web advertising to be broadly in line with print and broadcast advertising. It would not IN ANY WAY prevent these big platforms from hosting adverts, it would just make it illegal for them to target you. That's the bit that causes the harm. That's the bit that needs to be made illegal.
Google, Facebook and others that benefit from their ability to target ads are trying a magic trick - they are trying to misdirect you and Congress in to thinking that these measures will stop all advertising. Of course it won't. It will allow them to post as many adverts as before, but it would outlaw the ability of these companies to spy on you to such an extent that it isn't fair to call what they do advertising.
A more accurate description would be "Behavioral Profiling and Psychological Manipulation".
There's no need for it. The advertising industry did just fine for decades without it. It will be just fine if Congress outlaws it today. Best of all, it will help to "level the playing field" that is currently concentrating far too much power in the hands of just a scant few major players. That's far too dangerous to be allowed to persist.
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Re:All About The Differentiators (Score:5, Interesting)
They will go to a site - like Facebook - and say, "Hey, we can help you with your advertising revenue. Here's how it works... You buy this server from us. It's a turnkey box - it will sit in your infrastructure with your Domain Name and everything. But we'll maintain it for you, we'll populate it for you. Then, in your main site, you just place these templates anywhere you'd like an advert to appear.
And you are no better off than when you started. The thing is, these scum - the "Outbrain" and equivalent advertisers - are already doing 90% of this today. All they really need to do is "mask" the fact that they have their own tracking cookies by getting their clients to do it for them.
Also, don't forget that since many of us now use cookie-wiping technology on our browsers, these sites have pushed all their tracking technology to be server-side, so now instead of serving cookies, they simply push javascript to run in your browser. How secure is your browser sandbox? How much side channel and meta-data is your browser giving away when it runs javascript? [Hint - get yourself a copy of the NoScript plug-in and find out - it's *terrifying*.
This is an arms race. For every blocking idea you come up with, the advertisers will find three ways around you. The only way to stop them is to make it illegal and then have volunteer projects to catch them at it.
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Its true i dont know why ads are served so frequently from third party or sub domains, except the same advertising user types want to be cheap and not pipe daata thru themselves etc.
Not claiming my idea is perfect but at least it will take "them" type to adapt and its a good start.
Fraud (Score:1)
Why the stupid assumption that Google cares (Score:3)
Its just rediculous to pretend there is any benevolence, we all know that they would all sell their mother for $1, they arent giving away and the only consideration is money.
Who cares? (Score:2)
Do we care about the financial needs of developers and advertisers? Is that something we should be concerned with?
Advertisers are stakeholders (Score:1)
They want to appear... (Score:2)
They want to appear to be concerned about user privacy. They are never actually going to care much at all about user privacy and in fact want every last detail they can get.
If you re serious about protecting your privacy. (Score:2)
If you are serious about protecting your privacy, then you should not use any Apple or Google products. Both of these companies make significant revenue from harvesting data about you. No matter what they say and what token gestures they make, they are not going to stop doing this.