{"id":9766,"date":"2021-06-17T12:01:59","date_gmt":"2021-06-17T16:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9766"},"modified":"2021-06-17T12:01:59","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T16:01:59","slug":"adtech-and-floc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9766","title":{"rendered":"Adtech and FLoC"},"content":{"rendered":"

It won\u2019t come as a surprise to anyone with the slightest bit of skepticism or, indeed, two brain cells to rub together that Google\u2019s replacement for cookies, FLoC<\/a>, is a privacy nightmare<\/a>. Google, of course, is touting the system as a privacy respecting alternative to third party cookies but privacy experts are warning that they have the potential to be a worse privacy problem than cookies.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for proof of these assertions to emerge. According this Digiday<\/a> article, adtech firms are already testing ways of linking of FLoC indentifiers to personal data they already hold<\/a>. If you\u2019re surprised, you shouldn\u2019t be. This is what adtech does: they\u2019ll exploit any opening in their insatiable quest for data about us. There\u2019s no piece of information they consider too small to exploit. Their goal is to build a complete profile of every person using the Internet.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t\u2014believe me\u2014end with using that information to target ads at you. The iron law of data acquisition<\/a> guarantees that it will be abused. That will probably start with law enforcement demanding access but sooner or later people like divorce lawyers will also want to get at it. Everything about you will be available for anyone who can convince a court that they have a need for it.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in how FLoC can be exploited, here\u2019s a useful privacy analysis of FLoC<\/a> that describes how it can be exploited to link the FLoC code back to individuals. Be sure to give it a read before you accept Google\u2019s assurances about FLoC respecting your privacy. In the meantime, Amazon is reportedly blocking FLoC<\/a> on most of their sites. That\u2019s for competitive advantage, of course, but is nevertheless good to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It won\u2019t come as a surprise to anyone with the slightest bit of skepticism or, indeed, two brain cells to rub together that Google\u2019s replacement for cookies, FLoC, is a privacy nightmare. Google, of course, is touting the system as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-9766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9767,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9766\/revisions\/9767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}