THE plans Google’s efforts to remove third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome browser with Privacy Sandbox have run into new problems after Austrian privacy nonprofit noyb (none of your business) said the feature can still be used to track users.
What are Privacy Sandbox’s privacy concerns
“Although the so-called ‘Privacy Sandbox’ is touted as an improvement over invasive third-party tracking, the tracking is now simply done within the browser by Google itself“, has declared noyb.
Who adds regarding Privacy Sandbox “To do this, the company theoretically needs the same informed consent as users. Instead, Google is tricking people by pretending to ‘enable a privacy feature for ads‘.”
In other words, by making users agree to enable a privacy feature, they are still being tracked by consenting to Google’s first-party advertising tracking, the Vienna-based non-profit organization founded by activist Max Schrems said in a complaint filed with the Austrian data protection authority.
Privacy Sandbox is a Together of proposals put forward by the internet giant which aims to block tracking techniques hidden and limit data sharing with third parties, while allowing website publishers to serve targeted ads.
Privacy Sandbox: a name, but not a guarantee
However, its plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome have been repeatedly made postponed as it works to address concerns and feedback raised by regulators and developers; last April, the company said it planned to phase out third-party cookies early next year.
Meanwhile, Google is ramping up its testing efforts, with the company eliminating third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users globally starting in the first quarter of 2024.
While users have the option to opt-in or opt-out of tracking in this way, noyb accused the company of using dark patterns to boost consent rates and misleadingly presenting it as a feature that protects users from advertising tracking.
Noyb also argued that Privacy Sandbox is less invasive than third-party cookie tracking mechanisms does not give Google the right to violate data protection laws in the region.
Deception according to noyb
“Consent must be informed, transparent and fair to be legal. Google did exactly the opposite“, said noyb founder Max Schrems. “If you simply steal less money from people than another thief, you cannot call yourself a ‘wealth protection agent’. But that’s basically what Google is doing here.”
Google, in a statement shared with Reuterssaid that Privacy Sandbox offers “significant privacy improvements” over existing technologies, and that it will work to arrive at a “balanced outcome” that meets the needs of all stakeholders.
This is not the first time Noyb has filed complaints with European Union regulators against big tech companies over alleged privacy violations.
Not just Google: META and OpenAI are also involved
Last April, Noyb has accused ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, of violating General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws by “hallucinating” false information about individuals.
It also has criticized Meta for relying on “Legitimate Interests” in its plans to use publicly shared data of its users (with the exception of private messages with friends and family or the accounts of Europeans under the age of 18) to train and develop unspecified artificial technologies.
The social media company has answered stating that the artificial intelligence models it develops “they must be trained on relevant information that reflects the different languages, geographies and cultural references of the people in Europe who will use them.”
He also said that other companies, including Google and OpenAI, have already used data from European users to train their AI models, stressing that his approach is “more transparent and offers easier checks than many of our competitors in the industry who already train their models on similar publicly available information.”
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