As many of us had already feared, Google is once again rowing back from plans to eliminate third party cookies, one of the main ways it has long-breached user privacy.
Cookies date back to the early years of the internet, initially designed by Netscape as a simple way to save information between sessions. Since the internet protocol does not allow it, forcing all sessions to start without any context, Netscape came up with the possibility of sending, along with the requested page, a small file that would be stored in our computers that only we could retrieve, in order to check if the session corresponded to a user who had been on the page before.
So far, so good: the cookie did not contain any information about the user, only an identifier that provided a link to previous sessions — with some possible flaws, such as the fact that it does not identify the user but the computer.
Where things went wrong was when the advertising industry changed the rules so that cookies were no longer be sent by the owner of the page visited but by an ad server, allowing it to follow our activity on the web. Third-party cookies are responsible, for example, for those persistent ads that offer you hotels in Rome just because you searched for information about a ticket to Rome. Third-party cookies are, quite simply, a violation of user privacy we were never consulted about.
Now, after having announced on many occasions that it would stop supporting third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, and when others such as Safari or Firefox have already done so, Google says the advertising ecosystem is not ready for a cookie-free world, and that it is abandoning plans to help create one. In other words, Google is not on the side of user privacy, but with advertisers and their intentions to continue violating it, to continue pursuing us, to continue sharing information about us to obtain detailed profiles of our habits and consumption. Thank you, Google: in case anyone had any doubts about what kind of company you are.
What can we do about this? Several things. First, try to understand what it means for our privacy that there are entities scattered around the web that follow us and sell on our consumption habits and what they interpret from our browsing. Secondly, abandon Chrome, and opt for a browser that, properly configured, respects our privacy, such as Firefox, Safari, Brave or others. And thirdly, install an ad blocker such as UBlock, Ghostery, AdBlock, etc. that allows us to eliminate ads and trackers, which often consume more resources than the page we wanted to read. My personal combination is Brave plus Ghostery: I never see a single ad (not even on YouTube), I’m protected from trackers, and I’m not being followed by anyone on the web. Give it a try, you will thank me later.
We need to create a different web, one that is at the service of people, of users, and not of advertisers. If they do not want to return to privacy-friendly advertising, which does not require constant monitoring and spying, we will have to force them to do so. And the way to do it is to show them with our actions that we do not agree to being spied on, and that we want to continue to have access to all the information we want, but we want to be left alone. Tell Google, tell the advertisers, tell whoever needs to be told. Let Google’s decision become irrelevant, because users will simply stop being forced to eat their cookies.
Information is what makes you stop being a docile user who swallows all the cookies they put on your plate, and instead become a well-informed user who makes their own decisions and only shares the information they really want to share. Take the step and help change the internet.
(En español, aquí)
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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The post What Google’s Decision to Backtrack on Eliminating Cookies Says About the Company appeared first on The Good Men Project.