In 2022, tech giant Google spoke about how it was making big plans to get rid of its FLoC initiative that came under the company’s Privacy Sandbox feature.
The news made plenty of people happy because it meant the tech giant would be prevented from sharing personal data belonging to users with advertisers. Even though the firm added that things were being done keeping their safety and privacy in mind, the rollout faced plenty of criticism across the board from several firms like Microsoft.
Similarly, we saw the tech giant reveal how it was going to replace that with another feature called Topics API. Hence, this would identify the interests of users and store them in a local manner across the system. Later, it would be shared so advertisers could benefit when users visited any particular site.
More details on this front were provided including how it paved the way for ads that were developed and shown based on the user’s particular interests. This would be done without any sort of tracking of the user’s website activity.
So how exactly was information on this matter being generated? The answer is simple. The Chrome browser would be seeing and recording any subjects that might be loved by the user, depending on what they browse. And that would be stored on any user’s device.
Now, the company says it’s launching a new Topics API as the final replacement for cookies belonging to third parties. Moreover, the feature would now be a part of the firm’s 115 release and that is making room for everyone to join.
But in case you as a user don’t find this subject of interest and wish to opt-out and avoid third parties from getting your data, you can turn it off.
For starters, simply open up Chrome on your device and press on the three dots displayed across the top right side. After that, navigate and enter the Settings tab, click on Privacy, and then press on Security and Ad Privacy (or simply copy paste this in Chrome chrome://settings/adPrivacy). This displays three more options including Ad Topics, Suggestions for Site Ads, and Ad Measurements.
You will select each of them and then switch the toggle off that's seen at the screen’s top. Similarly, you as a user can block a few topics that you wouldn’t like to be shared with other third parties.
This may not seem like the ideal way to ensure you remain disguised during your online browsing activity for various web pages. And that’s because so many different websites have separate tracking systems involved including specific pixels for tracking purposes, cookies, and others.
But we do feel that switching off the search engine giant’s latest Topics API is a great place to start for those people who are super concerned about losing privacy online when they’re browsing. Meanwhile, another option could be switching over to browsers that are more focused on privacy than anything else like DuckDuckGo.
Read next: X's New Terms of Service Takes You From Tweets to Posts
The news made plenty of people happy because it meant the tech giant would be prevented from sharing personal data belonging to users with advertisers. Even though the firm added that things were being done keeping their safety and privacy in mind, the rollout faced plenty of criticism across the board from several firms like Microsoft.
Similarly, we saw the tech giant reveal how it was going to replace that with another feature called Topics API. Hence, this would identify the interests of users and store them in a local manner across the system. Later, it would be shared so advertisers could benefit when users visited any particular site.
More details on this front were provided including how it paved the way for ads that were developed and shown based on the user’s particular interests. This would be done without any sort of tracking of the user’s website activity.
So how exactly was information on this matter being generated? The answer is simple. The Chrome browser would be seeing and recording any subjects that might be loved by the user, depending on what they browse. And that would be stored on any user’s device.
Now, the company says it’s launching a new Topics API as the final replacement for cookies belonging to third parties. Moreover, the feature would now be a part of the firm’s 115 release and that is making room for everyone to join.
But in case you as a user don’t find this subject of interest and wish to opt-out and avoid third parties from getting your data, you can turn it off.
For starters, simply open up Chrome on your device and press on the three dots displayed across the top right side. After that, navigate and enter the Settings tab, click on Privacy, and then press on Security and Ad Privacy (or simply copy paste this in Chrome chrome://settings/adPrivacy). This displays three more options including Ad Topics, Suggestions for Site Ads, and Ad Measurements.
You will select each of them and then switch the toggle off that's seen at the screen’s top. Similarly, you as a user can block a few topics that you wouldn’t like to be shared with other third parties.
This may not seem like the ideal way to ensure you remain disguised during your online browsing activity for various web pages. And that’s because so many different websites have separate tracking systems involved including specific pixels for tracking purposes, cookies, and others.
But we do feel that switching off the search engine giant’s latest Topics API is a great place to start for those people who are super concerned about losing privacy online when they’re browsing. Meanwhile, another option could be switching over to browsers that are more focused on privacy than anything else like DuckDuckGo.
Read next: X's New Terms of Service Takes You From Tweets to Posts
