If you use Chrome, and if you have Google Chrome version 115, you will have seen a new notice regarding privacy: “Enhanced ad privacy in Chrome”.
According to Google:
Chrome works to keep you safe and protect your privacy while you browse. New features help protect your identity and give you more control over how advertisers choose which ads to show you. These new features will roll out gradually on computers and Android devices.
Chrome notes your topics of interest based on the sites you browse and how often you visit them. Sites can also store info with Chrome about your interests. As you keep browsing, Chrome may be asked to share stored info about ad topics or site-suggested ads to help give you a more personalized ad experience. To measure the performance of ads, limited types of data can be shared among sites and apps.
“Enhanced ad privacy in Chrome” it’s an attempt by google to get rid of third party cookies. Google says it’s a better way of traking, since protects your privacy tranferring tracking from websites to Chrome. To do this tracking, Google Chrome is using two mechanisms “Ad topics” and “Site-sugested ads”. “Ad topics” is based on your browsing history and “Site-suggested ads” is based on your activity in a site1. Basically, when you will visit a website, the website will be able to ask Google Chrome which ads are the most relevant to insert for your interests, and Google Chrome will answer based on your browsing history and/or your browsing activity. As you browse, the ads you see will be personalized depending on if the site personalizes ads, this settings and your cookie settings. And, you can enable or disable these features in your Google Chrome settings anytime.
Is this better for your privacy than third party cookies tracking methods? Maybe. Or maybe not. But it’s a new way of tracking. So, if you want to disable (or enable) “Ad topics” and/or “Site-suggested adds” you can do it from:
- Three dot menu (on the right corner) > Settings > Privacy and Security (left menu)
You can also access this settings typing chrome://settings/adPrivacy in the address bar.
Enjoy! ;)
You can find how “Ad topics” and “Site-suggested ads” work in more depth, in Google Chrome settings, in the “Learn more” section of each functionality. ↩