DuckDuckGo warns Chrome users about Google’s new tracking method

Team Udayavani, Apr 11, 2021, 11:30 AM IST

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DuckDuckGo, a browsing platform in a blog post warned Chrome users about Google’s new tracking method. It mentioned that many people have entered into Google’s new tracking method called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).

FLoC is targeted at forming a group based on people’s interests and demographics that are easily fetched from browsing history, which allows the company to target unwanted, creepy advertising along with content without third-party cookies.

As per the blog post, Google had initially tried for a short period of time and later decided not to make this new tracking method a user choice, resulting in millions of users being automatically included in the scheme.

Asserting that FLoC is bad for privacy, blogpost further informed that it puts you in a group based on your browsing history and any website can get that group FLoC ID to target and fingerprint you.

DuckDuckGo suggested users not use Google Chrome. It also informed that only Google Chrome has enabled FLoC as of now and that other vendors have not even expressed an intention or interest in implementing such trackers.

The blog asked users to stay logged out of their Google account and not to sync their history data with chrome.