You will be tracked—everywhere.
Google has a tracking problem. Nowhere is this more acute than with Chrome, the world’s most popular browser and front-end to the company’s marketing machine. Last year, Google reversed its decision to kill off the tracking cookies that follow Chrome’s 3 billion users around the web. That was bad — but you’re about to get something worse.
While there’s no agreed end-date to tracking cookies, there’s a likely next step. Google has teased a one-click solution for users to stop being tracked. Think of this as its equivalent to App Tracking Transparency deployed by Apple, which gave Meta and others a serious bloody nose. But Google doesn’t need tracking cookies itself. It almost certainly knows who you are because you hold one of its accounts.
And so as cookies give way to a “please don’t track me” global prompt, Google will have to convince the marketing industry that it hasn’t gained a huge advantage at their expense. But it’s not all bad news for the wider ecosystem. If tracking cookies are controversial, they’re nothing compared to digital fingerprinting, and the industry is about to get back this favored tracking tool that’s been banned for years.
Digital fingerprinting combines multiple user data signals collected on device, building a profile that transcends websites to identify you and everything you like and are likely to buy. Even Google has slammed this tracking in the past, warning it “subverts user choice and is wrong.” Somewhat surprisingly then, it’s about to return. And this time it will move beyond the web to the smart devices you own. Tracking you everywhere.
Google has two arguments for bringing back digital fingerprinting and allowing it to be used across devices rather than just web browsers. First is the “broader range of surfaces on which ads are served.” This means TVs, gaming consoles, and other smart devices in and out of your home. Second it says, are privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that unlock “new ways for brands to manage and activate their data safely and securely,” while “giving people the privacy protections they expect.”
You will be tracked
The UK data regulator strongly disagrees. “Fingerprinting involves the collection of pieces of information about a device’s software or hardware, which, when combined, can uniquely identify a particular device and user,” it says, warning this “is not a fair means of tracking users online because it is likely to reduce people’s choice and control over how their information is collected. The change to Google’s policy means that fingerprinting could now replace the functions of third-party cookies.”
This change of policy is now just 10 days away. From February 16th, the rules are relaxed and the data tracking industry can enjoy newfound freedoms as you lose yours.
The regulator warns that “fingerprinting relies on signals that you cannot easily wipe. So, even if you ‘clear all site data’, the organisation using fingerprinting techniques could immediately identify you again. This is not transparent and cannot easily be controlled. Fingerprinting is harder for browsers to block and therefore, even privacy-conscious users will find this difficult to stop.”
This combines into a lot of moving parts for digital tracking, and so the UK regulator has just issued a strategy to “level the playing field for online tracking in 2025.” They want to see “a fair and transparent online world where people are given meaningful control over how they are tracked online.” It’s a sound and laudable vision, but with tracking cookies and digital fingerprinting still here, we wish them the best of luck.
Fortunately for Google, those worried about tracking have just been distracted by its controversial decision to disappear its self-imposed restrictions on AI surveillance. So February 16th will likely come and go with little fuss. But if you do care about such things, you have been warned. From that date, Google will be “less prescriptive with partners in how they target and measure ads” across “the broader range of surfaces on which ads are served (such as Connected TVs and gaming consoles).”
Something to bear in mind.