Italy's Antitrust Regulator Fines Google and Apple for "Aggressive" Data Practices

Italy's antitrust regulator has fined both Apple and Google €10 million each for what it calls are "aggressive" data practices and for not providing consumers with clear information on commercial uses of their personal data during the account creation phase. The Autorità Garante della Concorrenza...

Mozilla Says Google's New Ad Tech—FLoC—Doesn't Protect User Privacy

Google's upcoming plans to replace third-party cookies with a less invasive ad targeted mechanism have a number of issues that could defeat its privacy objectives and allow for significant linkability of user behavior, possibly even identifying individual users. "FLoC is premised on a compelling...

Chrome users, here’s how to opt out of the Google FLoC trial

Two weeks after Google launched a trial to replace run-of-the-mill online user tracking with new-fangled online user tracking, several companies and organizations have pushed back, criticizing the new technology—called FLoC—which is designed to respect peoples privacy more, as a detriment to user...

A week in security (March 1 – 7)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, our podcast featured Eva Galperin who talked to us about defending online anonymity and speech. We wrote about how Ryuk ransomware has developed a worm-like capability, how Exchange servers are attacked by Hafnium zero-days, 21 million free VPN users’ data was...

Will Google’s Privacy Sandbox take the bite out of tracking cookies?

Third-party cookies have been the lynchpin of online advertising for many years. Plans to phase cookies out forever continue to run at a steady pace, with Google in the driving seat. In 2019, it announced its vision for a “Privacy Sandbox”. The building blocks for this were essentially: 1. Most...

Google Will Use 'FLoC' for Ad Targeting Once 3rd-Party Cookies Are Dead

Signaling a major shift to its ads-driven business model, Google on Wednesday unequivocally stated it would not build alternate identifiers or tools to track users across multiple websites once it begins phasing out third-party tracking cookies from its Chrome browser by early 2022. "Instead, our...

Google to Nix Chrome Support for Third-Party Cookies by 2022

Google has set an aggressive two-year deadline for dropping support for third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser. Tracking cookies, which allow advertisers to virtually follow people around the web, are used for ad targeting. The move follows a number of privacy hardening steps by...

Google Proposes 'Privacy Sandbox' to Develop Privacy-Focused Ads

Google today announced a new initiative—called Privacy Sandbox—in an attempt to develop a set of open standards that fundamentally enhances privacy on the web while continuing to support a free, open and democratic Internet through digital advertisements. A lot of websites on the Internet today,...

Google Proposes 'Privacy Sandbox' to Develop Privacy-Focused Ads

Google today announced a new initiative—called Privacy Sandbox —in an attempt to develop a set of open standards that fundamentally enhances privacy on the web while continuing to support a free, open and democratic Internet through digital advertisements. A lot of websites on the Internet today,...

Google Launches Open-Source Browser Extension for Ad Transparency

Google is launching an experimental, open-source browser extension aimed at increasing transparency around online advertising by displaying information about the ads that are shown to users. The browser extension is an integral part of a new Google initiative announced Thursday to develop a set o...