Blocking third-party cookies has a clear consequence: only websites that we specifically visit can collect cookies, which must also be used for their original purpose of controlling certain aspects of navigation on the page.
This blocking would therefore mean that outside of this scope, the user cannot be identified and “provided” with tailored advertisements, which would be a great step forward in favour of privacy, but a hard blow to online advertising .
Although this decision had already been taken by other browsers such as Safari on iOS or Mozilla Firefox, the step taken by Google showed that in the coming months we will experience a true global revolution in terms of privacy, advertising, and browsing in general.
Obviously, all of these companies, led by Google in terms of market presence, base their business and income on what they earn from advertising on their self employed phone number list search engines. Therefore, it is obvious that Google does not want to hurt an industry that it thrives on, and that is why the issue, beyond simply eliminating “cookies” (we have seen how the price of advertising on Mozilla and Safari has vanished), is finding an alternative that pleases both parties. That is, one that provides users with a “safer” navigation, but that allows these companies to continue doing business.
In this context, numerous options are already being developed to adapt to the changes, such as the creation of Google Analytics 4. At the same time, options to replace the current model of third-party cookies are quickly emerging. Technological solutions that make it easier for advertisers to target specific demographic and interest niches, while maintaining the anonymity of users. And that is where FLoC comes in.
What is FLoC?
Following the announcement of the end of third-party cookies in Chrome, Google was quick to point out what model could replace them: the so-called “trust tokens.”
This new model would be similar to cookies in that it allows for the authentication of users, creating profiles for them and associating information about their tastes and preferences. However, they would have a key element unlike cookies, which is that they would protect the identity of said users, eliminating the possibility of being tracked in their sessions and, therefore, preserving their privacy.
what-is-floc
Thus, following a model based on “tokens”, FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) has emerged, which promises to be able to identify users while maintaining their privacy. In Google’s own words, FLoC will allow the continuation of a system of advertising and ads of interest, without letting advertisers know our identity. This new system would work as follows:
First of all, as the name suggests, the key is cohorts, that is, large groups of people, in this case, Internet users, who will be grouped based on their online activity, characteristics and interests, for which their browsing is tracked, but maintaining their privacy.
This is achieved because this user information remains and is managed directly by the browser, without sending the data to anyone, since it is the browser itself that performs this distribution and categorization of users into cohorts.
That is, each person's browsing history remains private and will never be shared, but the browser itself will have access to it in order to carry out its assessment and assign the user to each cohort.
When a user visits a website, Chrome will provide them with the cohort to which that person belongs, which will allow them to access their interests in order to personalize ads. This is intended to ensure that users' personal data is protected and, therefore, their privacy is safeguarded.
This is, however, an option in development that still needs a lot of work and refinement, although the results obtained by Google so far are more than positive, and they expect advertisers to achieve an effectiveness of around 95%.
What is the problem with FLoC?
So far, everything we have seen does not seem to indicate anything negative about FLoC, however, the reality is that not everything is as it seems, and a flood of criticism has fallen on Google and this new system. Many of them, clearly positioning themselves against what they consider a clear error.
One of the most direct ones has come from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a prestigious organization that works for the rights of citizens in the digital age in which we find ourselves. The EFF has made it clear that for them FLoC is a “ terrible idea .”
Most of the criticism is in one direction: FLoC doesn't really change anything. True, third-party trackers will no longer be able to "follow" us around the web, create user profiles, learn about our activity and then do business by sharing this information with websites and advertisers. But far from disappearing, this will be continued by browsers.
This new technology will avoid the risks and problems of third-party cookies, but everything indicates that it could generate many others.
It must be understood that, in this new situation, online advertising will continue to exist, and targeted ads based on our interests will continue to be an essential part of such advertising. However, with this new model, it will once again be necessary to share profile and cohort information with advertisers, which will generate new privacy risks.
One of these risks concerns the digital footprint we leave behind when browsing. The FLoC cohort system will allow up to 8 bits of so-called entropy to be stored, a very valuable quantity and quality of information that will make it much easier for trackers to reconstruct an identity based on users' footprints.
There are other, even greater risks. For example, we assume that for FLoC to be useful to advertisers, information about cohort behaviour must be revealed to them. On the other hand, companies have other ways of identifying users, such as the well-known “login with Google”. All this will make it possible to link the information provided by FLoC with the user profile, which in turn will put at risk the exposure of two types of information:
