PRIVACY SANDBOX

PRIVACY SANDBOX

TOPIC: Science & Tech

Context- Google announced that it would bring the Privacy Sandbox — the privacy solution that it is building for the web — to Android devices. The new solution would “limit” the sharing of user data with third parties, and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising IDs.

Concept-

How do cookies work?

• Imagine you are flying with a friend, and you have a check-in bag each.
• Imagine that before putting the bags in the aircraft belly, airline personnel go through their contents. They find a bottle of Chanel perfume and Tommy Hilfiger clothes in your bag, and put a red sticker on it. In your friend’s bag they find a camera tripod and books on photography, and put a blue sticker. (These stickers are cookies.)
• At the destination, the driver of your cab notes the stickers, and hands you separate advertisement flyers: to you for Hermes bags, and to your friend for Canon DSLRs.
• Brands and local businesses have paid the cab company to hand over pamphlets to passengers, and your ride is now free.

What is the Privacy Sandbox?

• Privacy Sandbox will phase out third-party cookies and limit tracking.
• A ‘cookie’ is a small piece of data stored in the browser when a user visits a website.
• Third-party cookies are stored by a service that operates across multiple sites.
  • For example, an ad platform might store a cookie when you visit a news site. First-party cookies are stored by the website itself.
• So, if the news site is storing a cookie, it will use it to offer curated news items the user is more likely to read.
• But if an ad platform like Facebook stores a cookie when one visits a news site, it is likely to use that information and categorise the user in certain buckets based on preferences, and will offer advertisers the ability to target the user with specific ads. This can also be used for political advertisements.