7 May 2021

Block Google FLoC Tracking With A DuckDuckGo Chrome Extension

Google says that it takes your privacy seriously and so it is eliminating third-party cookies from the Chrome browser. Great! After all, third-party cookies have long been a privacy issue. But wait, there's a bit more to the story.

Cookies set by a website you're visiting can be helpful and might even be essential. The site writes small text files to your computer so that the website can assist your navigation. Third-party cookies are something else entirely. These are the cookies that allow advertisers to follow you around the internet. Perform a search for information about how to repair a problem with a car and you'll soon see ads for auto parts and new cars.

Marketing and advertising search firms think they're wonderful because they give advertisers ongoing access to information about what a user is looking at and interacting with. Cookies can reveal a user's interests, demographics, location, and more. A lot more. So goodbye third-party cookies! It's great that Google will eliminate them from Chrome.

Or is it? Google dropped the "Don't Be Evil" tag line long ago and some observers are saying that Google's replacement for third-party cookies is the epitome of evil.

The replacement Google is testing is called Federated Learning of Cohorts, FLoC for short. Even if you use Chrome, you probably don't yet have FLoC. It's being tested on about half of one percent of Chrome browsers in the United States along with Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the loudest privacy advocates, says "FLoC is a terrible idea that should not be implemented. Google’s experimentation with FLoC is also deeply flawed." The EFF wants to raise awareness about the future of Chrome and why FLoC shouldn't be a part of that future.

The EFF's explanation is more than a bit concerning, in no small part because the technology that underlies Chrome is used by nearly all other browsers. Of the major browsers, only Netscape and Safari don't depend on the Blink engine.

FLoC analyzes your browsing history in Chrome and assigns you to a category (Google fancy term for this is "cohort") so that information about your cohort can be sent to a website when you visit. The information tells the website, using aggregate data, information about the group. So this depends on Google's algorithm accurately assessing you and your interests. The information is updated weekly.

Google says "FLoC allows you to remain anonymous as you browse across websites and also improves privacy by allowing publishers to present relevant ads to large groups (called cohorts)." Apparently you remain anonymous because you're just part of a big group. The information about you individually isn't shared with advertisers, but it still gives advertisers a lot of information about who you are. Google also maintains that it won't create groups that it deems "sensitive". Medical websites, websites with political or religious content, sexual interests, or race, for example. But then the Google blog post says the cohort won't be used "without learning which sensitive topics users were interested in," which seems to have a high resemblance to double-talk. Individual websites can "opt out of FLoC" so that the browser won't include visits to that site when determining a cohort. Of course, that depends on the website developer understanding the process and implementing it.

If you wonder whether FLoC has been enabled on your Chrome installation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has an online service that will tell you. Launch this site from Chrome and click the "Check for FLoC ID" button.

Is the "cure" worse than the disease? DuckDuckGo seems to think so and has launched a new extension for Chrome that's designed to block FLoC.

DuckDuckGo, which operates a search engine that competes with Google created the extension for Chrome that, when installed, changes the browser's default search engine to DuckDuckGo, which provides some protection, but FLoC can still analyze the browser's cache if it has been activated. The extension is supposed to block trackers on websites you visit and stop companies from collecting and selling your data.

DuckDuckGo also recommends using a browser other that Chrome and a search engine other than Google. If those suggestions seem a bit self serving, clearly they are. Users can also log out of their Google account, but that eliminates useful features such as synchronization across machines. It's also possible to turn off personalization in Google's Ad Settings panel. That won't reduce the number of ads you receive, but it will make the ads less interesting to you.

Short Circuits

Stop Asking To Send Me Notifications!

Some website developers seem to spend altogether too much time creating new ways to annoy site visitors. Remember Flash animations that visitors had to watch before being allowed into the site? Or audio files that played automatically? Even worse, video files that played every time a user went to the site?

Now we have pop-ups that offer to send notifications. As if we need more interruptions!

You can tell each site no, but many will continue to ask. Apparently the developers hope that you'll eventually either give up and allow notification or that you'll accidentally click the wrong answer.

If you find these annoying, as do I, there's a way to eliminate them, at least most of the time. Let's see how to banish these annoyances in Firefox and Chrome. The information for Chrome should work for most Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge.

If you have a Chromium-based browser, start by typing chrome://settings/content/notifications in the address bar. This will open the Settings panel; then select "Privacy and Security".

Scroll to the Notifications section and you'll see the words "Sites can ask to send notifications" or something similar. The exact words vary by browser. Toggle the switch to the OFF position.

For Firefox, start by clicking the hamburger menu in the upper right corner and then choose Options from the menu.

When the Options panel is open, (1) select Privacy & Security. Then scroll down to the Permissions section and (2) click "Settings" on the Notifications tab. This will open a permissions panel that will show sites for which you have allowed or blocked notifications. To eliminate future interruptions, (3) click "Block new requests asking to allow notifications" and then (4) click the Save Changes button.

Limited Stock Images Available For Free From Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock is one of the most comprehensive sources of photos, templates, video, and audio tracks. The prices generally are reasonable, but Adobe has acquired virtually all of the stock services that provide the least expensive images. But now there are some free options.

 Click any small image for a full-size view. To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.

Adobe's stock images generally cost up to $10 individually, but some premium images selected for exclusive use cost hundreds of dollars. Various subscription plans drop the cost significantly. It's hard to argue with any of that. Photographers need to have income for essentials such as cameras, computers, and software, as well as for luxuries such a homes, clothing, electricity, and food. But for those who need occasional images for projects that have low budgets, or no budgets, even $10 per image might be too much and the quantity of images needed might not justify even the most basic subscription plan.

So Adobe Stock now offers a limited number of images for free. The selection is a severely limited subset of the full offerings and the images themselves are more basic than what you'll find in the paid section. One might reasonably suspect that at least some of the motivation for the free images is to entice designers to sign up for one of the paid plans. The $30 per month plan provides access to 10 basic paid images per month, so that lowers the price to just $3 per image. For $200 per month, a designer can download 750 images per month — so that's less than 30 cents per image. This really is an outstanding deal for anyone who needs a lot of images.

To understand the differences between one of the paid plans and the free offerings, I used the search term cat and was offered a selection of 275 free cat images. When I expanded the search to include standard paid images, the selection increased to more than 2 million images.

Subscription plans provide access to royalty-free, high-resolution standard images, as well as standard templates, 3D assets, and music tracks; assets such as premium images, premium templates, premium 3D, editorial assets, video, and standard images with an extended license are omitted. Assets that are not included in the plan can be purchased individually.

Adobe Stock is available to anyone, including those who don't use Creative Cloud. Licensed images come with a perpetual license, but the images cannot be used to create something that you will sell or for print runs greater than half a million. To use an image on something you plan to sell (a coffee mug, for example), an extended license would be required. Of course you're not permitted to sell any of the downloaded images. There are no limitations for images used on websites, social media, or mobile applications.

To check out the free offerings, visit the Adobe Stock website.