In this world of Web and App technologies, and with the emergence of thousands of new features, the privacy of users must be the top priority. Moreover, with a tremendous increase in the number of cyber-attacks, privacy helps a lot in maintaining cyber security. Keeping this in mind, Google has never disappointed while offering plentiful privacy features to its users. Privacy Sandbox is another one on their list that will enhance users' privacy on Web and Android Apps.
A brief about Privacy Sandbox
Privacy Sandbox comes with an initiative of "Reinforcing the Online Privacy" and in layman language, it will not let your browser history spread all over the web, enclosing it in the Sandbox.
It's Google's new add-on feature that could help users get better online privacy. Although it was about to work efficiently in the year 2022, it's still in the testing phase and would require some more time to launch perfectly.
It aims to modify the current practice of online advertising without using third-party cookies. The 3 initiatives of Privacy Sandbox are: eliminating third-party cookies, modifying cross-site tracking, and reducing risks associated with device fingerprinting.
Privacy Sandbox for Web
The web version of Privacy Sandbox is in the testing phase, and many new proposals are being made to embed in it. It comes with new privacy standards while maintaining the digital ads businesses so that no one has to compromise, neither the users nor the digital advertisers.
Private State Tokens
With the incorporation of these tokens, websites can easily recognize who is real and who is going to attack. Tokens being encrypted will help to hide your identity from unknown or fake websites.
How does it work?
A site provides your browser with a private state token once it checks out your regularity on the site. Further, other sites can identify you with the token, whether you are a bot or a human. In this way, these tokens can protect your identity if you're genuine and can attack back if you are a malicious actor.
Topics API and Fledge
Topics API shows only the relevant content and ads based on your interests. Your browser history searches help sites recognize your topics of interest. Moreover, they are not shared all over the web but only to the advertisers to show more ads and content of your type.
An interesting feature is the topics saved are limited to 350 in number, and you can remove them or disable this feature in Chrome Settings.
Furthermore, FLEDGE remarketing technique shows you the sites and products of your interest. It is based on the TURTLEDOVE algorithm and lets go of third-party interference. To emphasize, it resists all kinds of irrelevant ads in order to keep your privacy.
Cross-Site Privacy
In order to forbid cross-site tracking, a number of proposed solutions are :
- Restriction on exchanging information except with the first party.
- Shared storage, such as cache, local storage, will only be readable in a protected and secure space.
- CHIPS, abbreviated as Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State, is introduced to only allow an important cookie or activity to be read by the other sites. It is because sometimes, there is a requirement to know about your browser history for some sites to work efficiently.
- Network Partition Key could assign each site an individual and isolated area to mitigate the linking of both the sites on the network.
- Other proposals include Storage Partitioning to lower the interference of third parties and Fenced Frames API to add a fence between the two sites that are reading users' data to avoid their connection.
Limiting Covert Tracking
Restraining covert-tracking such as fingerprint, IP address, and more could be a great idea to prevent privacy compromises. Some of the proposals are:
- Same-site cookies could control cross-site injection and other data breaches.
- Client Hints API helps to first request for information such as fingerprints with the purpose of limiting the readability of shared data contained in the User-Agent string.
- IP Protection in Privacy Sandbox will conceal your IP address from third parties to track users.
Privacy Sandbox for Android
Not only Privacy Sandbox will protect you on the web but also on Android too. Similar to the web, some proposals are made for privacy on Android.
- Same as the web, Topics can be used to categorize your interests and only inform about specific topics to the advertisers.
- Apart from this, FLEDGE is again a part of the Android Privacy Sandbox. It facilitates remarketing, which helps the browser to identify your choice of sites and products and show you the relevant ads.
- Adding more privacy, Attribution Reporting API is going to replace the dependency on cross-apps for advertising.
- To boost user privacy, SDK Runtime will add a barrier between third-party and user data.
Will Privacy Sandbox impact Advertisers?
15-25% revenue loss is expected for the advertisers, according to the information on Financial Express. Moreover, not only the advertisers, it will also significantly impact Google and Facebook revenue. Importantly, mobile ads have made India earn nearly $2 billion in 2022, and it's about to cross in the current year. Thus, it can be said that Privacy Sandbox on Android is going to take away a lot from advertisers. However, there are chances of returning to normal revenue once the Sandbox is implemented successfully.
Ending Up
It has yet to be determined when Privacy Sandbox will launch with confidence, but the launch day will bring a new U-Turn to privacy. Although a private window saves no browsing history, you will be able to browse on the regular web with privacy, too and without the involvement of third parties.
