• Data Protection

  WordPress to block Google’s ad tracking tech as an invasion of privacy

  Posted by Unknown Member on 3 May 2021 at 3:27 pm

  Open-source content management system (CMS) WordPress said that it will block Google’s new ad tracking technology. The company said that it sees the system as a security concern. Google is currently testing the feature called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).

  “While it is indeed unusual to treat a new “feature” this way, there is precedent in that something that was not strictly a security vulnerability in comments was back-ported to previous versions for the good of the community as a whole,” WordPress said in a blog post.

  FLoC will replace third-party cookies. It uses an algorithm that will place people with similar browsing histories in a group for target advertising. The feature is yet to be completely rolled out.

  A number of browsers like Mozilla, Brave, Vivaldi and DuckDuckGo have opted out of FLoC. Meanwhile, WordPress has also released four lines of code that can help developers block FLoC for their websites. This would impact Google’s plan significantly as WordPress powers 41 per cent of the web.

  Moreover, users who want to opt for FLoC, they will be able to do so themselves. WordPress versions that support privacy settings could have on-off toggle to opt for FLoC.

  WordPress also mentioned a post by Electronic Frontier Foundation that called Google’s FLoC a terrible idea.

  Unknown Member replied 3 years ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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