Google's replacement of third-party cookies with Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) has been controversial since it was first outlined Now, Google may make it easier to opt out of FLoCs

FLoCs are a new way to track users online and can display targeted ads (for which Google can charge more), but Google has argued that FLoCs offer better anonymity than third-party cookies and provide a better compromise between appropriate advertising and absolute online privacy

According to Android Police, Google has made changes to Chrome Canary, the most experimental version of its browser, to allow users to easily disable FLoC with a toggle switch

However, finding that toggle switch is not particularly obvious, and Canary is not the version of Chrome that most home users would want to use

Because Canary is aimed at finding bugs and flaws in new features, it does not have the stability of a normal Chrome build New changes are pushed out daily, sometimes in an unfinished state

However, if Google is testing an option that allows users to turn off FLoC participation immediately, this option may be included in stable builds of Chrome in a few months

FLoC is designed to use your browser to determine what you are interested in It then assigns you to a group that includes thousands of people with similar interests

That allows advertisers to target, for example, "cat owners who live in San Francisco, drive Teslas, and are vegan" However, the advertiser is not given such information about you specifically How you use the cohort to target a larger group of anonymous people is up to the ad maker, and Google will always be the intermediary between the ad company and you

The big problem with FLoC is that while it may make perfect sense to Google's internal brainpower, to the general public, reading about FLoC and how it works on Google's site is a nightmare of convoluted language and soothing PR clichés

Therefore, they may simply accept the FLoC and feel happy that Google is looking out for them But it is also worth noting that Google has a lot to gain by selling ad space to marketers who want to target you Google has a clear vested interest in developing tools that will be used to market you for years to come

Google has already stated that it will not enable FLoC for users who have manually opted out of third-party tracking This new feature allows users to turn off FLoC with a simple switch

If you are one of the few users using Chrome Canary, you can disable FLoC by copying and pasting the following into your address bar: "chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-settings-2" Then select "Enabled" from the page that appears

Restart Canary and head to "Privacy and Security" in the browser settings and you will see a new option called "Privacy Sandbox" Clicking the link button next to it will open a new tab with a toggle switch to turn FLoC on or off

FLoC itself is currently still in trial testing, and very few people have actually registered with the program If you are using a standard Chrome browser, you can visit amiflocedorg to see if your browser is generating cohort data

Again, you can opt out of FLoC by disabling third-party cookies: click the menu icon in the upper right corner of the Chrome window, scroll down and click Settings, then in the left-hand navigator click Privacy and Security, select "Cookies and other site data," then select the "Block third-party cookies" radio button

Your FLoC cohort will be derived weekly from the websites you visited over a 7-day period You will then be categorized into one of the 33,000 groups (for now) that advertisers can target with ads of interest to that particular group

Currently, the only browser that uses FLoC is Chrome Safari, Firefox, and Brave are not included in this experimental tracking system

It is good to see that Google has at least enabled this experimental option to easily turn off FLoC in Chrome Canary (You have to go through the Chrome Dev and Beta channels before reaching the Stable (Stable) channel) As always, it is very important that users have a say in how their online data is used