DuckDuckGo has once again defied Google's plan to replace third-party cookies in Chrome by calling the search giant's new themes and ad tracking and targeting methods FLEDGE.
While Themes uses your Chrome browsing history to automatically collect information about your interests to share with tracking companies and other companies, FLEDGE allows Google's browser to target users with ads based on their browsing history.
While Google's intentions to replace third-party cookies with Themes and FLEDGE may be good, DuckDuckGo notes in a new blog post that tracking, targeting, and profiling will still happen once Privacy Sandbox is implemented in Chrome. .
The company also notes that targeting in this way allows for manipulation by exploiting personal vulnerabilities, discrimination as users may not see certain job openings based on their personal profiles, and filtering bubbles or echo chambers that can further divide to people online. Also, themes will be available to third-party crawlers and not just websites.
At the same time, subjects can be combined with an IP address or other fingerprint attributes to facilitate individual user tracking by third-party trackers. Although Google has promised to fix this problem at some point through a so-called "privacy budget", experts have already questioned the company's approach.
How to disable themes and FLEDGE
The best and easiest way for privacy-conscious users to disable Themes and FLEDGE is to simply stop using Chrome and switch to another modern browser. While DuckDuckGo recommends using its mobile browser on iOS and Android or its recently released desktop browser for Mac, Brave, Vivaldi, and Microsoft Edge are also good alternatives to Chrome.
However, what if you can't switch to another browser? In this case, DuckDuckGo suggests using its updated Privacy Essentials Chrome extension (version 2022.4.18) which can now block FLEDGE topics and interactions on websites.
Alternatively, you can also change your Chrome and Google settings to disable Themes and Fledge at least for now. To do this, click on Chrome's three-dot menu and head over to Settings. From there, under the "Privacy and Security" tab, navigate to "Privacy Sandbox" and disable the Privacy Sandbox trial. You will then need to sign out of Chrome, disable Chrome sign in, and choose not to sync your history data with Chrome. In the meantime, in Google Activity Controls, you need to disable "Web & App Activity" as well as "Ads Personalization" in Google Ads Settings.
Themes and FLEDGE are coming to Chrome whether you like it or not, but at least DuckDuckGo has provided Google's browser users with a Chrome extension to block the company's new ad tracking and targeting methods.