This summer, Google began rolling out its new Topics API, which “allows a browser to share information with third parties about a user’s interests while preserving privacy.” A part of Google’s new Privacy Sandbox, the API is supposed to replace the third-party cookies that have been following us around for many years now, reporting where we go and what we buy, among other info.
The Topics API was included in July’s Chrome 115 release, and if you don’t have it yet, you will soon. If the idea of sharing information about your interests with third parties doesn’t thrill you, you can easily turn it off. Here’s how:
In Chrome, start at the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. (Or just type chrome://settings/adPrivacy into your address field.)
You’ll see three categories:
- Ad topics, which assumes your interests based on your browsing history.
- Site-suggested ads, which suggests ads based on the sites you’ve visited.
- Ad measurement, which shares data with sites to help them measure the effectiveness of their advertising.
Click on each. If you want, you can pause to find out more about what interests and sites Google has been associated with you. You can even just turn off subcategories for each — for example, under Ad topics, you can block Business and industrial but keep Computer and video games active.
However, if you want to save yourself time, as you go into each of the three categories, just toggle each one off. And you’re done.
We hope these tips have been helpful in your business. Please let us know if you have any questions about your IT environment or how to secure it from outside cyber threats. We are here for you! Contact us at (732) 780-8615 or email at [email protected].
Barbara Krasnoff, “How to disable Chrome’s new targeted ad tracking“, theverge.com, Sep 9, 2023