Detailed profiles of internet users can be created with fingerprinting. (Image: Immo Wegmann / Unsplash)
In addition to cookies, there are many other ways to track internet users. The techniques are mainly used in advertising to switch ads and evaluate their performance.
Google has been using fingerprinting since this week and thus clearly continues in this regard than before.
That is behind it:
- With fingerprinting, in Europe “creating fingerprints”, data from users are collected.
- In addition to the IP address, data about the location, the language, the country, the browser used and much more can also be used for profiles.
- Google already has the change in December 2024 announced. In the announcement, Google mentions that advertising customers will have more freedom to track users in the future.
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This is regulated in the Program guidelines. From this, Google has removed a heel that has not yet allowed the use of “Device Fingerprints”, in Europe “Fingerprints of devices”.
Before that, the following stood there:
You may not have any device finger prints or locally released objects (e.g. flash cookies, browser helper objects, local HTML5 memory) except HTTP cookies or mobile device identifiers that can be used by users, which are intended for use in advertising, in Use connection with Google's platform products. This does not limit the use of the IP address to uncover fraud.
What is new is that Google and advertising customers can now also use the IP address of Internet users, along with other tracking signals.
Google's change is criticized
Google still faced fingerprinting in 2019. In one official contribution described Google fingerprinting as wrong.
We consider this to be an inadmissible restriction of the user's freedom of choice and is wrong.
A main problem of fingerprinting is that it is almost invisible in the background.
While users can see and delete cookies, the collected data for fingerprinting are not stored on the devices of the users. There is also no direct way to delete the data.
For Mozilla developer Martin Thomson hat Google A border exceeded with the introduction.
With the permission of taking fingerprints, Google has given itself – and the advertising industry that he has dominated – to use a form of tracking against which users cannot do much.
How you can help yourself: Some browsers have functions with which fingerprinting can be blocked or at least reduced. Both Mozillas Firefox browser and good browser fingerprinting block.
Now you are asked. What do you think of the changes? Do you use browsers or extensions that protect you against fingerprinting? Please write us a comment.
