NPR’s Scott Simon asks Julia Angwin of Proof News about Google’s decision not to remove cookies from its Chrome browser.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Google announced this week that its Chrome browser would continue to accept third-party cookies – those are those digital codes that let websites track where you’ve been on the internet – after four years of trying to develop a system without them. It’s known as the Privacy Sandbox. Julia Angwin is founder of Proof News, an investigative tech news website. She joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
JULIA ANGWIN: It’s great to be here.
SIMON: And we’ll point out that Google is one of NPR’s funders. Advertisers, of course, use cookies to deliver targeted ads. You know, you look up window shades in the morning, an ad for window shades might pop up when you’re browsing a news site later in the day. Did Google decide their efforts to do away with cookies just wouldn’t work, or they didn’t want them to work?
ANGWIN: I mean, that is the million-dollar question, right? I mean, you know, the other web browsers – Safari never allowed third-party cookie tracking. Firefox got rid of it in 2019. And Google Chrome has been promising to get rid of it since 2020. And this week’s announcement was them basically reneging on that promise.
SIMON: What’s the problem, technically or otherwise?
ANGWIN: My understanding is that when you go to a website and the cookie is tracking you, it literally just sends back a thing like, Scott is on a website looking at cowboy boots, right? And so…
SIMON: How did you know?
ANGWIN: (Laughter) All these companies building profiles, they add this to their little dossier, right? The way the Privacy Sandbox works is, actually, that information doesn’t leave your computer. And inside of your web browser, it adds you to a category called footwear apparel. And then later, when advertisers want to sell an ad, they go to Google and they say, OK, send this ad to all the people in your footwear category. So it basically is less granular information. It’s less specific. And I think advertisers have found that that really lowers their profits.
SIMON: Right now, Google does permit you to turn off third-party cookies in your settings, right?
ANGWIN: Yes, it does. And apparently, I think maybe about 30% of people do. But you do have to dig around and find those settings.
SIMON: Well, I gather Google now says they’ll make that option more visible.
ANGWIN: Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of concern about what that could look like. Many, many websites put up these cookie consent boxes. So you get to a website. It pops up this thing that says, do you consent to cookies or, if not, go through these 10 different steps. You click on it – manage cookies – and then it sends you some incomprehensible menu, and then you click on some things. And, like, by then, you lost track of why you wanted to go to this website at all. Truth is the companies deliberately make it difficult…
SIMON: Yeah.
ANGWIN: …To go through all those menus.
SIMON: How does Microsoft Edge deal with cookies?
ANGWIN: So Microsoft Edge allows you to block third-party cookies, but it is not turned on by default. So it is similar to Chrome – to Google Chrome – in that you have to go into the settings and find the part that helps you manage cookies.
SIMON: A lot of us gripe and tell funny stories about what cookies drive to our screens. But in the end, do we really kind of like that, or at least we accept that as the price of having a certain convenience?
ANGWIN: So we have gotten accustomed to it. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to become accustomed to this level of surveillance, because the reality is that it can be innocuous when they want to sell you a cowboy boot, but it can be quite terrible when a bad actor wants information. And I think we are at a place where there – it’s impossible to control it. And so I think there’s a legitimate concern that this is an industry that’s basically out of control, selling all of our personal data.
SIMON: Investigative journalist Julia Angwin, who’s founder of the Proof News website. Thank you for this sobering conversation.
ANGWIN: Sorry to be so depressing. Thanks for having me.
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