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Does Google already send user data along with a FloC Cohort ID? #111

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drdsgvo opened this issue May 6, 2021 · 0 comments
Open

Does Google already send user data along with a FloC Cohort ID? #111

drdsgvo opened this issue May 6, 2021 · 0 comments

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@drdsgvo
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drdsgvo commented May 6, 2021

It seems as if Google already connects a Cohort ID with data that can be used to track down a single user.

Here it is explained that the FloC cohort ID is already used by Google in Real-Time Bidding:
https://developers.google.com/authorized-buyers/rtb/realtime-bidding-guide?hl=de

That leads to: Google already computes the FloC ID outside browsers and will possibly do this on any Android phone.

On the above mentioned page, when you click on the "Authorized Buyers RTB proto file" link on top of the page, several pieces of information show up that are shared with the bidders for ads, like:
3 of 4 bytes of the user's IP address, the Google User ID , the user agent, match data for the cookie matching service.

FloC claimed in several texts and documentations that an opaque browser frame etc. is used to ensure privacy. Only the browser of the user would know who the user is, no one else (also not Google)!

Why can the user not be tracked down to a cohort ID with these bunch of information (which are called "fingerprint", right) ?
I hope that no user which lives far away from the next person is getting labelled with a cohort ID as that user might be tracked down with the "user's approximate geographic location". A fuzziness of 5000 meters, e.g. may be too less to mask a hermit... Or is the geo data also skipped when having the cohort ID?

The documentation says, that "traditional pseudonymous cookie-based user identifiers or device advertising identifiers would not be populated". That's great.

So "only" Google knows who the user is that belongs to a FloC ID?

When I first heard about FloC and read the documentations and information on GitHub I did not read anything about the plans to use the FloC "data base" on behalf of Google.

Please update the RTB documentation to exactly mention which data will not be used along with FloC data.

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