Google wants to remove your advertising ID in Android

Android 12 already represents a huge leap forward in terms of privacy for the mobile operating system. across the privacy control panel You can easily manage your permissions for apps, and finally you got the option to disable your advertising ID. All kinds of data related to your phone usage is stored in your advertising ID which is worth gold for advertisers. In a blog post It makes Google look like the advertising identifier may disappear completely in future versions.

He. She Privacy Sandbox Initiative Google has to devise a new advertising solution in Android that better meets the privacy needs of consumers. Additionally, the user should gain more control over how much data they share with third parties via their phone and with which. At this point, it’s still too early to get an idea of ​​what the new ad system will look like. It also appears that Advertising ID will remain a part of Android 13. Although Google wants to continue to focus more on improving privacy in the new version.

A less hawkish approach from Apple

Google says it certainly doesn’t want to rush to adopt a new ad system to give app developers time to adapt. They take a less hawkish approach than Apple. In iOS 14.5, the iPhone giant made a commitment to app developers to require consumers to share their data. So users can decide for themselves whether they want to open the data faucet.

Such an advertising system is not at all interesting to Google itself. The tech company largely relies on selling data to advertisers for its income. Apple’s actions did not go well with digital advertisers. Mita claims that because of this Losing up to $10 billion in revenue annually† Google wants to work on a temporary solution in consultation with advertisers that serves their interests and those of consumers.

Privacy sandbox: mixed success

With this in mind, Google launched the Privacy Sandbox in 2019. This initiative aims to give the tech giant’s products and services a better reputation for privacy without hurting Google’s wallet. Privacy Sandbox now deals primarily with the Chrome web browser and Google search engine, and Android has now been added. One of the main tasks of the Privacy Sandbox is to find an alternative to third-party cookies, which Google aims to phase out Chrome completely by the end of this year.

This quest continues in fits and starts. First attempt to replace cookies with FLoC API turned out to be a failure† The FLoC API was supposed to divide Internet users into anonymous segments, but the system was not very clear. Now Privacy Sandbox tries it using the Topcis API, an ad system that categorizes your browsing history into topics.

Disable Ad ID

The impact of Privacy Sandbox on Android is still in the future. For now, we have to content ourselves with the ad ID. Don’t need personalized ads? Then we recommend disabling this. You can opt out of ad tracking via the Google menu in your Settings (under Ads). You can also restrict it via the privacy menu. Note: You will still see ads.