Big Tech must do more to protect user privacy

The commercial internet developed with so little regard for privacy, tech companies have been able to turn personal data into hefty profits. Last week, Google announced a step in the right direction — but not a giant step, nor one that will stop Google from continuing to hoover up immense amounts of personal data.

At issue is how online companies track internet users online, typically through snippets of code known as cookies. The most noxious version, “third-party” cookies, is the web equivalent of a company posting sentinels across the internet to surveil you even when you’re on other companies’ sites.

Google declared it would no longer use or support third-party cookies, nor create or use any other technology that tracks individual users across the web. Given that Google is a main supplier of online advertising technology, its change will ripple far and wide.

That’s welcome news, albeit with caveats galore. As Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted, third-party cookies were already on the retreat, with Apple and other makers of popular web browsers moving to block them. Google, Facebook and other Big Tech companies continue to collect personal information in abundance from people who use their sites and services.

Instead of helping advertisers track individuals, Google says, it is refining a technology that assigns users anonymously to large groups with common interests. That’s an improvement, but why do any tracking at all? Privacy advocates say pitches can be targeted effectively by basing them on where the user is at the moment, not where he or she has roamed previously online.

Ultimately, legislators are going to have to enact protections giving people far more control over whether and how personal information is used online. Ideally the federal government will set a strong floor under online privacy protections, but until then it will be up to state lawmakers or voters to act. It’s good to see Google move the ball forward, but there’s much further to go.

Ultimately, legislators are going to have to give people more control over their personal information.