Google has unveiled more detailed information about its Privacy Sandbox program, which focuses on improving privacy. It should land in beta version on Android 13 before the end of the year.
On February 16 on Clubic, we unveiled the contours of the extension of the Privacy Sandbox initiative on Android which should ultimately lead to the birth of advertising solutions that are more respectful of user privacy. Can you imagine that in recent days, Google has published more detailed information on the technologies included in the Privacy Sandbox program, which developers will be able to get to grips with during this year, before a beta version expected for the end of 2022 on Android 13.
Give more independence to developers
The first solution offered as part of Privacy Sandbox on Android offered to developers is called “SDK Runtime”. The primary idea behind this technology is to allow third-party software development kits (SDKs) to work.
If until now the developers who inserted libraries in their applications saw these libraries (so here Google) collecting all kinds of data, with the SDK Runtime, all that will be ancient history. Third-party libraries will operate in a sort of more controlled and regulated virtual sandbox. Here, the developer can directly manage the access rights of each library (Google, Facebook and others), and even restrict these rights directly.
Another fundamental change: until now, the library was intrinsically attached to the application. If the library suffers a problem, the application suffers too. With the Runtime SDK, this risk will disappear, since the libraries that will be distributed via stores separate from the applications themselves will be active from a sandbox independent of the rest of the app.
Topics, from Chrome to Android 13
The second major technology that will make up Privacy Sandbox on Android 13 is none other than Topics, a designated descendant of the aborted FLoC, which will not have found its audience even before its final adoption. The idea of Topics will be to directly monitor the applications used by the owner of a device. Once a week, the smartphone will thus calculate, like what Google wants to do in Chrome, the five topics of interest to the user, for example “Travel and transport” or “Sports”.
The applications you use will be able to access some of the data, but they will receive minimal data, which will limit the impact and thus prevent the same user from being identified in too much detail, at least on paper. The rather “coarse” information will nevertheless be shared with advertisers, who will then be able to deliver personalized advertisements, but without tracking sites or between applications. The interest of Privacy Sandbox is to preserve the confidentiality of users as much as possible, while not preventing advertisers from “working”, one could say vulgarly.
Except that this model will casually expose our data to certain actors whose applications you regularly use, such as the Meta group, Facebook’s parent company, which each week will receive your favorite topics and can thus use them to complete as your profile progresses.
On the same subject :
Android 13: the first public beta has arrived!
Source : Android Developers Google Blog
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