July 24, 2024 at 04:54PM
Apple recently celebrated privacy changes in Safari and criticized Google’s Topics system for serving online ads based on Chrome history. Apple cited a research paper to claim Topics aids digital fingerprinting, raising concerns about user tracking. Though Google disputed the findings, the privacy risk remains a point of contention between the tech giants.
Based on the meeting notes, Apple has raised concerns about Google’s Topics system, which they claim presents a privacy risk due to potential fingerprinting of web users. Apple cites a research paper by Yohan Beugin and Patrick McDaniel from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to support their claims. They argue that Topics could allow advertisers to identify previously unknown web users and track them across different sites, potentially compromising user privacy. However, Google has responded by challenging the research methodology and pointing out flaws in the simulation, which, when corrected, significantly reduces the reidentification rate. This suggests that the privacy risk posed by Topics may be less severe than initially assumed.