What is Google FLoC?

Google FLoC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts, has just been released by Google for Chrome as its answer to improving privacy while still delivering targeted ads.

The company is planning to use this new system as an alternative to cookies to track online behavior.

The company is saying that it is designed to respect user privacy but some entities like Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claim that FLoC creates more problems than it’s trying to solve.

It works by monitoring people’s browsing, assigning their aggregated behavior an ID, and then grouping browsers with similar browsing behaviors together. The data from these groups, called cohorts, is used to show people targeted ads.

If you are concerned about FLoC, you can disable it in your chrome browser. Check How to disable Google FLoC in Chrome browser