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Forget me not—or not.
That’s a concern for companies like Google and Facebook, who are seeing ad tracker dodging initiatives cutting into revenue. Users, by and large, are hesitant to embrace tracking, especially when it’s outsourced to third parties.
Privacy-focused open source web browser Brave is introducing a new tool to stop third-party tracking. It follows a trend from browsers like Safari, which can block all third-party cookies, and Chrome, which plans to end third-party cookies by the end of 2024.
Brave’s “Forgetful Browsing” tools are more targeted. They log users out of sites once they are closed, stop rate limits, and stop reidentification.
In a press release announcing the change, the Brave privacy team said that third-party tracking isn’t something with a lot of upside for users.
“Most often, you won’t benefit from being remembered by every news site you read an article on, or every shopping site you briefly browsed, or every image hosting site that showed you a cute cat picture,” the team wrote.
Not only won’t you benefit, the companies sending your information to third parties won’t either.
Google is being sued over analytics tracking on the Planned Parenthood site by an anonymous complainant alleging the company violated the plaintiff and class members’ “reasonable expectation of privacy in their confidential communications, including information relating to their searches for and scheduling of abortions and other medical services, and their sensitive medical information.”
Global permissions aren’t that mind-blowing, PC World’s Michael Crider wrote, but the site-specific changes could be useful.
“When applied universally, the Forgetful Browsing feature isn’t much more useful than the existing option to clear all local data when the browser closes,” Crider wrote. “But on a site-by-site basis, I can see how it would be a huge boon to users who want to keep their browsing more private.”