Chrome’s new Privacy Sandbox gives huge privacy boost - here’s how to set it up

New set of anti-tracking tools available to most Chrome users

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● A Google account● Google Chrome downloaded and updated● Internet connection

It’s a big day for internet privacy asGoogle’s Privacy Sandbox initiative has reached “general availability” on theChrome browsermeaning the update is now present for 97 percent of all users.

Privacy Sandbox has been in the worksfor a long time – since 2019. It was developed as a way tostop third-party tracking cookieswhich were created to learn people’s likes and dislikes. This tech has proven to be highly controversial as it would allow companies to collect vast amounts of sensitive data with the sole purpose of delivering personalized ads to people. Moving forward,most Chrome usersnow have a new set of security tools for stopping these trackers dead in their tracks.

But what about that three percent gap? Google states it won’t finish its rollout just yet as it wants to continue conducting “adequate A/B testing”. There may be a few things left to adjust. The company does, however, have plans to “expand general availability to 100 percent of [Chrome] users over the coming months.”

Judging by the numbers, there’s a pretty good chance you already have this feature on your computer. You simply may not be aware of it. Fortunately, finding and activating these tools is easy to do.

Quick steps on how to activate the Privacy Sandbox tools on Chrome

Step by step guide on how to activate the Privacy Sandbox tools on Chrome for desktop

Step by step guide for how to activate the Privacy Sandbox tools on Chrome for mobile

Future update

So far, there are three blockers available currently. Ad Topics displays various “topics of interest” which are based on your recent browsing history. These are used by websites to show personalized commercials. Site-suggested Ads stop websites from collecting data on you. And Ad Measurements ensure your browsing history stays private among other things.

Because this is a brand-new update, we don’t have any accumulated topics to show you. Google states “it can take up to a week for a list of sites to appear”, so we recommend checking back later. However, a video on the Privacy Sandbox announcement shows what a page full of entries looks like

There, you can see the topics listed out. According to aGoogle Chrome Help page, selecting an entry blocks it. No one can extract your data.

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Next year, Google has plans to outrightdisable all third-party trackerson its web browser for good. Until that security upgrade launches, be sure to check out TechRadar’slist of the best privacy tools for 2023.

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Cesar Cadenas has been writing about the tech industry for several years now specializing in consumer electronics, entertainment devices, Windows, and the gaming industry. But he’s also passionate about smartphones, GPUs, and cybersecurity.

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