Google on Tuesday announced a new plan to stop using small files known as cookies to track people's web browsing habits, after its previous proposals were roundly criticised.

US tech giants are under huge pressure to overhaul the way they collect data -- Google was fined 150 million euros ($169 million) by France earlier this month over its cookie policies.

Privacy campaigners have pushed hard against the use of cookies, which transmit users' information often to dozens of companies each time they visit a website.

But the files form the backbone of the online advertising industry that has proved hugely profitable for Google and their customers.

The company said on Tuesday it would trial a new system called "Topics", which it said would protect privacy while continuing to allow targeted advertising.

Chrome users will still be tracked and the websites they visit and advertising partners will be given three topics -- broad themes supposed to correspond to their interests -- based on the user's browsing history.

However, the firm said the process of generating topics would take place entirely on the user's device -- even Google itself will not have access.

Advertisers will only be able to retain the topics for three weeks, and Chrome users will have the option of opting out entirely.

"Topics" replaces an earlier idea floated by Google called "Federated Learning of Cohorts", which caused consternation among advertisers and the media industry.

Critics said the FLoC system would allow Google to hoard user data for itself and cut third parties out of the loop.

"Topics was informed by our learning and widespread community feedback from our earlier FLoC trials, and replaces our FLoC proposal," said senior Google official Vinay Goel.

Internet companies have faced stricter rules since the EU passed a massive data privacy law in 2018 obliging firms to seek direct consent of users before installing cookies on their computers.

Privacy campaigners have filed hundreds of complaints against companies including Google and Facebook arguing that they make it much easier to opt in than to opt out.

Making smartphone data anonymous no longer enough: study
Paris (AFP) Jan 25, 2022 - Privacy measures that are meant to preserve the anonymity of smartphone users are no longer suitable for the digital age, a study suggested on Tuesday.

Vast quantities of data are scooped up from smartphone apps by firms looking to develop products, conduct research or target consumers with adverts.

In Europe and many other jurisdictions, companies are legally bound to make this data anonymous, often doing so by removing telltale details like names or phone numbers.

But the study in the Nature Communications journal says this is no longer enough to keep identities private.

The researchers say people can now be identified with just a few details of how they communicate with an app like WhatsApp.

One of the paper's authors, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye of Imperial College London, told AFP it was time to "reinvent what anonymisation means".

- 'Rich' data -

His team took anonymised data from more than 40,000 mobile phone users, most of which was information from messaging apps and other "interaction" data.

They then "attacked" the data searching for patterns in those interactions -- a technique that could be employed by malicious actors.

With just the direct contacts of the person included in the dataset, they found they could identify the person 15 percent of the time.

When further interactions between those primary contacts were included, they could identify 52 percent of people.

"Our results provide evidence that disconnected and even re-pseudonymised interaction data remain identifiable even across long periods of time," wrote the researchers from the UK, Switzerland and Italy.

"These results strongly suggest that current practices may not satisfy the anonymisation standard set forth by (European regulators) in particular with regard to the linkability criteria."

De Montjoye stressed that the intention was not to criticise any individual company or legal regime.

Rather, he said the algorithm they were using just provided a more robust way of testing what we regard as anonymised data.

"This dataset is so rich that the traditional way we used to think about anonymisation... doesn't really work any more," he said.

"That doesn't mean we need to give up on anonymisation."

He said one promising new method was to heavily restrict access to large datasets to just simple question and answer interactions.

That would get rid of the need to classify a dataset as "anonymised" or not.

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