Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) has garnered a lot of attention since the company announced the standard earlier this year. Major browser manufacturers, including Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, and Vivaldi, have expressed disinterest in Google’s FLoC approach, and WordPress has announced that it will block FLoC on their websites. Google has now added an option that allows users to be disabled, and here’s how you can disable FLoC in Chrome.
Disable FLoC in Google Chrome (2021)
To better understand FLoC and how it affects you as a user, check out our explainer on what Google’s FLoC is and why you should block it in our linked guide. To give you a quick summary, FLoC groups users with similar browsing habits into groups and advertisers can serve targeted ads based on these groups. However, this can cause fingerprinting and you can avoid it by following the steps below to exit FLoC.
Quit FLoC in Google Chrome Desktop
Firstly mottled By the folks at gHacks, Google added the option to disable FLoC (Privacy Sandbox) in Chrome Canary build 93.0.4528.0, but it may be hidden behind a Chrome flag. When I checked out Chrome Canary build 93.0.4530.1 on my Windows PC, the toggle was available without having to change the Chrome flags. If you don’t see the feature, you can enable it like this:
1. Open chrome://flags file and Search for ‘Privacy Sandbox Settings 2’.
2. Next, Choose “Enabled” Restart your browser from the drop-down menu next to the flag. You can directly access the flag by pasting the link below into Chrome’s address bar.
chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-settings-2
3. After restarting the browser, open Chrome’s Settings and “Privacy and security” tab from the left sidebar. Under the “Privacy and security” section, there is now a New option titled “Privacy Sandbox”. You can access Privacy Sandbox directly at:
chrome://settings/privacySandbox
4. You will see two toggles on the Privacy Sandbox page. Disable both “Privacy Sandbox trials” and “FLoC” toggles and you are all set. Specifically, simply disabling the Privacy Sandbox trials toggle will automatically turn off FLoC.
This much. You are now out of Google’s FLoC tracking system and will not be included in any advertiser groups.
Exit FLoC on Google Chrome Mobile
1. Open Chrome on your smartphone and go to Settings. From the settings page, Open the “Privacy and security” section.
2. Tap the “Privacy Sandbox” option at the bottom of the “Privacy and security” page. At that time, Disable the “Privacy Sandbox attempts” toggle on the next page. And that’s it. You have successfully disabled Chrome’s Privacy sandbox trials, thus disabling Google’s FLoC in the process.
Disable Google’s Privacy Sandbox Trials in Chrome
This is how you can disable FLoC in Google Chrome. For more such tips, check out our article on the Chrome settings you need to change. You can also consider switching to a privacy-friendly browser from our article on the best browsers for privacy, or check out one of the best Google Chrome alternatives.
