For several weeks, a strange eye-shaped icon has appeared at the end of the address bar of Chrome, Google’s browser. You may have seen it while surfing the web with Chrome. An attempt by Google to spy on you? Not at all, quite the contrary. We’ll explain it to you.
You may not have noticed it yet, even if you are a regular Chrome user.
of the Google Chrome browser, you may have noticed the presence of a new icon in the interface. For some users, it actually appears at the far right of the address field when they go to a website. Rather worrying, it represents an eye, crossed out or not, as soon as a site page is loaded. A way to access normally hidden code or content? A sign that you are authorized or not to access this site? Or an attempt by Google to spy even more on your activities on the Web? None of that, rest assured. This is an approach that even goes against what this icon could mean, which is rather poorly chosen. Google’s popularity rating is already not high when we approach the area of confidentiality but then, we can say that its engineers are hitting hard by having chosen this distressing signage.
Since the beginning of January, the American giant has been testing a new function in Chrome on computer and mobile. Its goal: to put an end to the use of third-party cookies. As a reminder, cookies are small files placed on the device by the website visited in order to facilitate navigation for the visitor during their next visit. Third-party cookies, for their part, behave in the same way except that they do not belong to the site visited. They mainly come from advertising agencies and are used to track the Internet user’s activities from site to site. It is against this type of cookies that Chrome wishes to fight with its tracking protection function. A first step which comes 4 years after Google’s official announcement to get rid of these cookies.
Also, since the beginning of the year, its browser has activated by default the blocking of third-party cookies for a small number of users (1% on computers) in order to test the effectiveness of the function. It should be generalized for everyone during the second half of 2024. According to Google, this large-scale testing phase “will help developers conduct real-world experiments to assess the readiness and effectiveness of their products without third-party cookies“. At the same time, and in order not to put too much pressure on advertisers, Google has also deployed tools (Privacy Sandbox) allowing them to use new targeting methods, more respectful of confidentiality.
But then, how to interpret the icon that appears? It’s simple. If the eye icon is crossed out, Chrome is blocking third-party cookies on the displayed page. In other words, you are not tracked on this site by cookies from another site. On the other hand, if the eye icon is not crossed out, Chrome does not block third-party cookies on the displayed page and you may therefore be tracked by cookies from other sites, in particular advertising agencies.
And since it is possible that the display of pages is disrupted by blocking third-party cookies, you can fortunately deactivate the function. Click the eye and then turn off the Third-party cookies switch. In this case, obviously, the door is open to tracking. To summarize: if the eye is crossed out, you are not being followed, if the eye is not crossed out, advertising agencies (among others) follow your journey on the Web.
Disabling third-party cookies is already integrated into the latest version of Chrome but not activated for everyone. If you want to try the experiment and implement it, it is possible. Open Chrome then enter chrome://flags in the address field and validate. Look for the option Test Third Party Cookie Phaseout and tilt the latter into position Enabled. After restarting Chrome, the new eye icon will appear in the address field. Incidentally, note that only tracking from other sites is blocked. Google will continue to track you and collect the data it is interested in, with your consent of course: it is not by chance that some people call Chrome “the biggest spyware in the world”…