Google, Apple, Advertisers Talk About This

Set to replace cookies

According to Axios, Google, Apple and their advertisers are all in talks about replacing the GDPR-frought cookies with a new system of tracking people called “Unified ID 2.0” (or UID 2.0 for short).

Invented by The Data Trust, an advertising technology firm, as a way to keep track of people’s movements and demographs (read: the key features that identify you).

Originally proprietary, Unified ID 2.0 was made open source so other advertising firms could readily adopt it. Tech firms have already started, and they’re trying to push the mass surveillance worldwide.

Lip service is paid to keeping the datasets anonymous, but in truth, given they’re trying to evade non-tracking consent forms of GDPR, it is anything but. It claims it is opt-in, but they do so by bait-and-switch burying the consent in promos:

[…] most users opt in by providing their email addresses when they sign up for a purchase or promotion through a publisher's or advertiser's website.

Notice it includes “a purchase”, meaning even if you are paying them money, they still want to datamine you. It is already in use by the likes of child murder financing Amazon (and naturally, Amazon owned Washington Post), and pedophile enabling Disney, something noted by campaign.

Doing a cursory search of “Unified ID 2.0” shows a whole slew of organisations (including Nielsen), this strikes The Daily Beagle as the various datamining firms engaging in a cynical practice to bypass GDPR by making the primary focus - cookies - obsolete, and circumventing the intention of the bill’s passage.

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