Google is planning to limit sharing of data with advertisers

According to the Financial Times, Google is planning to limit the access of advertisers to personal data, due to privacy concerns. More specifically, Google announced it will stop companies from viewing information “that breaks down the content of an app or web page ranging to sensitive topics such as drug abuse – when they bid for display adverts”. In a blogpost, Chetna Bindra, Senior Product Manager, User Trust and Privacy, indicated that Google will no longer include contextual content categories in the bid requests we send to buyers participating in our auction.  Bindra argued this change would help avoid the risk that any participant in Google’s auctions is able to associate individual ad identifiers with Google’s contextual content categories. According to the Bloomberg, these changes from Google aimed at better protecting people’s privacy result from recent scrutiny in investigations in the European Union.