Starting with a small number of users, equal to approximately 1% of the entire audience of Chrome users, starting from January 2024, Google’s browser began to block third-party cookies. We also explained how to check if you are included in this small part of users affected by the news and how, if necessary, to force its activation.
Following in the footsteps of Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, Microsoft communicated that also Edge it will soon automatically block all third-party cookies, such as those used to track movements from one website to another.
Edge also looks to end support for third-party cookies
With a note published on the Microsoft blog, the Redmond company confirmed that Edge will begin to disable the cookie support of third parties in the coming months, starting with approximately 1% of the user base. The initiative will continue throughout 2024 in order to measure and evaluate its impact on customers and partners, urging the entire ecosystem to prepare for its definitive abandonment.
The difference, compared to Google, is that Microsoft is not taking a similar replacement approach Privacy Sandbox. The company led by Satya Nadella instead proposes the use of a new one API (Application Programming Interface) for selecting ads to be shown in the body of each web page. It’s called Ad Selection API and will not be available for testing until the second half of this year.
Commercial customers using Edge on managed devices (think workstations centrally managed by your organization, such as through Active Directory) will not be affected by these experiments.
The Microsoft Edge team explains that the Ad Selection API is a feature that will be an integral part of the browser and will allow advertisers and publishers to show relevant ads, without relying on tracking cookies or other unique identifiers shared between websites. The proposal put forward by Microsoft is publicly available on the GitHub repository: you can also check the source code here.
The deployment times of the new feature and how to test it in advance
Microsoft hasn’t shared one yet roadmap specifies: the objective is to begin to “stir things up” and arouse the interest of all interested parties. It will take at least all of 2024, however, before third-party cookies begin to be abandoned on all end users’ systems.
Il blocking cookies third party, Microsoft is keen to point out, will work in a very different way compared to the complete deactivation that can already be configured by typing today edge://settings/content/cookies in the address bar and activating the option Block third-party cookies.
After the introduction of Ad Selection APIyour browser will continue to allow so-called explicitly partitioned cookies. The concept of “explicitly partitioned cookies” refers to a proposal for a new cookie attribute called CHIPS (Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State). This attribute aims to improve privacy and security by introducing a partitioning model for cookies.
Con CHIPS, the cookies will be equipped with a double key: the “partition” key and the host key. The partition key is defined as the site that the browser was visiting at the start of the user’s client-side cookie generation request. The CHIPS approach requires the browser to send the information contained in the cookie only for remote requests that contain the partition key of the specific cookie. This approach helps limit the context in which cookies can be sent compared to non-partitioned third-party cookies, improving user privacy and security.
Users of the stable versions of Edge who want to try the new feature from today can simply type edge://flags/#test-third-party-cookie-phaseout in the address bar, click on Activated the corresponding setting (Test Third Party Cookie Phaseout) then restart your browser.