Google's New IP Protection Mode Might Help With Creepy Tracking Ads

pcmag.com:

Nearly three years ago, Google proposed a new "Gnatcatcher" system to help anonymize internet traffic and cut down on cross-site tracking. Soon, Google will roll out an updated version of that proposal, dubbed "IP Protection," with some significant changes.

In the original version of Gnatcatcher, Google planned to move away from third-party cookies and IP tracking by grouping users with similar browser habits and forwarding information to ad companies. The idea was to still allow for "relevant ads" without the need to track users individually.

But Google's plans have changed quite a bit since 2021. Now, IP Protection will anonymize your data without trying to "hide you in a crowd." Instead, Google will hide your IP address by filtering third-party traffic through proxies. That's a task that must be accomplished carefully, though. While IP addresses can identify you as you travel from site to site, they're also essential to make the internet work as a whole. It's a difficult needle to thread: cross-site tracking through IP addresses is easy for advertisers to accomplish and hard to evade (unlike third-party cookies). Typically, your IP address doesn't change after all.

However, the site you're visiting may have legitimate reasons to check your IP address, such as preventing fraud and properly routing traffic. Google can't simply block all IP address tracking and call it a day. So, the solution is to thwart third-party tracking through proxies. Advertisers (and other third-party trackers) will get the IP address of the proxy server instead of yours, preventing them from tracking you. 

In upcoming versions of Chrome, IP Protection will be an opt-in feature to start that test. But it'll be limited at first. The first step,