Quelle Surprise, Google, Microsoft, and Meta Still Tracking Users After Opt-Out

Shocking News Fails To Shock Anyone Who Has Been Paying Attention

A privacy search engine called webXray conducted an audit of Microsoft, Meta, and Google web traffic, specifically checking for the presence of ad cookies that were dropped onto machines which had already opted out of cookie tracking.  55% of sites checked ignored that setting and dropped cookies of various flavours on the devices anyway.  This means that in over half the sites you visit, the only purpose of that pop up at the bottom asking you about your cookie preferences is to annoy you, it actually has no effect whatsoever on if you are being tracked or not.

To nobody’s surprise, all three companies have stated these results are completely wrong, with Google going so far as to state the audit was based on a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how their cookies work.  One can only guess that they need to be able to track the machines which they aren’t supposed to track to ensure they … don’t track them?  Microsoft ignored tracking about 50% of the time but it’s Meta that is the winner with a nice 69%!  Meta’s code doesn’t even seem to bother to check if a browser has been set to prevent tracking, they simply don’t seem to care.

Microsoft, Meta, and Google have already paid billions of dollars in fines because of this behaviour, and apparently they are fine with continuing to pay them so they can track your browsing habits.