Chrome is about to change how users manage their cookies. Here's how the new tool works
Google is planning to give users of its Chrome browser more, but not too much, control over the management of cookies, which are the files in which websites store some information about our browsing when we visit them via a browser.
At the moment, these new cookie control options are only available in Chrome Canary version 82. Canary is the "nightly build" for developers, a test version where some new features of the browser are experimented with before making them available in the official version of the application. The official version of Chrome currently distributed by Google, to understand each other, is 80.0.3987.132, while Canary is now version 82 and contains some features that perhaps we will find in future official versions. One of them, actually, has already arrived with the official version 80: a new cookie classification system called "SameSite".
Chrome Canary 82: the new cookie management
Let's start with what we saw in the Chrome developer version. In Canary 82, a new window appears in the cookie management settings: where before you could only enable or disable these tracking files, you can now choose between "Allow cookies", "Block third-party cookies in Incognito", "Block third-party cookies" and "Block all cookies". Normal cookies are those generated by the sites we visit, third-party cookies are instead those generated by some elements outside the site, but displayed on the site.
Such as, for example, advertising cookies that are the most active in tracking user behavior. The user, therefore, can finally choose what to activate and what not, knowing that if he limits too much the action of cookies is very likely that the browsing experience will be limited. Because, without cookies, the site cannot recognize us when we visit it for the second time.
Cookies: the SameSite attribute
In addition to this new feature, which has yet to arrive on the stable version of Chrome for all users, there is also one that has already arrived: the "SameSite" attribute for cookies. This attribute will have to be specified by websites for each cookie, otherwise Chrome will consider all cookies as "first party", i.e. attributable directly to the site operator. If, however, the URL to which the cookie points is not the same as the site you are visiting then Chrome will automatically block it. All of this should help Chrome understand what third-party cookies are in order, if you choose, to block them altogether.