Introduction

[From the intro to the explainer]

At Microsoft, we are committed to fostering a healthy web ecosystem where everyone can thrive – consumers, publishers, advertisers, and platforms alike. Protecting user privacy is foundational to that commitment and is built into Microsoft Edge with features like Tracking Prevention, Microsoft Defender SmartScreen, and InPrivate browsing. We also support an ad-funded web because we don't want to see a day where all quality content has moved behind paywalls, accessible to only those with the financial means.

Through this proposal, we believe we can substantially improve end-user privacy while retaining the ability for sites to sustain their businesses through ad funding. We propose a new set of APIs that leverage a browser-trusted service to develop a sufficient understanding of user interests and therefore enable effective ad targeting without allowing ad networks to passively track users across the web. This approach removes the need for cross-site identity tracking, enables new privacy enabling methods to support monetization, and maintains ad auction functionality within existing ad tech ecosystems.

Today, we're pleased to further this discussion among the web community with the contribution of one possible approach. We will continue to collaborate with the community to iterate on this and other proposals with the goal of landing on a set of interoperable standards that work in multiple browsers. Together with the web community, we have an opportunity to share ideas, learn from each other, and create a better future for the web.

Overview

This proposal defines an internet-hosted service trusted by the browser that assists in user interest inference and anonymization in the ad ecosystem. This service replaces the current model where ad networks store cross-site identifiers for interest-based ad targeting.

The service will use Private and Anonymized Requests for Ads that Keep Efficacy and Enhance Transparency ("PARAKEET").

PARAKEET is a service for anonymizing ad requests and user interest inference support. It has many advantages including strong privacy contracts based on differential privacy and ad request anonymization, user transparency and control of ad interest membership and granularity, monetization that leverages both site context and ad interest information in a unified request.

The service aims to offer significant privacy improvements with fewer changes (relative to other proposals in this space) required on the part of website owners which will help accelerate adoption in the ad ecosystem.

Read the complete Explainer.

Feedback

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