Google Retired Privacy Sandbox — But Ad Tracking Didn’t Stop (Comprehensive Guide)

For five years, Google promised to kill the third-party cookie. It was supposed to be the funeral of the decade.

Since 2020, the plan was simple: phase out the old, invasive cookies that follow you around the web, and replace them with a “Privacy Sandbox.” Google pitched it as a win-win—better privacy for you, sustainable ads for them.

Spoiler alert: They changed their minds.

In late 2024, facing angry advertisers and antitrust regulators, Google pulled a massive U-turn. They announced they would not be killing third-party cookies after all. Instead, they decided to introduce a “User Choice” model.

Translation? They kept the old tracking system and launched the new one anyway.

Congratulations! You now get the worst of both worlds. This pivot created a “Double Tracking” nightmare for the average user in 2025. Because the original plan was scrapped, the old trackers are still alive. But the new profiling tools—specifically the Topics API—were still pushed out to billions of Android and Chrome users.

Here is your new reality:

• External Tracking: Websites still use legacy cookies to log where you go.
• Internal Profiling: Your own phone now scans your app history to label you with interests like “Debt Services” or “Medical Issues.”

Google rebranded these new tools under a friendly menu called “Ad Privacy.” But let’s be real: your phone isn’t protecting your privacy; it’s curating a dossier on you. Even incognito mode is not safe as you think it is.

This guide is your decoder ring. We’re going to bypass the marketing fluff, explain the system-level surveillance running on your Android device, and show you exactly which buttons to click to stop the double-dipping.

If you are concerned about how your browser tracks your interests, you likely want to disable Google Ad Privacy features.

This step is the logical follow-up after you delete your Google Advertising ID. With the release of the “Privacy Sandbox,” Google changed how it tracks users, shifting from cookies to “topics.”

Fortunately, it is straightforward to turn these settings off if you know where to look. This guide ensures you can navigate the settings menu and protect your data. To fix this, use our [PixelDefence Protocol].

What Happened to the Privacy Sandbox?

For years, Google promised to kill third-party cookies with an initiative called the “Privacy Sandbox.” However, facing regulatory pressure and ad-industry pushback, they shifted strategies in 2025.

The result is a rebrand. The underlying tracking technology (formerly FLoC, then Topics) is now live and active on billions of devices, but it is buried under a friendly-sounding menu called “Ad Privacy.”

The Reality: Your Chrome browser and Android phone are no longer just passive tools; they are now active ad-servers that analyze your behavior locally to assign you “interest categories.”

Why You Should Disable Google Ad Privacy

Many users choose to disable Google Ad Privacy because they are uncomfortable with a browser determining their interests.

By default, Chrome notes the topics you browse and shares them with websites to serve relevant ads.

Just as it is critical to stop Facebook tracking offline, you must control Chrome’s settings to maintain your privacy.

When you disable Google Ad Privacy, you stop the browser from curating this profile, giving you significantly more anonymity.

Decoding the “Ad Privacy” Menu

When I first opened my Chrome settings to find the “Privacy Sandbox,” I thought I was in the wrong menu. The familiar names were gone.

Instead, I found a new section called “Ad Privacy.” It sounds helpful, doesn’t it? It sounds like a place where you go to stop ads. But when I dug into the developer documentation, I realized the opposite is true. This isn’t a privacy shield; it’s a control panel for Google’s new tracking engine.

To help you navigate this “rebrand,” I created this Rosetta Stone to translate what Google says versus what the feature actually does.

The 2025 Google Decoder Ring

The Old Term	The New Menu Name	What It Actually Does
Privacy Sandbox	Ad Privacy	The umbrella term for the new tracking system running on your device.
FLoC / Topics	Ad Topics	Your phone scans your browsing history to guess your interests (e.g., “Debt”).
FLEDGE	Site-suggested Ads	Lets websites “tag” you so their ads can follow you to other sites.
Attribution API	Ad Measurement	Reports to advertisers when you click or buy something.

Inside the Machine: How Your Phone Profiles You

I wanted to see exactly what my device thought of me, so I enabled these features for a week. The results were unsettling. The system doesn’t just look at what you click; it fundamentally changes how your browser works.

1. Ad Topics (Your Browser as an Ad Server)

This is the core of the new system. Under the hood, your Chrome browser (or Android OS) runs a local analysis of your history every 7 days. Google calls these weekly cycles “Epochs.”

Based on the sites I visited, the system assigned me specific labels from a list of over 470 categories. Some were innocent, like “Autos & Vehicles.” Others felt invasive, like “Credit & Lending” or “Health Conditions.”

The Privacy Trap: Google argues this is private because the data stays on your device. But here is my counter-argument: Why is my own phone acting as a snitch? When I visit a participating website, my browser voluntarily hands over my top 3 interests to that site. It’s not a cookie tracking me anymore; it’s my own device broadcasting my personality to every advertiser I meet.

2. Site-Suggested Ads (Retargeting 2.0)

You know how you look at a pair of shoes on Amazon, and then that shoe follows you to Instagram? That used to happen via third-party cookies. Google killed the cookie, but they built this feature to replace it.

With “Site-suggested ads,” the shoe store can ask your browser to “remember” that you liked those sneakers. Later, when you are on a news site, your browser sees an empty ad slot and says, “Hey, I have a saved ad for sneakers, should I show it?”

Again, the tracking has moved from the cloud to your local hard drive.

3. Ad Measurement (The Report Card)

This feature creates a report card of your clicks. It allows advertisers to verify if their ads are working without needing to track your every move. While this is the “least” invasive of the three, it is still a mechanism that turns your personal device into a marketing analytics tool.

The Bottom Line: I found that “Ad Privacy” is a misnomer. A better name would be “Device-Based Surveillance.” And unlike cookies, you can’t just clear your cache to wipe the slate clean—you have to shut the machine down at the source.

The “Invisible” Trackers (Android & Play Services)

After I disabled the Ad Topics and cleared my browser, I felt a moment of victory. I thought I had won.

But then I looked at the system logs.

Disabling the “Ad Privacy” menu is like locking the front door of your house while the entire back wall is missing. While you are busy tweaking user-facing toggles, the Android operating system itself is running a deeper, more pervasive layer of surveillance that you cannot easily turn off.

1. The “App Set ID” (The Zombie Tracker)

For years, privacy advocates told us to “Delete your Advertising ID.” And in 2025, Google finally made that easy to do. But here is the catch: when you kill the Advertising ID, a new one often rises to take its place.

It’s called the App Set ID.

Google claims this identifier is for “fraud prevention” and “analytics,” not ads. But functionally, it creates a persistent link between all the apps on your phone. Even if you opt out of personalized ads, this ID allows a developer to know that the person playing Candy Crush is the same person using a specific Fitness App, building a behavioral profile that doesn’t need an Ad ID to be valuable.

It’s a game of privacy Whack-a-Mole. You hit one tracker, and another pops up with a different name.

2. Google Play Services (The “God Mode” App)

If you have an Android phone, there is one app you cannot uninstall, cannot disable, and cannot restrict. It’s called Google Play Services, and it is the heartbeat of the Android surveillance state.

Unlike normal apps that ask for permission to see your location or contacts, Play Services runs with System Privileges. It bypasses the rules.

• The Frequency: Network traffic analysis suggests that Play Services pings Google’s servers as frequently as every 15 minutes, even when your phone is sitting idle in your pocket.
• The Data: It collects device telemetry, location capability, and “usage stats” that act as a fingerprint of your digital life.

I tried to block it using a standard firewall. The result? My phone broke. Notifications stopped, maps crashed, and Uber wouldn’t load. Google has engineered the system so that you cannot extract the spy without killing the patient.

3. Chrome “IP Protection” (The Trojan Horse)

Finally, there is the newest feature appearing in Chrome: “IP Protection.”

On the surface, this sounds amazing. Google promises to route your traffic through a proxy server so websites can’t see your real IP address. It sounds like a free VPN.

Do not be fooled.

When you use a standard VPN, you are trusting a third party to hide you from Google. When you use “IP Protection,” you are asking Google itself to be the middleman. They are masking your IP from other websites, but in doing so, you are routing your entire browsing history through Google’s own servers.

It is the classic “Fox guarding the henhouse” scenario. You gain privacy from the small trackers, but you hand total visibility to the biggest tracker of them all.

The “Ghost Data” (Maps & Location)

Of all the data points I looked at, location is the most sensitive. It’s one thing for Google to know I like “Tech News”; it’s another for them to know exactly where I sleep.

In 2025, Google made a huge PR move. They announced that Google Maps Timeline (your location history) would move to “On-Device Storage.” They claimed this was a win for privacy.

I call it the “Great Deception.”

While Google technically moved the visible history map to my phone, I discovered they left the invisible tracking mechanisms wide open.

1. The Timeline “Deletion” Scandal

When I migrated my own data during the 2025 shift, I saw the warning pop-up: “Cloud backups will be deleted.” It sounded like they were wiping the slate clean.

But “On-Device” doesn’t mean “Private.” It just means you are responsible for the data storage. Google states this data is used for core device functionality, but the opacity around retention, aggregation, and secondary use remains a concern for privacy researchers.

Even with my Timeline “paused” and stored locally, my phone continued to ping local cell towers and Wi-Fi networks to triangulate my position for “Find My Device” services. The map was gone, but the signal remained.

2. The “Web & App” Loophole

This is the sneakiest trick in the book. I turned off “Location History,” thinking I was safe. Then I dug into a setting called “Web & App Activity.”

It turns out, Google doesn’t need a GPS log to know where you are. They just need your search bar.

• When I searched for “Coffee near me,” they logged my location.
• When I checked the weather, they logged my location.
• When I opened Google News, they logged my location.

They classify this as “App Activity,” not “Location History,” so it bypasses the main toggle entirely. It is Ghost Data—location points hidden inside non-location files.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. For the full story on how your location is harvested (and how to actually stop it), read our upcoming investigation into the [Google Maps Timeline Scandal].

Step-by-Step Guide to Disable Google Ad Privacy

Understanding the surveillance is important, but stopping it is better.

I spent hours digging through nested menus to find the “Kill Switches” for these new trackers. It turns out, you can’t just press one button. You have to disable the tracking on three distinct layers: the browser, the operating system, and the cloud account.

Here is exactly how I did it.

Layer 1: The Browser (Chrome Desktop & Mobile)

This stops your browser from generating interest labels based on your history.

For Desktop:

• Open Chrome and type this into the address bar: chrome://settings/adPrivacy

• You will see three large tiles. You must click into each one.
  • Ad Topics: Toggle this OFF. (Stops the interest profiling).
  • Site-suggested ads: Toggle this OFF. (Stops the “retargeting” tags).
  • Ad measurement: Toggle this OFF. (Stops the reporting).

For Chrome Mobile:

1. Tap the three dots (Menu) > Settings.
2. Scroll down to Privacy and security > Ad privacy.
3. Repeat the process: Open all three sub-menus and toggle them OFF.

Layer 2: The Operating System (Android)

Mobile users often forget that they need to disable Google Ad Privacy on the system level, not just in the Chrome browser app. This is the most critical step. If you don’t do this, your phone will profile you even if you switch to a different browser like Firefox.

1. Open your phone’s main Settings.
2. Navigate to Security & privacy > More privacy settings > Ads.
   • Note: On some Samsung devices, this is hidden under “Privacy” > “Other privacy settings” > “Ads”.
3. Step A (The New System): Tap Ad privacy and disable the familiar trio: Topics, Site-suggested ads, and Ad measurement.

1. Step B (The Legacy System): Go back one screen and tap “Delete advertising ID”.
   • Warning: Do not just “Reset” it. Delete it. This breaks the link for older apps that haven’t updated to the new system yet.

Layer 3: The Cloud (My Ad Center)

Finally, I had to stop Google from tracking me on their own properties (YouTube, Search, Discover).

Go to myadcenter.google.com.

In the top right corner, you will see a big toggle named “Personalized ads”.

Turn it OFF.

The Result: You will still see ads, but they will be generic. Google will stop using your search history and YouTube views to target them.

FAQ & Conclusion

This entire investigation taught me one thing: complexity is the enemy of privacy. Google relies on users being too confused to change the defaults.

To wrap this up, here are the answers to the most common questions I hear about the 2025 privacy shifts.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Conclusion: The “Privacy” Rebrand

After dissecting the new settings, my conclusion is simple: Google didn’t stop tracking us; they just changed the menu labels.

The shift from “Privacy Sandbox” to “Ad Privacy” was a masterclass in user interface design. By framing surveillance features as “Privacy” controls, they convinced millions of users to leave them turned on.

True privacy in 2025 requires digging deeper than the default settings. Ultimately, the only way to opt out of this new tracking standard is to manually disable Google Ad Privacy across all your devices.

Don’t assume switching to Apple solves everything. Their ‘Private Cloud Compute’ has its own risks. If you are on Apple’s latest hardware, check out our audit on iPhone 17 Pro Max privacy settings to see what they are hiding

This guide tackled the ad trackers, but remember: this is just one head of the hydra. If you haven’t secured your location data yet, your next stop should be our investigation into the [Google Maps Timeline Scandal] .

Stay privacy-aware.

Sources & Documentation

• Google Official Blog: Update on the Privacy Sandbox (2025 Pivot)
• Chrome Developers: The Topics API: How it works
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” Still Tracks You

About the Author Rock is a technology writer and privacy researcher focused on consumer data protection and digital surveillance. He analyzes cybersecurity trends and platform vulnerabilities for Pixel Defence.