IP address protection

For years we’ve been told that browsers were going to build new IP address protection (“obfuscation”) into their technology. That would have put up barriers to IP authentication, one of the most common ways for users to get licensed access to publisher content. On 17 October, Google announced that they won’t be building obfuscation. You can read their blog on Privacy Sandbox if you want the technical details.

What does that mean for us? Well, as Olly Rickard put it on LinkedIn:

“We still need to move our industry on from IP authentication for security reasons, but Chrome isn’t going to force the issue.”