Google's New Privacy Setting Will Let You Block Real Time Ad Auctions

Every time you visit a website or open an app, an invisible auction takes place. Your location, device details, browsing history, and inferred interests are packaged into a "bid request" and broadcast to thousands of advertisers in milliseconds. This system, called real time bidding, exposes your personal information hundreds of times daily with virtually no oversight.

A new class action settlement with Google is about to change that. Google must create a privacy setting called RTB Control that allows users to block their data from being shared in these auctions. It is the first time a major ad platform has been required to give users this level of control over the surveillance advertising ecosystem.

How Real Time Bidding Exposes Your Data

Real time bidding works like a stock exchange for your attention. When you load a webpage, the site sends your information to ad tech companies. These companies package your data into bid requests containing your IP address, device fingerprint, location data, and inferences about your interests, then broadcast it to thousands of potential advertisers.

The entire process takes less than 100 milliseconds. But in that fraction of a second, your personal information reaches companies you have never interacted with and never consented to share data with. Anyone posing as an ad buyer can access this stream of sensitive data about billions of individuals every day.

The Privacy Violations RTB Enables

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has documented how this system has been exploited for surveillance and discrimination:

• Data brokers have used RTB data to track union organizers at their workplaces
• A Catholic publication used RTB data to identify gay priests and out them publicly
• Federal agencies including ICE, CBP, and the FBI have purchased location data from brokers with RTB connections
• Foreign intelligence services have accessed RTB data for surveillance operations

The system was built for advertising but has become a surveillance infrastructure that anyone with money can access.

What the Settlement Requires

Under the settlement terms, Google must implement several specific changes:

• Create an RTB Control setting in user privacy preferences
• When enabled, bid requests will exclude pseudonymous IDs, mobile advertising IDs, IP addresses, and user agent details
• The setting will prevent cookie matching, a technique companies use to link data profiles to bid requests
• Google must notify all users about this new control via email

This represents a significant shift. For the first time, users will have a direct way to stop their data from being broadcast to thousands of unknown companies in real time auctions.

The Limitations You Should Know

Privacy advocates at the EFF note that while this settlement represents progress, it has significant limitations:

• The RTB Control is opt in, not opt out. Most users will never find or enable it
• It only works for users who are signed into a Google account
• Users who disable third party cookies for privacy reasons cannot access this protection
• Other ad platforms like Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft continue operating their own RTB systems

The irony is that users who have already taken steps to protect their privacy by blocking cookies are excluded from this new protection entirely.

What This Means for Regulation

The settlement comes as lawmakers in both the US and EU debate whether to ban surveillance advertising entirely. The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, reintroduced in Congress, would prohibit the use of personal data for ad targeting altogether, restricting targeting to context and generalized location data at the city level.

Privacy researchers argue that opt in controls, while better than nothing, do not address the fundamental problem. The financial incentive to track users drives the entire surveillance ecosystem. As long as behavioral advertising remains more profitable than contextual advertising, companies will find ways to collect and monetize user data.

How to Protect Yourself Now

Until the RTB Control setting becomes available, you can take several steps to limit your exposure to real time bidding:

• Use browser extensions like Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin that block tracking requests
• Disable your mobile advertising ID in your phone's privacy settings
• Use a privacy focused browser like Firefox or Brave with strict tracking protection enabled
• Consider a VPN to mask your IP address from bid requests

Watch for Google's email notification about the new RTB Control setting. When it arrives, enabling it will not solve the surveillance advertising problem, but it will reduce the number of companies that receive your data in real time.

The Bigger Picture

This settlement is a symptom of a larger problem. The entire business model of the modern internet is built on collecting and monetizing user data. Real time bidding is just the most efficient system yet devised for turning your personal information into advertising revenue.

Whether through settlements, legislation, or market pressure, the question is whether we can reform this system before it causes more harm. The RTB Control setting is a small step, but it establishes a precedent: users should have the right to stop their data from being auctioned off to the highest bidder.