In late 2013, Google was reported to be working on a new form of user-tracking device that might replace cookies, the little bits of software that record your web browsing history and provide that information as targeting data to advertisers. This week we spotted the new system, "Advertising ID," in the wild. We know it's being used to track users with newer versions of Android phones. We believe it is running on KitKat, the latest version of Android. Below, we'll show you how to locate Advertising ID in your settings and turn it off or on. Its appearance suggests that Android users' mobile phone use is now trackable with both traditional web cookies in the Android Chrome browser and Google's new Advertising ID. What we don't know is exactly how it works, or what it is tracking. But given that it's intended to provide usage data for advertisers, it's a reasonable assumption that it's tracking your web browsing and possibly your app usage too. One possible difference is that Advertising ...
