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In a mid-February blog post, Google indicated that its goal “is to develop effective and privacy enhancing advertising solutions, where users know their information is protected, and

developers and businesses have the tools to succeed on mobile.” Google pointed out that 90 percent of the apps available in its Google Play store are free and that digital advertising plays

a key role in making that possible. How exactly Google plans to thread this needle, much less how the Privacy Sandbox will ultimately play out for consumers, is murky. "Let me be clear:

When Google says, 'Let these companies make money on ads,' Google is the company making money on ads. It’s not close. They are by far the biggest mobile advertiser in the

world," says staff technologist Bennett Cyphers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit civil liberties advocacy group in San Francisco. As an Android user, you can do

something about your privacy immediately. Android devices carry a unique advertising ID, a string of characters that Google says helps developers monetize their apps or, couched differently,

use targeted ads to profit off what they learn about you and share with others. But late last year, Google gave users the ability to disable the advertising ID, which many — if not most —

of you may want to do. In Settings on an Android smartphone, choose Privacy | Ads. On the third screen you can choose whether to Reset your advertising ID and your phone will start gathering

new information or Delete your advertising ID to get general ads. AARP WHAT TO DO ON ANDROID If you’re running the Android 12 mobile operating system on your phone, go to SETTINGS, scroll

down to Privacy, and tap ADS. You have two choices. You can tap RESET ADVERTISING ID, which doesn’t remove the advertising ID, it just starts a new one. Or you can tap DELETE ADVERTISING ID,

which does just that. Keep in mind that deleting the advertising ID doesn’t mean you’ll stop seeing ads, just that they will no longer be personalized. Rather than a set of numbers that

identify your device, developers will see a string of zeros instead. The privacy trade-off is that you may start to see ads that you find less interesting or relevant. If this becomes an

issue, you always can get a fresh advertising ID later.