Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 213 posts

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#181

Post by FungalRaincloud »

neotek wrote: post #142

You can't go to Google and say "I want to buy a dataset (anonymous or otherwise) of males aged between 18 to 34 who likes cars and drink beer". You can go to Google and say "here's an ad I want you to show to a group of people, none of whom will ever be identifiable to me in any way, who are male aged between 18 to 34 who like cars and drink beer." That's what I don't understand about all this outrage - nobody, not F…

It seems that there's a split between people who are complaining because the ads are "relevant" to only one aspect of their history, and do not change often enough, and people complaining that the ads are not at all relevant to their history. I can get how the first category would be frustrating - it's a primary motivator for my own not using hulu video for a while. I got very sick of seeing the same 3 commercials over and over again. I use adblock, save for certain websites, but when I have it off, as long as the ad makes no sound, I tend to mentally filter it out, but if I was unable to do that, I would probably be frustrated by constant repetition, as well. The second category confuses me, though. These are ads. If they're not relevant to you, they are easily ignored. Sure, it's strange that they suck at targeting you, and maybe that just means you're hard to target, but why is it so bothersome to just look away?

I do have my own concerns about bulk data collection. I've mentioned in other posts that I used to do everything I could to avoid being tracked online, but have since changed course to allowing google to track as much as they want. My reasoning is that if I am at risk of being deanonymized in a way that would make me uncomfortable, it's the service that gets the most information from me that is going to notice first. If that is a service that is responsible in its reporting (e.g. I can look at what is tracked about me and make my own conclusions), I'm better able to protect myself from harm. I am, of course, concerned with giving even a responsible corporation all of that information for the bare reason that even responsible corporations hire people who are not quite so responsible. But I would rather have knowledge of what can be known from my history, than fight off everyone who attempts to track me online. At least, as long as there is a strong incentive to track people who do not want to be tracked.

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#182

Post by pilif »

corecoder wrote: post #103

I don't know, I'm starting to think that all this is either propaganda for ad sellers or a prank Google, Facebook et all are doing to me. Google has my full search history, all my hangout chats, all my e-mails, and yet: * On my Android, it keeps proposing ultra boring "stories to read" about soccer, wannabe celebrities and YouTube videos of stupid teenagers doing stupid things; * With the sole exception of when the s…

Maybe nobody is interested in buying ads for the stuff you are interested in and conversely, the people making ads for the stuff you dislike have so much money that it's worth it to them to invest in trying to make you buy their stuff despite your dislike.

So in a sense, targeted ads are only worth it for the ad seller who can try to squeeze even higher prices from the ad buyer.

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#183

Post by pilif »

makomk wrote: post #178
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Google has created a perverse incentive here. They give me a ton of choices, so many and so vaguely explained that I couldn't possibly understand what they really mean and I get suspicous of everything they offer me. So what I do is disable everything without even thinking. Later when something isn't working as expected and it turns out it's because of one of those privacy settings, I start to think about whether…

Google also has an obnoxious "if we can't keep it, you can't either" approach to user data. For example, I have location history turned off for obvious reasons and tried using the Google Maps app. I wound up having to re-enter my destination several times due to accidentally doing something that cancelled the navigation and caused it to instantly forget the destination. As another example, Google's new Allo messaging…

If they did support keeping the history but only using it for you, it would be even harder for them to credibly prove that they are not keeping the history for advertisement purposes ("I have disabled you keeping any location history and still you list the places I have been to? How dare you??").

I can understand your point about allo more, though of course storing the local history unencrypted also means that it's going to be accessible to interested third parties in one way or another. If they don't keep it at all, it means that it won't be.

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#184

Post by wtbob »

bad_user wrote: post #172
wtbob wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla cannot decrypt and read your data. Completely false: they can if they want to. All they have to do is serve a new login page to you which transmits your password as well as the derived key. They control the login page, they control the JavaScript which derives the key. They can do it at any time, invisibly. This is different from trusting them to make a trustworthy browser, because you download the browser…

> the old protocol was very suitable It wasn't, because I've managed to lose my history with it. I very much prefer my history to be synchronized to a server I cannot lose. If your objection is not about cloud storage, then your objection isn't about the protocol, but its implementation (e.g. usage of HTML/Javascript): https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server/wiki/onepw-protoc... > you download the browser once Tha…

> Modern browsers are set to upgrade automatically in the background, without notifying the user.

My browser isn't; I use the Debian Firefox package and update it on my schedule.

> If you're paranoid, you can self-host your own Sync server

Only if you host it locally; if you host it at a VPS/dedicated-system provider then you're trusting that provider never to break into your system.

It's bad social hygiene to develop systems which are breakable.

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#185

Post by wtbob »

pietroalbini wrote: post #179
wtbob wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla cannot decrypt and read your data. Completely false: they can if they want to. All they have to do is serve a new login page to you which transmits your password as well as the derived key. They control the login page, they control the JavaScript which derives the key. They can do it at any time, invisibly. This is different from trusting them to make a trustworthy browser, because you download the browser…

You can also use your own auth server if you want... Just host it on your machines and change the URL in about:config.

> You can also use your own auth server if you want

The problem with that is that if the auth server is on a machine you don't have complete control over (e.g. one hosted by a dedicated-system or VPS provider) then you are trusting that provider to never break into your machine; you are also trusting that machine never to be broken into via some remote exploit.

That's far too much trust for a system hosting sensitive data like passwords. The only secure thing is to deploy a system with as little trust as possible.

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#186

Post by pietroalbini »

wtbob wrote: post #185
pietroalbini wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also use your own auth server if you want... Just host it on your machines and change the URL in about:config.

> You can also use your own auth server if you want The problem with that is that if the auth server is on a machine you don't have complete control over (e.g. one hosted by a dedicated-system or VPS provider) then you are trusting that provider to never break into your machine; you are also trusting that machine never to be broken into via some remote exploit. That's far too much trust for a system hosting sensitive…

Then host the auth server locally on your device.

The great thing about the self-hosted sync server is, the storage and auth components are separated, and the storage one just stores encrypted blobs.

If you want you can trust Mozilla with the authentication part while storing everything where you prefer, but if you're worried about a javascript change set up an auth server locally, create an account in it and copy it on every device you own: since it stores only account details which doesn't change, you don't have to worry about replication.

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#187

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

blowski wrote: post #82
wyaeld wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the right thing for customers, or for shareholders?

Like all profit-making businesses, they try to balance the interests of both in the short term to maximise shareholder value in the long run. A few Hacker News users being opposed to this doesn't make Google evil. A lot of people don't care, and I've met some who think it's a good idea.

so in the beginning Google has declared to have valued such things as customer privacy (the "don't be evil" motto seems to indicate that), my guess is that this was a deliberate strategy in order to gain trust and influence.

Nowadays all that seem to be less of a priority for Google; now what happens with the shareholder value when a large proportion of the customers again start to value their privacy over convenience ?

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#188

Post by neotek »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #170
neotek wrote: post #142

You can't go to Google and say "I want to buy a dataset (anonymous or otherwise) of males aged between 18 to 34 who likes cars and drink beer". You can go to Google and say "here's an ad I want you to show to a group of people, none of whom will ever be identifiable to me in any way, who are male aged between 18 to 34 who like cars and drink beer." That's what I don't understand about all this outrage - nobody, not F…

Even if the data is anonymized, isn't there a risk of a data leak, someone inferring your identity based on your browsing preferences? Like imagine someone who lives in a small town who's really into model railroads, and nobody else around is. Whoever from xyz location has done lots of browsing about model railroads, is likely that person and now we can see what else he/she's been browsing.

The data's being collected regardless of whether they use it to target ads at you, the risk profile doesn't change at all.

Re: Google will use Chrome browsing data for ad tailoring

#189

Post by neotek »

PunchTornado wrote: post #147
neotek wrote: post #142

You can't go to Google and say "I want to buy a dataset (anonymous or otherwise) of males aged between 18 to 34 who likes cars and drink beer". You can go to Google and say "here's an ad I want you to show to a group of people, none of whom will ever be identifiable to me in any way, who are male aged between 18 to 34 who like cars and drink beer." That's what I don't understand about all this outrage - nobody, not F…

because it is very annoying to see everywhere on your computer ads for pillows for a month only because you've searched for pillows on google shopping. and i'm not talking only about browser, but every app that has ads, like skype. I was going crazy. never search on google shopping again on chrome.

So don't opt in to targeted ads. Google, Facebook, etc all provide ways for you to opt out completely.

Also, from what I can tell, the parent post is about a Google program that's opt-in rather than opt-out so it's not even on by default anyway, I can't see what's so bad about it.

Post reply on HN