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

How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

abc.net.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 95 posts

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#61

Post by rm999 »

wagutina wrote: post #60

If you block 3rd party cookies, can the (exact) scenario described in the article still happen ?

Pretty sure yes; after Safari started blocking third party cookies by default a few years ago, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all started supporting the option to use first party cookies to get around this. As I understand it, they deploy code that stores tracking information on-site using first party cookies, then access that data directly.

https://digiday.com/marketing/wtf-what-are-facebooks-first-p...

https://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-adwords-respon...

https://searchengineland.com/bing-ads-apple-intelligent-trac...

Someone please correct me if my understanding of this is incorrect, I've been out the ad world for awhile (thankfully!)

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#63

Post by donjoe »

Last week, I got hit by a car while riding my bicycle. You won't believe in how many colors an upper arm can shine. Anyhow, I took a picture of the arm, shared it to a friend on WhatsApp and promptly got a newsletter from Pinterest promoting tattoo posts. I do not have the Pinterest app on my phone, barely use it otherwise and would never search for tattoos since I'm just not interested.

I've been trying to find out since then where and how Pinterest might have gotten my blue/red/yellow/green arm picture from to analyze it, interpret it and link it to my account. They might be able to search my friend's phone's pictures (in case he's got the app which I'm not sure) and link the picture back to my account. Spooky though.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#64

Post by eh78ssxv2f »

mrfusion wrote: post #55
013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

I searched for a car model and my bank called me an hour later to talk about car loans! That was my wake up moment.

Honestly, that just seems like a coincidence. Do you have thoughts on how that information got transferred?

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#65

Post by eh78ssxv2f »

anime_forever wrote: post #57
friedman23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is not the one selling your information, one of the websites you clicked probably is. They have pixels on their websites that will then match some fingerprint they generate on your browser with audiences (that contain info such as your email/phone number/etc) that already exist. If you want to challenge my assertion that Google is not selling your information please point me to where I can buy lists of emails…

That's true, but Google is one of the companies that pushed very hard to make the current situation socially acceptable and continues to promote and push technology that allows for it to continue as it's in their interest Google is a bad actor but yeah they are not the worst offender yet but I'm sure that will change in time right now they are just the enabler

> That's true, but Google is one of the companies that pushed very hard to make the current situation socially acceptable

Do you think the current situation would not have happened if Google was not there?

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#66

Post by vadym909 »

donjoe wrote: post #63

Last week, I got hit by a car while riding my bicycle. You won't believe in how many colors an upper arm can shine. Anyhow, I took a picture of the arm, shared it to a friend on WhatsApp and promptly got a newsletter from Pinterest promoting tattoo posts. I do not have the Pinterest app on my phone, barely use it otherwise and would never search for tattoos since I'm just not interested. I've been trying to find out…

I haven't used Pinterest in years and may have accidentally clicked on a Pinterest result in Google search results and suddenly started getting all kinds of desktop popup notifications from them and don't know how or why.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#67

Post by mrfusion »

eh78ssxv2f wrote: post #64
mrfusion wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I searched for a car model and my bank called me an hour later to talk about car loans! That was my wake up moment.

Honestly, that just seems like a coincidence. Do you have thoughts on how that information got transferred?

I was logged into search under my gmail address. The bank has that same address on file. They’re probably buying a data feed from the search company.

If not, maybe one of the pages I landed on was able to see my info and has a marketing deal with the bank.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#68

Post by tejtm »

chongli wrote: post #7
jlangenauer wrote: post #2

Further proof, as if any was needed, why other countries require something like the GDPR, backed up be significant penalties, and well-resourced enforcement. It won't happen in Australia though, as we are governed by fools who barely understand technology, and if they need to, rely on the representations of business to make any decisions.

From the perspective of a casual, non-European observer, the only effect of the GDPR that I've witnessed is the explosion of websites being extremely aggressive about forcing me to consent to their tracking cookies. Where is the real benefit to Europeans' privacy?

websites were already extremely aggressive about forcing you to consent before GDPR (and they still are) the difference is that some of what they are doing is a little bit more visible now.

Benefit for me is; knowledge is power. When I know a website is intent on ravaging me, I can just keep moving.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#69

Post by jhall1468 »

denerio-a wrote: post #52
jhall1468 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. A few things: 1. It takes a fairly high throne to look down on people for their employers issues. 2. You assume a great deal about what people are willing to put up with for free services. I think you're probably going to be wrong. Most people will whore themselves out for convenience because they don't care if th…

WRT point 1 - Wait what? You can work for not-not-evil employers now and all the ethical blame is on the CEO? > Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility - Bierce

Bad or good companies are subjective. My family > your ideals. Sorry man, I'm not going to take a pay cut because of your list of companies that are subjectively bad.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#70

Post by codyb »

JacobJans wrote: post #59
013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

I don't necessarily disagree with you. However, you are stating that ads for massage techniques could "break society." That just doesn't add up to me. What is not being stated here? How does this connect? (These are not rhetorical questions!)

I suppose one relatively easy scenario for me to imagine would be these massive databases of information on billions of individuals being either hacked, leaked, or taken by groups with idealogies which could use such data to discriminate or worse.

A slower moving but potentially more insiduous effect on society might be the slow cracking down of any semblance of privacy and the use of all this data to discriminate whether intentional or not.

And indeed there have already been studies showing that a lot of these AI programs trained over large data sets are discriminating against minorities and the poor. I doubt it's intentionally built into the system but it appears to be a side effect of some systems.

Post reply on HN