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I left the ad industry because of data tracking

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Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#31

Post by jefftk »

titzer wrote: post #19

We need to stand up and demand that all devices capable of surveillance run only open source software. Period.

Open source doesn't fix much. Most ad tracking today happens via well understood open technology, and then adtech companies build profiles server side. Here's something very simple and fully opensourceable that would still provide lots of tracking capability:

* Get lots of sites to put an img tag that references your site, perhaps by paying them a tiny amount per visitor

* When you get a request, assign a cookie if there isn't one. Log the cookie and the referrer.

* Sort your logs by cookie. Each cookie represents someone's browsing history, and the more complete your distribution of pixels is the more complete your view is.

You can opt out of this client side by blocking the requests (adblocker) or by using a browser that blocks 3rd party cookies (ex: Safari) but open source doesn't do much here.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#32

Post by datenhorst »

As a citizen of the EU, I really want to find out what the advertising industry has on me. I once filed a GDPR Art. 5 request with Quantcast but forgot about it - they give you a link to S3 with a promise that there will be a ZIP containing data within 30 days.

What other hidden players are out there? I know next to nothing about the ad industry

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#33

Post by jefftk »

icebraining wrote: post #21
luckylion wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless the site is only available to German users, you should be able to file a complain with any of EU member state regulators, and not all are so timid as that. You can, but they will forward that to the applicable authority, which will be the local German one for German sites.

On what do you base this? Facebook is registered in Ireland, yet multiple EU authorities have fined them.

For very large companies that do business in many countries regulators have various concerns (power of the company relative to the country, jurisdiction shopping via choice of headquarters location, etc) that don't apply for the typical case of a German company with a German audience.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#34

Post by thedevilslawyer »

jefftk wrote: post #31
titzer wrote: post #19

We need to stand up and demand that all devices capable of surveillance run only open source software. Period.

Open source doesn't fix much. Most ad tracking today happens via well understood open technology, and then adtech companies build profiles server side. Here's something very simple and fully opensourceable that would still provide lots of tracking capability: * Get lots of sites to put an img tag that references your site, perhaps by paying them a tiny amount per visitor * When you get a request, assign a cookie if t…

In the parent post's defense, open source would actually allow for looking at exactly what data is sent how. And hold the companies accountable. This would be dead easy, without the need for whistle-blowing, or reverse engineering

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#35

Post by tomrod »

user17843 wrote: post #12

I have yet to see a real whistleblower report by someone deep into the ad industry revealing whats really going on there. There are almost no details about what's really happening on a technical level (beyond the little things we already know), and whether large data sets are abused in the sense that they get routinely de-anonymised.

I worked some in marketing and targeting modeling within retail finance.

From what I saw, the data privacy rules and client contracts are followed scrupulously, and infractions are noted and remediated. Encryption slowed us down at least 10X,and bureaucracy another 10X.

While frustrating at times, I appreciated that most if not all actually wanted to stay well within the legal guardrails.

Of course, this is one person's experience, and obviously can't apply to every company. Genie and cork, toothpaste, and all that.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#36

Post by pure-awesome »

Aromasin wrote: post #25
zed88 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a hint https://docs.fullcontact.com/#enrich-api

As an engineer, I'm amazed. As a person who doesn't want the person on the other end of every website I visit to know who exactly I am, I feel violated. At this point though, all I feel I can do as a hapless consumer is to desensitize myself to said violation. I use a VPN, Pi-Hole, Ghostery and Firefox. All of these a relatively recent additions though, so if a website can get my email and that links to an already ex…

Just making sure you're aware of the discussion around Ghostery that's happened here on HackerNews, so you can make an informed decision:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15969525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16809625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13652126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9617827

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#37

Post by kasey_junk »

datenhorst wrote: post #32

As a citizen of the EU, I really want to find out what the advertising industry has on me. I once filed a GDPR Art. 5 request with Quantcast but forgot about it - they give you a link to S3 with a promise that there will be a ZIP containing data within 30 days. What other hidden players are out there? I know next to nothing about the ad industry

IAB Europe is the industry group representing ad tech in Europe. Their member list will give you tons of organizations that makeup the internet ad ecosystem. Note these are not “hidden” they are the above board members. Shady operators likely have no interest in joining industry groups but if they want to be able to credibly sell to big advertisers they will be.

https://www.iabeurope.eu/membership/member-directory/

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#38

Post by adrianN »

ramraj07 wrote: post #24
user17843 wrote: post #12

I have yet to see a real whistleblower report by someone deep into the ad industry revealing whats really going on there. There are almost no details about what's really happening on a technical level (beyond the little things we already know), and whether large data sets are abused in the sense that they get routinely de-anonymised.

This comes from discussions and lectures from people working on engineering in some ad aggregstors - at least one said that in the end, they have a table with 300 million IDs for each person in the country and they key all the data they can link to that person with this id. In principle this data is annonymized. But does that make a difference? At least in health care people worry about hipaa and do audits to minimiz…

It's basically impossible to anonymize data. There a numerous papers about how little data is enough to uniquely identify people. Things like the zipcode where you start your commute and the zipcode where your commute ends are enough to identify the vast majority of people.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#39

Post by kasey_junk »

user17843 wrote: post #18
A2017U1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even government departments trying their very best to anonymise data tend to mess it up, what makes you think an advertising company has any interest in doing the same? Their entire existence is built upon deanonymising and monetising that data.

Nothing makes me think this. But since officially everything is pseudonymous, how would it be possible to have a website dedicated to showing the data someone has about me? Privacy International did a piece on this kind of ad-tech data survaillance and they were saying "Here is the shocking details what an ad-company knew about me when I asked them to share everything with me in line with GDPR" Then I emailed Privacy…

I helped implement the GDPR data request flow at a company with segment data.

Some of the big challenges of the system was a) convincing requesters that we couldn’t look them up by name and b) teaching them how to find the things we could look them up by (cookie Id or apple/android advertiser Id).

It was one of the ugly ironies of the system that we had to build a name collection capability when we didn’t want it.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#40

Post by jccalhoun »

What are they doing with all this data tracking because it sure isn't giving me relevant ads. In addition to the often noted situation where you buy something online and then get ads for that thing you already bought, I routinely see totally irrelevant ads and recommendations.

I've been on Facebook since around 2003. I've had an Amazon account for even longer. Their ads and recommendations for me are terrible.

Two recent examples from facebook: they recommended I join a group for progressive christian asian-americans. I am not christian or of asian descent. More recently they gave me an ad for maximizing tax right offs for nannies. I have no children and make way too little to even consider hiring a nanny.

Facebook has my picture. They know my relationship status. They have the text of all my posts where I have never mentioned children. They even know my occupation. Whatever they are doing with this data isn't working.

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