Live data from Hacker News

How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

wired.com

31–40 of 139 posts

Re: How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

#31
post #21
post #17

I don't understand how targeted ads on Grindr can be used to get peoples locations. Does the ad auction tell the users current location? Does grindr let you run your own auction bidder on your own machine?

Ad serves up an image hosted by the advertiser. Phone makes an http get for the image and gives out its IP. You can also target ads by geography and do a lat/long box over your target area and show a specific ad so you know how many unique users are in that area.

Giving up the IP is against the GDPR.

Re: How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

#32

At least I'm old enough that I can still go places without a phone.

A friend of mine had a girl he was dating drop him because she couldn't understand why he didn't text her all the time- never mind that he worked at a Navy facility that didn't allow cell phones.

Re: How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

#33
post #6

>Working with Grindr data, Yeagley began drawing geofences—creating virtual boundaries in geographical data sets—around buildings belonging to government agencies that do national security work. Are you seriously telling me that government phones of national security employees allow for the installation of apps that track your location and/or these employees are allowed to bring personal cell phones into these buildi…

When we had to go into SCIFs, generally phones went into lockers. At some locations, phones stayed in cars. But that doesn't make it any harder to figure out. But this isn't the first time people are encountering this problem. Strava has given away plenty of US military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki... Russia has the same problem, VKontakte has given away plenty of secret Russian…

When I was in the military cell phones were extremely new, but I honestly don't see why most commands don't say "leave phones and other electronics at home when coming to base" and then you just tell anyone who needs to contact you to call the command quarterdeck or whatever. Examples you just gave are good reasons to do this, much like how in the 90's during Desert Storm several people figured out (post-hoc, but still) that there were a buttload more pizza orders from government offices relating to the invasion of Iraq. I'm a former shithead officer, though, so it's easy for me to just say "ban the phones!" instead of trying to figure out a smarter solution. Maybe beepers will make a comeback, since you can't track a multicast, receive-only client?

Re: How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

#34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad serves up an image hosted by the advertiser. Phone makes an http get for the image and gives out its IP. You can also target ads by geography and do a lat/long box over your target area and show a specific ad so you know how many unique users are in that area.

Giving up the IP is against the GDPR.

this about US not EU

Re: How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

#35
Android lets you delete the advertising id that's mentioned in the article, as well as reset it. Does anybody who is in Adtech know what that does in terms of identifiability on brokers? Am I now "anon at location x,y", or am I "anon4321 at location x,y”?

Re: How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

#36
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad serves up an image hosted by the advertiser. Phone makes an http get for the image and gives out its IP. You can also target ads by geography and do a lat/long box over your target area and show a specific ad so you know how many unique users are in that area.

Giving up the IP is against the GDPR.

That hasn’t stopped RTB (real time bidding) mechanisms from leaking personal data to hundred/thousands of third parties yet.

Re: How The Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets

#39
post #17

I don't understand how targeted ads on Grindr can be used to get peoples locations. Does the ad auction tell the users current location? Does grindr let you run your own auction bidder on your own machine?

SnapChat does the same thing, we (not me technically, I am just a developer that worked with our ad team) set up Geofences around events to serve ads and we could continue to target those users for continuous remarketing as soon as they stepped foot into and out of a location of our choosing. In our case it was mostly a concert and car race. We knew -a lot- more than we probably should have. You could push filters, and all kinds of stuff within those custom geofences. Facebook & Google have similar, but it's not near as granular as what I saw with Snap. They might have changed it by now, this is when they first were getting into advertising. It honestly wasn't very effective, probably because of the demographic that uses SnapChat.

Tiktok was used to find and track/monitor Chinese dissident whereabouts a few years ago by the CCP in Hong Kong.

Post reply on HN