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CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

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Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#111

Post by noosphr »

PostOnce wrote: post #105
Cider9986 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience. More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time .

The root of all evil is that we don't have a functioning micro transaction network and we don't know how to build one.

For the user there is no way to pay the 0.0000001c that it takes to load a web page, for the web master there is no way to get paid the $10,000 it takes to serve the users. So we settled on advertising which can somewhat cover those costs since each individual add is basically worthless but an add campaign isn't.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#112

Post by godelski »

orthoxerox wrote: post #35

That's Scroogled (2007) by Cory Doctorow! Life imitates art, again. https://web.archive.org/web/20070920193501/http://www.radaro...

It's a bit crazy how much we look back at that time and what people thought was tin foil haty. But that was written in 2007, still 6 years before Snowden. 7 years before the Director of the NSA (Hayden) told Congress they kill people based on metadata.

The invasion of privacy has been slow, creeping, and just waiting for that Turnkey Tyrant. We fooled ourselves into thinking we'd never elect someone who would turn that key. But in reality the key has been slowly turning, until finally it opened the latch

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#113

Post by godelski »

PostOnce wrote: post #105
Cider9986 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience. More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time .

I know it's a cliché, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. People forget, most evil is created by good people trying to do good. The biggest trick the devil played was making us all believe evil is (always) easy to identify. But all the sayings are about how the devil is sly, tricks you, and sneaks up on you. All of that is to remind us how hard it is to do good. You don't have to be an evil person to create evil. Often you don't have to do anything at all, as inaction is still an action. Pull the lever or not, you've still made a decision.

The problem is so complex that every action you take compounds and extends far beyond what you realize. Especially as we're living in such a connected world. Those ripples propagate through all the ponds we've connected together.

I don't think it's money, convenience, or any of that. I think it's just that the world is getting more and more complicated. That our actions and inactions have larger and larger effects. We've done a lot of good, but we've also made it a lot easier to feel the flapping of a butterfly's wings on the other side of the planet.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#114

Post by gruez »

chaps wrote: post #101
legitster wrote: post #16

I work with Ad Data a lot in my job, and there's a lot of misconceptions about what this data that journalists love to propogate: The location data in these networks is very inaccurate. Your OS and browser actually do a pretty good job of locking down your location data unless you give explicit permission. It's in the ad network's interests to lie about the quality of their data - so a lot of the "location" data is g…

I worked in ad-tech for a year before I left the tech industry as a whole. I've also done a fair bit of investigative journalism. Let me share a thing: Factual, a company that specializes in hyperlocal geofencing, uses geofencing much smaller than the self-regulation that their industry allows in their own rules. I learned this after a coworker quit because our company was allowing ad targeting to people using these…

>Please try to reconcile with what your industry has and continues to destroy.

I don't see anything contradictory between your comment and the OP. Having an amoral CEO who condones breaking geotargeting self-regulation doesn't contradict OP's claim that it's hard to tie geotargeting data in bidstreams back to a particular person.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#115

Post by 486sx33 »

bigbuppo wrote: post #85
ducttape12 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither the government nor an ad agency needs to know where I am, no matter how "rough" the data is. It's none of their business.

But dude... just think of all the optimal personalized mattres sales they can do with that data. I mean, people that use the bathroom at 3:57pm for seven minutes are 0.00138% more likely to buy a new mattress within the next six months. They need that data. Think of all the unsold mattresses.

[dead]

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#116

Post by sroussey »

dygd wrote: post #80
legitster wrote: post #16

I work with Ad Data a lot in my job, and there's a lot of misconceptions about what this data that journalists love to propogate: The location data in these networks is very inaccurate. Your OS and browser actually do a pretty good job of locking down your location data unless you give explicit permission. It's in the ad network's interests to lie about the quality of their data - so a lot of the "location" data is g…

> Each SDK might be tattling on you, but unless you give them a key to match you across apps, each signal from each app is unique You'd be surprised what can be done when data from different source is fused together. Large-Scale Online Deanonymization with LLMs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139716 Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf

There are whole companies that de-anon ad data as a service. Which gives the lots of data brokers the ability to not do the last mile and feel good about themselves. It’s a joke.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#117

Post by kelvinjps »

wat10000 wrote: post #78
paxys wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can enact all the laws you want, but what do you do when the government in charge just ignores them?

You can increase your chances by crafting the laws differently, at least. A law that says the government can't ask for this stuff doesn't help very much. They'll ignore it when it suits them. A law that says it's illegal for private companies to hand it over would be better. When caught between a request from the government and a law that says they're not allowed to honor that request, there's a good chance they'll o…

With the recent anthropic incident, even if unlawful, the company will accept the government request, fearing retaliation.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#118

Post by sroussey »

tempaccount5050 wrote: post #94
jonas21 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That location information is not available to apps or ad networks without user consent. The government can access it from the carrier with a warrant, but that's not what we're discussing here.

Couldn't you just maintain a list of cell tower IPs and figure it out with traceroute?

Cell towers are not working at the IP level, so no

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#119

Post by [deleted] »

Zak wrote: post #100
Cider9986 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

I beat it with Firefox, UBO, standard Firefox advanced tracking protection, and a VPN. It was able to track me as long as my IP address didn't change, but as soon as I switched VPN endpoints, it gave me a new identifier.

[deleted]

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#120

Post by jmward01 »

I am evolving my views on personal privacy. I am, like many people, trying to passively defend myself. However, the environment today is more akin to people coming up and punching you than it is to just avoiding door to door sales people. We are being actively attacked, and real harm is being caused. People are loosing their entire livelihoods, or worse, to attacks on their privacy like this. At the moment all I see out there is sit there and take it. Nothing I do will keep my life private in a meaningful way. The best I can hope for is that companies wont tell me too loudly that they know when I go to the bathroom and how heavy I am, they will just show me targeted ads that prove they know those things and sell my data so corrupt agencies can decide how best to abuse it, legally. So, what options are left if the only tool you are given is sit there and take it but nobody is actually defending you?
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