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Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

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Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#121

Post by chillacy »

kyboren wrote: post #115
adrr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Story is about Meta who doesn't sell your data.

Actually, they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_bidding Modern programmatic advertising enables each user to be pimped out to whichever manipulator is willing to pay the most. In just a few dozen milliseconds, Facebook will send out your personal data to participants in the advertising system ('bidstream data'), select a winner, and serve their ad to you. Note: Your data goes out to bidders, and someone pa…

Show us a link to a Facebook advertising API which can give me bidstream data which includes a user's demographic info? The links describe "Modern programmatic advertising" including "Patternz" but have not shown that Facebook is an implementor.

For the record every time I have advertised on both Google and Facebook, it works in reverse: I give them my ad, audience info, and how much I'm willing to bid, and they run an auction per impression (of which I don't get to participate in knowing the details directly). I get no user data, only the bill. If I did get user data (presumably with user consent) I would start my own direct-marketing mailing or email list and stop paying the ad-tech companies each time (who act as gate-keepers).

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#122

Post by nerdbert »

smeej wrote: post #25
Cheer2171 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess: you don't have a kid that goes to a school that only posts crucial news and updates to their Facebook page and you don't have a friend group that uses a WhatsApp group to plan events. Try explaining to the average human that you have a moral objection which means you can't install the same app everyone else has, and that everyone else needs to do a lot of work to accommodate you. One of my friend groups…

So far, I've yet to be in a friend group that wasn't willing to switch to Signal once I explained my security concern. This includes my group of women who are spiritual directors in their 60s, not exactly a demographic you'd expect to care about E2EE. It's always been easy for me to come up with a circumstance under which something the people involved cared about might become so politically or socially condemned that…

> I've yet to be in a friend group that wasn't willing to switch to Signal once I explained my security concern.

I've found that works with friends, yes.

But it's too much to ask in cases like a whatsapp group for parents of a school class, or for participants in an upcoming event. Things where I don't feel like I'm entering with any social credit and don't want to be a huge noodge straight off the bat.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#123

Post by JohnFen »

This kind of thing is one of the reasons why I don't use Facebook. Not to single Facebook out, though -- I don't use any social media, and am extremely hesitant to heavily use any web site or internet service at all because of how ubiquitous all the spying is.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#124

Post by JohnFen »

legitster wrote: post #68
josephg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if a shoe company sends my email address to Facebook because I’m their customer and they want to advertise to me on platform, Facebook has learned new information about my purchasing behaviour. I’m not sure what else Facebook does with that information. I wouldn’t be surprised if they use it and send me ads for shoes from other companies.

That's a two way street though - if FB started accepting random data anyone uploaded, they would end up with a lot of crap and inaccurate data. When you use the custom audience tool they very explicitly don't let you upload any data unnecessary to find matches.

> they very explicitly don't let you upload any data unnecessary to find matches.

Is that supposed to be reassuring in some way? I don't understand how that really makes the practice OK.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#125

Post by Zelphyr »

sirpunch wrote: post #55
Zelphyr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have kids that go to school and they don't use Facebook. They don't want to. I didn't even ask them to not have an account. (that one kind-of surprised me, honestly) My Jiu Jitsu gym heavily uses Facebook but they're smart enough to recognize that not everyone (even the people that have an account) checks it regularly so they notify the members through other means. Lately they've been telling people to be on the lo…

Do your kids not use TikTok as well?

No. They asked to be on it but that was a hard line for us.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#126

Post by kyboren »

chillacy wrote: post #121
kyboren wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_bidding Modern programmatic advertising enables each user to be pimped out to whichever manipulator is willing to pay the most. In just a few dozen milliseconds, Facebook will send out your personal data to participants in the advertising system ('bidstream data'), select a winner, and serve their ad to you. Note: Your data goes out to bidders, and someone pa…

Show us a link to a Facebook advertising API which can give me bidstream data which includes a user's demographic info? The links describe "Modern programmatic advertising" including "Patternz" but have not shown that Facebook is an implementor. For the record every time I have advertised on both Google and Facebook, it works in reverse: I give them my ad, audience info, and how much I'm willing to bid, and they run…

I do not have a link for Facebook, and I did not claim that Patternz was slurping data from Facebook specifically.

But here's a couple links for Google: https://developers.google.com/authorized-buyers/rtb/start and https://developers.google.com/authorized-buyers/rtb/download... .

You are just not in the right position in the market to do much slurping.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#127

Post by micromacrofoot »

aspenmayer wrote: post #107
micromacrofoot wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have little doubt some of these companies do de-anonymization themselves (or through a third party). I use a PO Box for all my mail, yet I somehow get ads delivered to me based on my interests and recent purchases in my name to my residential address. I've literally never purchased anything using my residential address, I have zero mail sent here intentionally.

Do you receive mail to both addresses under the same or any name? Is it required to have the name field populated to receive mail to your physical or P.O. Box?

Oh another point this reminded me of: I go by Alex (to the extreme that it's on my bank accounts and credit cards) but all the ads have my full name Alexis. When I google my full name in quotes, all of the results are data brokers.

Full name isn't required, I've received mail to my PO box with my first name only, last name only, initials, etc...

My residential address is used so infrequently that my cousin remembers my PO Box number but had to recently ask for my street number to visit.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#128

Post by csdvrx »

fsflover wrote: post #106
bentt wrote: post #100

I have one browser (Chrome) where I have logged into Facebook/Insta/Oculus/Meta and one where I have never logged into them (Brave with Shields UP). I'd like to think that gives me some protection from tracking in the clean browser. Am I naïve?

You are. Compare the fingerprints of your two browsers: https://amiunique.org , https://coveryourtracks.eff.org . Very likely, the fingerprints are very similar. For anonymity, use Tor.

If I don't want to use tor, but just reduce fingerprinting, is there a solution that wouldn't depend on extensions but use the features from a regular browser?

Firefox could limit the fonts and the resolution it reports to "usual" values, then upscale/downscale as needed.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#129

Post by legitster »

JohnFen wrote: post #124
legitster wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a two way street though - if FB started accepting random data anyone uploaded, they would end up with a lot of crap and inaccurate data. When you use the custom audience tool they very explicitly don't let you upload any data unnecessary to find matches.

> they very explicitly don't let you upload any data unnecessary to find matches. Is that supposed to be reassuring in some way? I don't understand how that really makes the practice OK.

I'm not saying it's okay, but I'm also pointing out that the system doesn't work that way. Data brokers would not be comfortable handing over all of the data to FB if they thought FB was just going to steal it, and FB wouldn't trust gobs of unprocessed data from third parties ("You are now a 16 year old girl who likes Taylor Swift because there was a typo in the matched email address").

So in FB's documentation, they make it clear that they take the hash of your chosen identifier information (email, ID, etc) and just return the number of hashes that get matched. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/112061095610075?id=24...

They don't tell you who gets matched, and they don't give you a way of providing any other data because they don't trust it.

Re: Each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies

#130

Post by bonton89 »

msm_ wrote: post #91
legitster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most browser "fingerprinting" methods have a pretty short half-life. The last assessment I read said something like half of the fingerprints were lost within 24 hours. There are some companies that advertise device fingerprinting for moderation/anti-abuse services, but I have yet to see it in any martech stack. I assume they give lots of false positives and don't distinguish between different users/devices on the sam…

>Most browser "fingerprinting" methods have a pretty short half-life. The last assessment I read said something like half of the fingerprints were lost within 24 hours. That's absolutely not my experience. Maybe if you use some weird research-level fingerprinting technique, but most fingerprints are just regular old boring stuff - screen and browser viewport size, installed plugins and fonts, browser UA and settings,…

Doesn't the firefox resistfingerprinting setting fuzz most of these things? I see a lot of misconceptions about it on here when people use amiunique. It will say you are unique but if you look for a historical match there aren't any because you are unique, but also different each time you show up.
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