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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

#171

Post by spike021 »

ducttape12 wrote: post #19
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…

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.

i'm not confident they know where i am at all. i routinely get ads on social media for places (super random US states, cities, etc.) nowhere near where i live (SF Bay Area).

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

#172

Post by throwaway85825 »

hahajk wrote: post #168

It's unfortunate the Privacy Act included an exception for law enforcement. I imagine at the time it wasn't clear that every action taken by the govt would be called law enforcement. There is an ethical framework for handling personal data collected and maintained by the US govt called the Fair Information Practice Principles ( https://www.fpc.gov/resources/fipps/ ). It really is too bad that "any legal purpose" is t…

Laws aren't the problem here. If the data exists it will be abused, if not by the government then by corrupt insiders.

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

#173

Post by some_furry »

Aeglaecia wrote: post #127
some_furry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are dozens of us! But, yeah, anti-fingerprinting is still a useful signal if less people do it. So more people should do it; especially if they're less likely to be targeted. "More haystack" makes their job harder.

i feel like this is the same as voting independant. it's the right idea in theory, but given the fact that 99% of people don't do it , righteousness is decreased. in this case very literally as having a unique fingerprint is entirely counter intuitive to the idea of privacy

It starts with you. Doesn't matter if others won't. You can't expect anything to chamge if you, yourself, are not willing to change.

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

#174

Post by pabs3 »

Cider9986 wrote: post #87
Zak wrote: post #66

I have never regretted my decision to aggressively block ads on every device I use, and to shun devices where I can't.

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

"Enable JS to run the demo"

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

#175

Post by majormajor »

gruez wrote: post #114
chaps wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only one person/company has to solve any given hard problem before they can sell it to interested parties. Who might lose it in a data leak, or package it up and re-sell it, etc, etc.

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

#176

Post by jonhohle »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #172
hahajk wrote: post #168

It's unfortunate the Privacy Act included an exception for law enforcement. I imagine at the time it wasn't clear that every action taken by the govt would be called law enforcement. There is an ethical framework for handling personal data collected and maintained by the US govt called the Fair Information Practice Principles ( https://www.fpc.gov/resources/fipps/ ). It really is too bad that "any legal purpose" is t…

Laws aren't the problem here. If the data exists it will be abused, if not by the government then by corrupt insiders.

Reminds me of a farmer who found a snake one winter.

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

#177

Post by godelski »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #165
godelski wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> most evil is created by good people trying to do good Citation needed.

Look at your username then look at mine.

You ask me to prove something essentially unprovable. Prove to me that most evil is created by people trying to do evil. It'll be equally as difficult to prove as you can't look in the minds of those doing evil. And you also can't trust what's coming out of their mouth.

I gave you some evidence in indirect form. I'll give you another saying: "for the greater good." There's no doubt people doing wrong want to justify their actions so that they do not view themselves as evil. So go ahead and look at your username and look at mine, then follow the line of logic

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

#178

Post by gib444 »

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…

> unless you give them a key to match you across apps

Eg by running standard Android? That doesn't have eg secure app spawning, so apps can profile app initialisation data AIUI

And probably 10 other things behind the scenes that GrapheneÓS plugs?

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

#179

Post by UltraSane »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #136
UltraSane wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Web is utterly unusable without uBlock Origin.

Honestly, ublock isn't even enough anymore. DNS sinkholes are the next layer, since they work device-wide. I use nextdns.io, and it's good enough that I just keep ublock around in case I need to disable nextdns for some reason.

I use Mullvad DNS with ad and malware filtering.

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

#180

Post by UltraSane »

dakolli wrote: post #152
UltraSane wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Web is utterly unusable without uBlock Origin.

uBlock Origin does not protect you from this, this is a fingerprinting problem. You need to use a fingerprinting resistant browser. And even then, there are new fingerprinting methods emerging frequently and you can't prevent fingerprinting from inside apps on android/iOs.. Most slop mobile applications, that many people have on their phones are basically spyware pretending to be games/whatever. Programatic advertisi…

Fingerprinting is insideous because the harder you try to prevent it the more unique you become. The best method is to try to create fake data to make the fingerprint useless.
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