To hide the pregnancy from marketing companies, a woman used Tor
Two years ago, many were surprised by the news that the American trading network Target learned about the pregnancy of a girl earlier than her father. “She still goes to school, and you send her coupons for children's clothes and diapers?” The angry father shouted. No wonder: simple data mining of purchase history with reference to a discount or bank card.
It turns out that many marketing companies are now actively trying to find exactly pregnant women, because they are on the threshold of a large number of predictable purchases. Therefore, retailers and manufacturers of children's goods pay a lot for such information. In the era of targeted advertising, the mere fact of pregnancy increases the cost profile of a consumer by about 200 times .
Marketers literally “hunt” for pregnant women, trying to find them in various databases, including surfing history through tracking cookies, search queries, personal emails and social media messages. Who knows, perhaps they have already guessed to scan public photos in social network photo albums with recognition of characteristic rounded images.
Janet Vertesi, associate professor of sociology at Princeton University, is part of the leadership of the Center for Information Technology Policy. This fact is important to understand the reasons for the unusual experiment that a woman organized with her participation.
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Janet decided to check if she could hide the fact of her pregnancy for nine months from the ubiquitous marketers. First, telling friends and relatives the good news on the phone, she warned everyone about the experiment and asked not to mention pregnancy in the mail correspondence and not to congratulate on social networks.
Since Janet could not refuse to use the Internet and visit specialized forums, she downloaded the Tor browser. All purchases in stores made only for cash. I had to refuse from discounts on loyalty programs. Even Amazon had to have a new account tied to a new mail with its domain name. In the online store, the fearless woman paid for with cash gift cards and ordered goods to a safe address.
Janet admits that it was a difficult time. For example, for a period of seven months, my father congratulated on pregnancy in a personal message on Facebook. She answered rather rudely: she immediately deleted the message and sent her father as a friend. When asked why he did it, the father said that he did not post a message in the open tape. Another friend mentioned the “secret information” in the Facebook chat. It is obvious that many people do not realize the fact of automatic scanning of personal correspondence and chats.
The experiment led to a completely unexpected (or, conversely, expected) result. For several months, Janet Vertesi was joking with friends that because of the Tor browser and constant cash withdrawals at an ATM, she could get the attention of the security services. And one day, when her husband went to the local store for another portion of Amazon gift cards, he was still warned that the store had a daily limit on the number of cards it bought, after which the store informed the law enforcement authorities about this.
By the way, the advice to use only cash in stores can already be considered obsolete. The fact is that fake WiFi hotspots became fashionable in shopping centers, so that the merchants will soon be able to determine the name of the buyer, even if he paid in cash. To do this, you must associate the phone number, the "route" to the cashier and the time of the check through Thus, in addition to withdrawing cash from an ATM, before entering the store, you also need to disable WiFi in your mobile device or use programs to randomize MAC addresses .
The experience of Janet Vertesi showed: in modern society, a simple attempt to defend their rights and avoid targeted advertising leads to unpleasant consequences. You can not normally communicate with relatives, you have to feel almost a criminal. In other words, we pay too much for privacy. It’s easier to give up privacy altogether and come to terms with advertising. This is a problem, first of all, of American legislation, which rather weakly regulates the trade in personal data of citizens, as compared with EU legislation.
It turns out that many marketing companies are now actively trying to find exactly pregnant women, because they are on the threshold of a large number of predictable purchases. Therefore, retailers and manufacturers of children's goods pay a lot for such information. In the era of targeted advertising, the mere fact of pregnancy increases the cost profile of a consumer by about 200 times .
Marketers literally “hunt” for pregnant women, trying to find them in various databases, including surfing history through tracking cookies, search queries, personal emails and social media messages. Who knows, perhaps they have already guessed to scan public photos in social network photo albums with recognition of characteristic rounded images.
Janet Vertesi, associate professor of sociology at Princeton University, is part of the leadership of the Center for Information Technology Policy. This fact is important to understand the reasons for the unusual experiment that a woman organized with her participation.
')
Janet decided to check if she could hide the fact of her pregnancy for nine months from the ubiquitous marketers. First, telling friends and relatives the good news on the phone, she warned everyone about the experiment and asked not to mention pregnancy in the mail correspondence and not to congratulate on social networks.
Since Janet could not refuse to use the Internet and visit specialized forums, she downloaded the Tor browser. All purchases in stores made only for cash. I had to refuse from discounts on loyalty programs. Even Amazon had to have a new account tied to a new mail with its domain name. In the online store, the fearless woman paid for with cash gift cards and ordered goods to a safe address.
Janet admits that it was a difficult time. For example, for a period of seven months, my father congratulated on pregnancy in a personal message on Facebook. She answered rather rudely: she immediately deleted the message and sent her father as a friend. When asked why he did it, the father said that he did not post a message in the open tape. Another friend mentioned the “secret information” in the Facebook chat. It is obvious that many people do not realize the fact of automatic scanning of personal correspondence and chats.
The experiment led to a completely unexpected (or, conversely, expected) result. For several months, Janet Vertesi was joking with friends that because of the Tor browser and constant cash withdrawals at an ATM, she could get the attention of the security services. And one day, when her husband went to the local store for another portion of Amazon gift cards, he was still warned that the store had a daily limit on the number of cards it bought, after which the store informed the law enforcement authorities about this.
By the way, the advice to use only cash in stores can already be considered obsolete. The fact is that fake WiFi hotspots became fashionable in shopping centers, so that the merchants will soon be able to determine the name of the buyer, even if he paid in cash. To do this, you must associate the phone number, the "route" to the cashier and the time of the check through Thus, in addition to withdrawing cash from an ATM, before entering the store, you also need to disable WiFi in your mobile device or use programs to randomize MAC addresses .
The experience of Janet Vertesi showed: in modern society, a simple attempt to defend their rights and avoid targeted advertising leads to unpleasant consequences. You can not normally communicate with relatives, you have to feel almost a criminal. In other words, we pay too much for privacy. It’s easier to give up privacy altogether and come to terms with advertising. This is a problem, first of all, of American legislation, which rather weakly regulates the trade in personal data of citizens, as compared with EU legislation.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/221615/
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