Human rights activists are sounding the alarm: Internet advertising has become too smart
Two consumer advocacy groups appealed to the US Federal Trade Commission with a request to investigate dishonest and deceptive practices in the practice of online advertising networks.
This request was made by the Center for Digital Democracy and the Public Interest Research Group . In a joint statement, they said that the current obligations of companies to protect privacy have become inadequate in the light of the emergence of new, more sophisticated automatic data collection techniques.
Advertising networks use increasingly powerful systems to spy on users, analyze their behavior and personal interests in order to select personal advertising for each of them with maximum efficiency. In this case, no one took care to warn users that they have become objects of such a deep analysis.
For each Internet user a full dossier is automatically collected. For example, the Google system knows literally everything about every person : the websites visited, the text of all letters and messages in the IM messenger, the content of each VoIP call, and other private data. This information is then used to select personalized ads. No less sophisticated advertising platforms are now created not only in Google , but also in Yahoo and Microsoft . Each of these companies tracks email, surfing, search and IM communication of their users. The technologies used include behavioral targeting, web analytics, profiling, pattern analysis, data mining, and even psychographic targeting . This is not a complete list.
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Ad networks spy on the user constantly. They can track his behavior on one site and show relevant advertising on another site in half an hour. Ad networks are getting smarter.
The owners of advertising networks are justified by the fact that they collect information on impersonal users, without identifying them by name. But such an excuse does not satisfy human rights defenders. What is the difference, identify the user by name or not, if in the letter with the message about the death of a relative, he sees the contextual advertising delivery service coffins? Even without knowing the specific user name, an impersonal computer system knows as many facts about this unfortunate user as he does not know about himself.
It should be noted that the current claims of human rights defenders strongly resemble the discussion that unfolded two and a half years ago, when Google introduced the Gmail mail service with the function of introducing contextual advertising in the text of mail messages depending on their content.
This request was made by the Center for Digital Democracy and the Public Interest Research Group . In a joint statement, they said that the current obligations of companies to protect privacy have become inadequate in the light of the emergence of new, more sophisticated automatic data collection techniques.
Advertising networks use increasingly powerful systems to spy on users, analyze their behavior and personal interests in order to select personal advertising for each of them with maximum efficiency. In this case, no one took care to warn users that they have become objects of such a deep analysis.
For each Internet user a full dossier is automatically collected. For example, the Google system knows literally everything about every person : the websites visited, the text of all letters and messages in the IM messenger, the content of each VoIP call, and other private data. This information is then used to select personalized ads. No less sophisticated advertising platforms are now created not only in Google , but also in Yahoo and Microsoft . Each of these companies tracks email, surfing, search and IM communication of their users. The technologies used include behavioral targeting, web analytics, profiling, pattern analysis, data mining, and even psychographic targeting . This is not a complete list.
')
Ad networks spy on the user constantly. They can track his behavior on one site and show relevant advertising on another site in half an hour. Ad networks are getting smarter.
The owners of advertising networks are justified by the fact that they collect information on impersonal users, without identifying them by name. But such an excuse does not satisfy human rights defenders. What is the difference, identify the user by name or not, if in the letter with the message about the death of a relative, he sees the contextual advertising delivery service coffins? Even without knowing the specific user name, an impersonal computer system knows as many facts about this unfortunate user as he does not know about himself.
It should be noted that the current claims of human rights defenders strongly resemble the discussion that unfolded two and a half years ago, when Google introduced the Gmail mail service with the function of introducing contextual advertising in the text of mail messages depending on their content.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/4650/
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