Duck Go Duck
Agree 100%. Moreover, we voluntarily give advertisers permission to access our browsing/data with free stuff. Sure, signing up for something with the promise of saving money is free, but something is making it possible to offer that thing for free - it’s your data. Moreover, your activity on that free thing generates even more useful data. Our phones and the other listening devices we voluntarily bring into our homes generate more data. We are absolute gold mines of data that someone can monetize, and we’re volunteering to provide it.
And yeah, it does not take much to turn off a lot of this, if it bugs you. But it’s going to be almost impossible to leave no trace of your activity trail these days.
Then why, as far as I can tell, are they so bad at it? I keep getting ads for stuff I’m not at all interested in; what more info of mine do these people need before they can start putting relevant stuff in front of me?
Sure, it’s impressive when a pregnant woman gets relevant ads put in front of her — but if I’m getting ads built around being pregnant, or wanting to meet sexy singles in my area, or the latest film in a franchise I (a) have never yet bothered to watch and (b) just keep shrugging at, I gotta ask: What More Can I Give These Would-Be Monetizers In The Ostensible Gold-Mine Line So They Can Start Getting It Right?
It must be working enough of the time to keep offering free stuff. If it wasn’t working at all, there’d be less free stuff. Sort of like ads on TV. You may never be prompted to buy something, but sombody is, or we’d never see ads on TV. If you want better personalized ads, allow all cookies, all permissions, and frequent social media.
But I am prompted to buy stuff I see advertised on TV: sometimes it’s stuff that doesn’t interest me, but sometimes it is, and, sure, with a TV show that millions of people are tuning in to see, I of course get plenty of chaff along with the wheat, but I grant that one man’s chaff is another man’s wheat…
…but when I’m on my phone, there’s still all this advertising chaff amidst the advertising wheat. It doesn’t seem any more tailored or targeted or whatever; I’m here, plenty ready to be prompted to buy the right stuff, and still they keep showing me the wrong stuff.
As a demonstration of how smart AI is, ChatBot won’t talk to you unless you register your cellphone number with it. Not even a year old and already collecting data like the pro’s.
Yeah I agree with you. Your phone is personal, so why don’t you get ads for stuff more closely related to you, and less chaff. Maybe things are still being tuned, or maybe your info is collected for some other purpose besides advertiseing. Who knows? If you’ve ever adjusted your privacy settings or use something like Duck Duck Go, that may affect what your seeing.
I think too there’s a certain level of security. Installing app A doesn’t mean it can see what app B is doing (or if there is even B installed), or where you browse on the internet browser (unless you click on a link the app provides). However, if they buy your history from Google or whoever, they can tie it to your phone app. Plus, if you use a credit card, like the Target article points out, that’s more data to tie into your identity. It’s this aggregation of data from multiple sources that provides the leap in value. Plus, as the Tiktok paranoids point out, there’s also geographical data.
(I notice that Apple allows you to decide if an app can access location. I also assume that Apple insisting on handling all revenue from apps puts another insulating layer between you and the app, since it won’t see your card number. Meanwhile giving Apple addiional data to sell instead…)
Years ago I was looking online for a toilet for a pontoon boat. I found a few toilet seats that mounted to a 5 gallon bucket. As this would be used by my gf (captain goes over the rail) I emailed her each one I thought she might like.
So, she was doing a presentation at work (ad agency). She was using her laptop and everyone was watching the auditorium screen which was her laptop screen. She went to the agency’s client’s webpage to show everyone the banner ad at the top. Yep, it was for a bucket toilet with a goofy name.
The thing was, the banner was working as it should have, but it got lots of laughs.
It’s good she was not looking at adult toys.
I mentioned this recently in another thread. My wife was playing a game on her phone, then said “I want a milkshake”, and 10 minutes later her email chimed with a coupon for a milkshake at a local burger chain. Sure that was nice, but what else is being listened-to and captured?
I am cynical about the value of advertising, and I note — as the erstwhile owner of a failed small franchise store — that business customers who pay for advertising and the ad agencies and media outlets who sell advertising are among the most cynical people out there. They don’t believe it’s possible to prove that advertising measurably works and they’ll admit it, too, but in the same breath they’ll turn around and tell you that it’s a cost of doing business. There just is no way to be sure that what you pay for advertising comes back to you in revenue.
This is how I explain both the ubiquitousness of advertising and the simultaneously obvious ham-fisted targeting of promotional messages. Everybody does it, and nobody believes it’s possible to divine how to do it correctly.
Whch one was it - Yahoo? Gmail? They were scanning email content as part of their data collection about individuals. The argument was the information was not seen by humans, it was just parsed by computer for keywords and links to help narrow down a person’s interests. Therefore, your privacy was “intact”.
(Of course, she may have looked at the links and it went off her browsing history, too)
Apple doesn’t sell your data to third parties. If they did, they’d be a $5 trillion company instead of just a $2.5 trillion company.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t in the business of collecting data and selling ads, though. It’s estimated they bring in about $4 billion a year from advertising, and that is almost entirely from the ads you see in the App Store.
They charge Google $15-20 billion a year to be the default search engine on Apple devices, but that data is probably limited to just the search input or at least is not personally identifiable.
Did she give the game permission to use the microphone? If she did, she should delete that game as soon as possible and delete any account she made with it. If she didn’t, then the milkshake email was either a coincidence or she searched for a milkshake in that time and just doesn’t remember. I know it seems like the phone was listening, but it’s highly unlikely it was.
Targeted ads would be low on the list of online related privacy issues to be concerned about.
Cybercriminals is an obvious one. Using a webcam and, related to that, cameras in stores, on street corners. Facial recognition is being used more & more. Cell phone GPS. Vehicle computers. Storing personal data in the cloud. Even taking a photograph. The trail of data people leave behind is enormous.
It keeps proliferating. Those who say; ‘I do nothing wrong so I’m OK with it’ are living in a dream world. Yes it’s like science fiction or the stuff of conspiracies and yes it’s dangerous. Obviously to get more detailed would be of great length but the long & short of it is we have a small minority controlling a vast majority. Kind of like how wealth is distributed. It brings us into the world of corporate monopolies & government.
The type of soap you use is of little consequence & small time. It’s all the other stuff . . .
Recall that Home Depot was recently busted for selling their customer’s data.
Isn’t there a saying that goes, “I know that I’m wasting my money with half of my advertising, I just don’t know which half”?
You are not the customer.
You are “people intersections in toasters” or whatever marketing would call it.
“If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
Someone is making money off information about you.
Oops yes sorry, i forgot - Apple makes a point of privacy, even playing games with your phone ID information online to limit what others can pick up about you.
…doing what?
Are they making money off the information about me by marketing stuff to me, or by selling it to folks who are looking to market stuff to me? Because, if so, they don’t seem to be getting any better at putting the right ads in front of me. Are they instead making money off the info by selling it to someone else? If so, (a) to whom? And, if so, then (b) I get how the seller is making money — he’s getting it from the buyer — but how is that buyer making money off of my info? What’s in it for them?
Bluetooth beacons are another way stores track customers. They pay attention to all sorts of things; how much time you spend in front of a display, whether you linger on an endcap, what route you take through the store. There’s a reason some soups, for example, are inconveniently on the bottom shelf while others are at eye point.
Here’s a gift link to an article from The New York Times of March 1996 about how much supermarkets know about their customers, and in the 27 years since, they’ve only gotten more sophisticated and better at selling to you.