Online advertisers are selling you out

[duke]

Online advertisers are selling you out
Data mining companies like Rapleaf exist to build profiles of Web surfers. They know more than you think -- or privacy policies allow -- and it's high time for this data siphoning to end
October 25, 2010 By Robert X. Cringley J

Big Brother is watching. And he wants to sell you toothpaste and get you to vote for the candidate of his choice.

The Wall Street Journal's Emily Steel has an excellent piece today detailing just how much Internet data mining firms know about you. The answer? A lot more than you realize. Like: your political affiliations, religious activities, income level, various likes and interests, and your activity on online dating sites, to name but a few. online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304410504575560243259416072.html

And though they claim to be collecting this data without tying it to you personally, it turns out this information is not so anonymous after all.

Today's WSJ story is all about Rapleaf, one of the companies that benefitted from Facebook's latest "inadvertent" data leak, where it received personally identifiable information for people who clicked on advertisements inside Facebook apps.

Rapleaf builds profiles of Web surfers by dropping tracking cookies on its clients' websites, then matching the email addresses of registered users to data it has scraped from social networking sites. Rapleaf then sells this information to companies that want to target ads. This election year, Rapleaf's clients also include at least 10 political campaigns.

www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/online-advertisers-are-selling-you-out-811?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2010-10-25

[RuneDeer]

They can mine all the data they want. Until I have a penny to spend on anything, they're totally wasting their time.

[ScarlettP]

Hmm.... they don't do a very good job with me either. They know I like shoes - but having figured out that I never spend big money on designer items.

[duke]

What are the names searched for? What is a consistent thread between the people / items or news key words?
Republican, Democrat Libertarian, Green? Green = anti establishment, manufacturing, sales?
Anti establishment?
Religious, which one? Did that search for a Koran passage label you as a sympathizer?
Do you search with parental controls locked down or Censor off?
Did your interest in world affairs tell the researcher you do not support America?
Did your search for costumes indicate a desire to not be recognized? What did you do that makes you want to wear a disguise?
Did that search for a home remedy indicate you are about to expire or are you planning to kill someone?

I do have something to hide. It may not take much cloth to do the job, but an arrest is likely should I fail. There are always those that believe they have a right not to be offended, and the cops will gladly agree. They need the arrest to pump up their productivity numbers and the arrest would be socially acceptable.

Taken in a vacuum your search habits could paint a very different picture from what you and your friends would agree to.

[Police Moderator]

What are the names searched for? What is a consistent thread between the people / items or news key words?
Republican, Democrat Libertarian, Green? Green = anti establishment, manufacturing, sales?
Anti establishment?
Religious, which one? Did that search for a Koran passage label you as a sympathizer?
Do you search with parental controls locked down or Censor off?
Did your interest in world affairs tell the researcher you do not support America?
Did your search for costumes indicate a desire to not be recognized? What did you do that makes you want to wear a disguise?
Did that search for a home remedy indicate you are about to expire or are you planning to kill someone?

I do have something to hide. It may not take much cloth to do the job, but an arrest is likely should I fail. There are always those that believe they have a right not to be offended, and the cops will gladly agree. They need the arrest to pump up their productivity numbers and the arrest would be socially acceptable.

Taken in a vacuum your search habits could paint a very different picture from what you and your friends would agree to.

Keep typing that BS, Duke, and RapLeaf will ID you as Basil Marceaux.