4 ms·

They sell ads by offering this information in the form of targeting.

majormajor 10y ago
I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out, it's behind the scenes to them. Business-wise, it would be undermining our own product to offer anyone's personal information. There are other companies that do this focusing just on the collection side, which sounds like what FB is buying - but for FB to protect their position they're going to try to keep lids on that. The companies that try to sell those types of profiles, by IP or cookie syncing or whatever, seemed to get it wildly, wildly wrong - but the role of accuracy/auditing in the ads business is another discussion. FB seems to be buying a different sort of data than we were, since they know so much more (first/last/birthdate, etc). Anyway, this is a problem that doesn't start or stop with FB, and the brokers are the dangerous part.
- Fnoord 10y ago
  Starting a database with personal information on a large amount of personae. Without them knowing about it. Refusing to share the gathered information. All of this is legal in the US? In the EU???
  - mpk 10y ago
    The EU has restrictions on this kind of stuff - http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-collection/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-collection/...
- slau 10y ago
  I worked for a few years at a company that provided a SaaS IVR product. Think call centre call routing, and PBX features on any dumb phone. As people shy away from phone calls, and with the competition of VoIP, we gradually saw the erosion of the price per minute we could charge (roughly 40% drop over the course of 5 years). The company tried to shift by looking at the data we had available. Millions of phone calls, and we knew exactly what kind of service was being called. Banks, airlines, airports, sex lines, restaurants, customer support, whatever. We could see when people called most, for how long, and we even knew which service inside the call centre they were talking to. It wasn't long before the company wanted to exploit this, and they started working on the ability to play ads while people were waiting to get in touch with a service representative. Targeted ads. Based on phone habits, we could tell whether the person calling was a stay-at-home parent, retiree, teen, young professional, etc. We could also tell their gender, in 60-70% of cases. Because of the technology, we had access to actual phone number, even when people called with restricted identity. It's just how it works when you are registered as a "network operator". This shift from "let's provide an amazing service" to "let's mine the crap out of everyone" definitely contributed in my leaving the company.
- amelius 10y ago
  > I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out That's not really possible. Proof: Say Alice is your client, and her ad targets gay people (even though the ad or the advertised product itself is not necessarily related to being gay). Then using your data about sexual preference, you serve the ads only to gay people. Only gay people will see the ad, and thus only gay people will reach Alice's website. Hence Alice got the data out. QED.

I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out, it's behind the scenes to them. Business-wise, it would be undermining our own product to offer anyone's personal information. There are other companies that do this focusing just on the collection side, which sounds like what FB is buying - but for FB to protect their position they're going to try to keep lids on that. The companies that try to sell those types of profiles, by IP or cookie syncing or whatever, seemed to get it wildly, wildly wrong - but the role of accuracy/auditing in the ads business is another discussion. FB seems to be buying a different sort of data than we were, since they know so much more (first/last/birthdate, etc). Anyway, this is a problem that doesn't start or stop with FB, and the brokers are the dangerous part.

Fnoord 10y ago
Starting a database with personal information on a large amount of personae. Without them knowing about it. Refusing to share the gathered information. All of this is legal in the US? In the EU???
- mpk 10y ago
  The EU has restrictions on this kind of stuff - http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-collection/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-collection/...
slau 10y ago
I worked for a few years at a company that provided a SaaS IVR product. Think call centre call routing, and PBX features on any dumb phone. As people shy away from phone calls, and with the competition of VoIP, we gradually saw the erosion of the price per minute we could charge (roughly 40% drop over the course of 5 years). The company tried to shift by looking at the data we had available. Millions of phone calls, and we knew exactly what kind of service was being called. Banks, airlines, airports, sex lines, restaurants, customer support, whatever. We could see when people called most, for how long, and we even knew which service inside the call centre they were talking to. It wasn't long before the company wanted to exploit this, and they started working on the ability to play ads while people were waiting to get in touch with a service representative. Targeted ads. Based on phone habits, we could tell whether the person calling was a stay-at-home parent, retiree, teen, young professional, etc. We could also tell their gender, in 60-70% of cases. Because of the technology, we had access to actual phone number, even when people called with restricted identity. It's just how it works when you are registered as a "network operator". This shift from "let's provide an amazing service" to "let's mine the crap out of everyone" definitely contributed in my leaving the company.
amelius 10y ago
> I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out That's not really possible. Proof: Say Alice is your client, and her ad targets gay people (even though the ad or the advertised product itself is not necessarily related to being gay). Then using your data about sexual preference, you serve the ads only to gay people. Only gay people will see the ad, and thus only gay people will reach Alice's website. Hence Alice got the data out. QED.