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> If you aren't selling user's data I am curious when people mention this: Who literally sells user's data ?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Unroll.me literally sold Uber data about Lyft receipts in people's Gmail boxes.
Animats 8y ago
An innocent. Go watch this video from the Internet Advertising Bureau.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glgi9RRuJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glgi9RRuJs
- zerostar07 8y ago
  I know how advertising works, but i don't see 3rd party ads as directly "selling the data of the users". You include an ad that is visible inside the page. At most, you are sharing the page view with an ad company, but you are not communicating any of the data you have collected to the ad server. It's up to them to create a profile/track. "Selling access to your audience" is not the same as "selling your own data to an ad company".
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Your knowledge of the advertising world is roughly 20 years behind the state of the art.
    - zerostar07 8y ago
      It's not really. most people just put an ad tag on their page. It's adtech services that profile the user using their own data and trackers. The process remains the same.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        Again, you have absolutely no clue how this works. Please start with reading this and branch out from there: https://www.iab.com/guidelines/real-time-bidding-rtb-project/ https://www.iab.com/guidelines/real-time-bidding-rtb-project... Other avenues of interest: location based advertising and programmatic adaptive advertising.
        deleted 8y ago
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    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
scrollaway 8y ago
Usually when people say "selling user data", they usually mean "monetizing user data". There are four levels to doing that: - Level 1: Monetizing aggregates. Aggregating lots and lots of data, running statistics on all of it, and selling the outcome. Example: An online streaming site that sells TV analytics to TV channels. - Level 2: Selling proxied access. That's the Twitter/Facebook/Google ads model: Allow interested parties (advertisers) access to an audience, but they never are directly told "Mary Jane is a 33 year old woman with 2 children and an income of $80000/year." - Level 3: Selling personal data. This is what people think is happening in level 2, but is much rarer than it sounds. For example, let's say you have influencers on your site, you'll sell to potential sponsors data about that influencer. Or sites with personal statistics and insights that will sell access to it to their users' competitions (a known practice in sports services). - Level 4: Selling confidential data. That's where we're talking the really shady/illegal stuff. Gathering emails/credit cards and selling them to spammers and fraudsters, that sort of stuff.
- zerostar07 8y ago
  Great points. It's confusing when people say "selling user data" to refer to 3rd party advertising.
yxhuvud 8y ago
There are companies in the PR business that does that. Email addresses to journalists and and other people marketers want to read their press releases. Some even claim to be GDPR compliant. It will be very interesting to see how that turns out. Personally I wouldn't mind if the whole business segment was burnt down by the regulators.
seanhunter 8y ago
Well every two weeks or so I get unsolicited mails offering to sell me very large databases of contact information. My standard is to just completely ignore these, but when I got nagged for the third time recently I sent them a (very intrusive but still legally entirely legitimate) subject access request to find out what they have on me, who they got it from and who they have sold it to as it was entirely without consent.

Unroll.me literally sold Uber data about Lyft receipts in people's Gmail boxes.

An innocent. Go watch this video from the Internet Advertising Bureau.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glgi9RRuJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glgi9RRuJs

zerostar07 8y ago
I know how advertising works, but i don't see 3rd party ads as directly "selling the data of the users". You include an ad that is visible inside the page. At most, you are sharing the page view with an ad company, but you are not communicating any of the data you have collected to the ad server. It's up to them to create a profile/track. "Selling access to your audience" is not the same as "selling your own data to an ad company".
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Your knowledge of the advertising world is roughly 20 years behind the state of the art.
  - zerostar07 8y ago
    It's not really. most people just put an ad tag on their page. It's adtech services that profile the user using their own data and trackers. The process remains the same.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Again, you have absolutely no clue how this works. Please start with reading this and branch out from there: https://www.iab.com/guidelines/real-time-bidding-rtb-project/ https://www.iab.com/guidelines/real-time-bidding-rtb-project... Other avenues of interest: location based advertising and programmatic adaptive advertising.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

scrollaway 8y ago

Usually when people say "selling user data", they usually mean "monetizing user data". There are four levels to doing that: - Level 1: Monetizing aggregates. Aggregating lots and lots of data, running statistics on all of it, and selling the outcome. Example: An online streaming site that sells TV analytics to TV channels. - Level 2: Selling proxied access. That's the Twitter/Facebook/Google ads model: Allow interested parties (advertisers) access to an audience, but they never are directly told "Mary Jane is a 33 year old woman with 2 children and an income of $80000/year." - Level 3: Selling personal data. This is what people think is happening in level 2, but is much rarer than it sounds. For example, let's say you have influencers on your site, you'll sell to potential sponsors data about that influencer. Or sites with personal statistics and insights that will sell access to it to their users' competitions (a known practice in sports services). - Level 4: Selling confidential data. That's where we're talking the really shady/illegal stuff. Gathering emails/credit cards and selling them to spammers and fraudsters, that sort of stuff.

zerostar07 8y ago
Great points. It's confusing when people say "selling user data" to refer to 3rd party advertising.

yxhuvud 8y ago

There are companies in the PR business that does that. Email addresses to journalists and and other people marketers want to read their press releases. Some even claim to be GDPR compliant. It will be very interesting to see how that turns out. Personally I wouldn't mind if the whole business segment was burnt down by the regulators.

seanhunter 8y ago

Well every two weeks or so I get unsolicited mails offering to sell me very large databases of contact information. My standard is to just completely ignore these, but when I got nagged for the third time recently I sent them a (very intrusive but still legally entirely legitimate) subject access request to find out what they have on me, who they got it from and who they have sold it to as it was entirely without consent.