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You're entirely right and I quite agree. Except that I'm not sure I do, now that computers are involved and can pick up every scrap of maybe-data and correlate
by Arnt 8y ago
You're entirely right and I quite agree.
Except that I'm not sure I do, now that computers are involved and can pick up every scrap of maybe-data and correlate sets of maybes into probable identities. Twenty years ago walking into a shop with a voucher wasn't an identifying action, now it may be. Twenty years ago what the shop owner got from the voucher distributor wasn't a list of names, now it may be.
If the shop owner gets a list of names at the end of the day, then arguably that list is what Facebook sold. Maybe Facebook sold it with plausible deniability, maybe Facebook would prefer not to sell it, but the shop owner paid money and got something in return.
- ironSkillet 8y agoCompanies exist solely to gather and de-anonimize this data to the fullest extent possible. As an example of what you can do, in Google Adwords, you can download multiple aggregated click/cost reports across many dimensions (age range, zip code etc), set up and solve a mixed integer linear programming problem, and get detailed information about every click. Not sure if Google ever caught on or cared enough to fuzz the data.
- zonethundery 8y agoWould you mind naming some players in this space?
- bertil 8y agoYou can’t get a list of names from Facebook unless each customer individually allows the company to access it. Happy to upload the modal when that happens.
- Arnt 8y agoYes, but can I also not get any individual cookies that I could then collate with data from other sources?