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Not that I'm saying we shouldn't be careful with our personal data, but: There's some serious mental gymnastics going from "young dog owners in Seattle" to sel

Not that I'm saying we shouldn't be careful with our personal data, but: There's some serious mental gymnastics going from "young dog owners in Seattle" to selling somebody a dossier with their location, search & browsing history (all of which you can turn off).

behringer 7y ago
What? You can't turn off any of that. It's recorded whether you see it or not.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Where's your evidence for this? Are you saying Google violates their privacy policy billions of times per day (every search, location update, page view)? (i.e. fraud)
- wmf 7y ago
  Presumably when you "turn off" various Google features that data is no longer used for ad targeting. For Google to do otherwise would invite a scandal. (I wouldn't expect all copies of the data and its backups to be deleted immediately since that would be a lot of work for the tape robots.) Check out https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ and https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols
lucideer 7y ago
The mental gymnastics is in defining "selling data" as "selling all data Google has about you". This isn't a binary where it doesn't count if it's partial. Google provides selective contextual data about individuals to advertisers who target those individuals in exchange for money. Those advertisers are 3rd parties. Google sells data to 3rd parties. End of. They don't need to be handing over the full database for it to be a sale of data.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Fine, how about a subset? Prove that an advertiser has seen one instance of my exact location, or an instance of my search or web history. 90% of the 'valuable contextual data' is that I searched for something related to an ad's keywords. The other ~% is targeted data. Targeting anonymised, generalised demographics/keywords which billions of people fit into does not class as selling private data. I'm not arguing to trust Google, nor am I denying that there is massive data brokerage in the advertising industry - just that there is a big difference between targeted ads and selling data.
  - lucideer 7y ago
    > that there is a big difference between targeted ads and selling data. I'm not arguing that the data received by the advertiser through targeted ads is anywhere near as valuable as a selling a dossier full of an array of information about a person, but... they're both examples of selling data. Unless you're redefining English language verbs... data is being sold. About a person. To a 3rd party. There's a difference in scale and value, but there's no difference beyond that.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    > Prove that an advertiser has seen one instance of my exact location, or an instance of my search or web history. With all the subsidiaries and partner companies - and even just shell companies - out there, why should we be doing such gymnastics in order to support the advertising industry. If a company bought access to some data what's to say they couldn't eventually re-sell it to another company with another slice of that pie... or have that data inherited on acquisition. That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to sustain an industry that really isn't providing a lot of value.

behringer 7y ago

What? You can't turn off any of that. It's recorded whether you see it or not.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Where's your evidence for this? Are you saying Google violates their privacy policy billions of times per day (every search, location update, page view)? (i.e. fraud)
wmf 7y ago
Presumably when you "turn off" various Google features that data is no longer used for ad targeting. For Google to do otherwise would invite a scandal. (I wouldn't expect all copies of the data and its backups to be deleted immediately since that would be a lot of work for the tape robots.) Check out https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ and https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols

lucideer 7y ago

The mental gymnastics is in defining "selling data" as "selling all data Google has about you". This isn't a binary where it doesn't count if it's partial. Google provides selective contextual data about individuals to advertisers who target those individuals in exchange for money. Those advertisers are 3rd parties. Google sells data to 3rd parties. End of. They don't need to be handing over the full database for it to be a sale of data.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Fine, how about a subset? Prove that an advertiser has seen one instance of my exact location, or an instance of my search or web history. 90% of the 'valuable contextual data' is that I searched for something related to an ad's keywords. The other ~% is targeted data. Targeting anonymised, generalised demographics/keywords which billions of people fit into does not class as selling private data. I'm not arguing to trust Google, nor am I denying that there is massive data brokerage in the advertising industry - just that there is a big difference between targeted ads and selling data.
- lucideer 7y ago
  > that there is a big difference between targeted ads and selling data. I'm not arguing that the data received by the advertiser through targeted ads is anywhere near as valuable as a selling a dossier full of an array of information about a person, but... they're both examples of selling data. Unless you're redefining English language verbs... data is being sold. About a person. To a 3rd party. There's a difference in scale and value, but there's no difference beyond that.
- munk-a 7y ago
  > Prove that an advertiser has seen one instance of my exact location, or an instance of my search or web history. With all the subsidiaries and partner companies - and even just shell companies - out there, why should we be doing such gymnastics in order to support the advertising industry. If a company bought access to some data what's to say they couldn't eventually re-sell it to another company with another slice of that pie... or have that data inherited on acquisition. That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to sustain an industry that really isn't providing a lot of value.