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If Google can't keep things quiet, where can I find a rough list of factors DoubleClick uses in order to track users? Has any of those factors leaked in the pas

by 0xy 6y ago

If Google can't keep things quiet, where can I find a rough list of factors DoubleClick uses in order to track users? Has any of those factors leaked in the past? Would anyone on the ad team at Google jeopardize their $350k per year to leak unethical behavior in that division? There's plenty ambiguous about that statement. Firstly, it doesn't cover past or future. Room for weaseling there. Secondly, it specifically says "track individual users", rather than include devices or just say "tracking" generally. Could they be tracking multiple users with the data point of "rarely updates browser"? According to that statement, they didn't rule it out. That statement explicitly does not say they are not using that information to track devices or Chrome installs. In fact, it doesn't even say it isn't a factor in ad targeting algorithms. Given it was written by Google's highly skilled PR team, and not a developer, I'm inclined to believe they wrote this ambiguously for a reason. Google does not have a good track record with the truth or community goodwill (they stabbed Firefox in the back). It's an advertising company making billions of dollars specifically from the use of tracking data. You're asking me to trust that said advertising company isn't using a tracking ID for tracking purposes when said ID is sent directly to their advertising domains.

joshuamorton 6y ago
> If Google can't keep things quiet, where can I find a rough list of factors DoubleClick uses in order to track users? Do you mean like, categories into which it divides users (age, gender, interest), in which case a reasonable answer is https://adssettings.google.com/ https://adssettings.google.com/ or do you mean what request attributes it uses to make these determinations initially and tie them to particular users? In which case the answer is primarily cookies: https://policies.google.com/technologies/types?hl=en-US https://policies.google.com/technologies/types?hl=en-US. You're asking me to prove a negative, and you're starting from the assumption that Google must be lying. > In fact, it doesn't even say it isn't a factor in ad targeting algorithms. How can something be a factor in ad targeting without being used to target individuals?
- 0xy 6y ago
  >How can something be a factor in ad targeting without being used to target individuals? Really weird question. Easy. The tracking ID sent to DoubleClick could be used to target groups of people, such as "people who rarely update their browser". Such heuristics can indicate age, tech knowledge, etc. No other browser is doing this. Why does Google need to send such tracking information to DoubleClick? You cannot justify it without also explaining why Safari and Firefox don't need this. Coupled with Google's other self-dealing behavior such as refusing to crackdown on egregious third-party cookies like Safari and Firefox, then this is starting to look very suspicious. For me personally, the fact this data is even being sent is the smoking gun. Shifting the goalposts to "well we don't abuse it" is classic gaslighting. You don't need to send tracking information to an advertising network. Why should I trust an advertising network with a hard-coded, impossible to disable, opaque tracking backdoor in the first place? Google does not disclose it does this. Google provides no way to opt out. Google has not adequately explained why it needs to send it to DoubleClick, given Google Analytics. Google snuck this into the Chromium source code hoping nobody noticed.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > The tracking ID sent to DoubleClick could be used to target groups of people, such as "people who rarely update their browser". The hash sent to the various google websites when you make requests to them is determined by chrome/chromium on the client side, at approximately installation time. So this would require the RNG thats sitting in a publicly auditable source repository to be flawed and abusable in such a way that chrome could bias the hash based on various system attributes that we're just going to assume for the sake of argument are correlated with various ad demographics. > Shifting the goalposts to "well we don't abuse it" is classic gaslighting. I never shifted the goalposts. You just did. Please don't accuse me of gaslighting you when you're the one changing your argument. > Why should I trust an advertising network with a hard-coded, impossible to disable, opaque tracking backdoor in the first place? If you don't want to personally, that's fine. But don't presume to get no criticism when you accuse any person or group of actively lying based on literally no evidence. > No other browser is doing this. Why does Google need to send such tracking information to DoubleClick? You cannot justify it without also explaining why Safari and Firefox don't need this. There's a difference between "want" and "think it's the best decision". I'm certain there are people at both Apple and Mozilla who would prefer to have more robust client side analytics. I have no doubt about that. But whether they think that's worth the perceived loss of privacy is another question. Right now, Firefox has a comparative advantage with certain types of privacy conscious users. Why throw that away? The increase in development speed may not be worth the loss of user trust. And that's okay, but using that to then imply that Google is lying about things, again based on no evidence. Let me put it this way: I trust Google (obviously), and so I'm fine to take them at their word that they aren't using this for ad targeting. Someone who didn't trust Google could reasonably say "I don't put much faith in Google's press release", but without any other evidence that there's actually any targeting happening, the most you could reasonably say is that they might be. You're taking an even more extreme position that given the opportunity to do a nefarious thing, Google must be doing it. Despite other reasonable explanations existing. This is a weird position to take and I don't get it.

by 0xy 6y ago

joshuamorton 6y ago

> If Google can't keep things quiet, where can I find a rough list of factors DoubleClick uses in order to track users? Do you mean like, categories into which it divides users (age, gender, interest), in which case a reasonable answer is https://adssettings.google.com/ https://adssettings.google.com/ or do you mean what request attributes it uses to make these determinations initially and tie them to particular users? In which case the answer is primarily cookies: https://policies.google.com/technologies/types?hl=en-US https://policies.google.com/technologies/types?hl=en-US. You're asking me to prove a negative, and you're starting from the assumption that Google must be lying. > In fact, it doesn't even say it isn't a factor in ad targeting algorithms. How can something be a factor in ad targeting without being used to target individuals?

0xy 6y ago
>How can something be a factor in ad targeting without being used to target individuals? Really weird question. Easy. The tracking ID sent to DoubleClick could be used to target groups of people, such as "people who rarely update their browser". Such heuristics can indicate age, tech knowledge, etc. No other browser is doing this. Why does Google need to send such tracking information to DoubleClick? You cannot justify it without also explaining why Safari and Firefox don't need this. Coupled with Google's other self-dealing behavior such as refusing to crackdown on egregious third-party cookies like Safari and Firefox, then this is starting to look very suspicious. For me personally, the fact this data is even being sent is the smoking gun. Shifting the goalposts to "well we don't abuse it" is classic gaslighting. You don't need to send tracking information to an advertising network. Why should I trust an advertising network with a hard-coded, impossible to disable, opaque tracking backdoor in the first place? Google does not disclose it does this. Google provides no way to opt out. Google has not adequately explained why it needs to send it to DoubleClick, given Google Analytics. Google snuck this into the Chromium source code hoping nobody noticed.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > The tracking ID sent to DoubleClick could be used to target groups of people, such as "people who rarely update their browser". The hash sent to the various google websites when you make requests to them is determined by chrome/chromium on the client side, at approximately installation time. So this would require the RNG thats sitting in a publicly auditable source repository to be flawed and abusable in such a way that chrome could bias the hash based on various system attributes that we're just going to assume for the sake of argument are correlated with various ad demographics. > Shifting the goalposts to "well we don't abuse it" is classic gaslighting. I never shifted the goalposts. You just did. Please don't accuse me of gaslighting you when you're the one changing your argument. > Why should I trust an advertising network with a hard-coded, impossible to disable, opaque tracking backdoor in the first place? If you don't want to personally, that's fine. But don't presume to get no criticism when you accuse any person or group of actively lying based on literally no evidence. > No other browser is doing this. Why does Google need to send such tracking information to DoubleClick? You cannot justify it without also explaining why Safari and Firefox don't need this. There's a difference between "want" and "think it's the best decision". I'm certain there are people at both Apple and Mozilla who would prefer to have more robust client side analytics. I have no doubt about that. But whether they think that's worth the perceived loss of privacy is another question. Right now, Firefox has a comparative advantage with certain types of privacy conscious users. Why throw that away? The increase in development speed may not be worth the loss of user trust. And that's okay, but using that to then imply that Google is lying about things, again based on no evidence. Let me put it this way: I trust Google (obviously), and so I'm fine to take them at their word that they aren't using this for ad targeting. Someone who didn't trust Google could reasonably say "I don't put much faith in Google's press release", but without any other evidence that there's actually any targeting happening, the most you could reasonably say is that they might be. You're taking an even more extreme position that given the opportunity to do a nefarious thing, Google must be doing it. Despite other reasonable explanations existing. This is a weird position to take and I don't get it.