4 ms·

Your words are as spurious as Goog's. Where you state Still means, they STOPPED scanning emails for targeted ads, supposedly in 2017(Did they "pinky-swear"?). S

by tunap 6y ago

Your words are as spurious as Goog's. Where you state Still means, they STOPPED scanning emails for targeted ads, supposedly in 2017(Did they "pinky-swear"?). So, they always did before, as stated it in plain words in 1st 2 paragraphs of their previous EULAs. Now that they claim they don't "scan emails for ads", they don't state they no longer scan emails and it does not state what they do, currently, scan emails for. Please don't retort "they don't sell PII", as P2 most definitely is what they use to sell X to 3rd parties in whatever form the ubiquitous NDAs prevent the public from knowing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail#Automated_scanning_of_email_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail#Automated_scanning_of_em... Edit: P2 > PII, am watching motogp & removed unnecessary personal jab.

joshuamorton 6y ago
Well of course Gmail scans your email. Spam filtering requires scanning, not to mention things like putting labels in the emails. Why do you think Google would sell pii? It doesn't make business sense. (I work on Gmail)
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Why do you think Google would sell pii? It doesn't make business sense. In these discussions, "selling PII" is sometimes a short for "providing a service that allows targeting ads based on PII without actually releasing PII itself to the service users", which is only a little less bad.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    Given the context, it's clear that's not what GP means. Also, from a privacy perspective, there is a vast difference between the two. One person who you trust to keep your data safe (but not to use it in ways you find ethical necessarily) is vastly different from them giving it to other parties who you don't know.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I don't think the difference is that vast in practice. What's currently stopping evil actors from exfiltrating data from Google's PII through buying narrowly targeted ads, each time with slightly different targeting, and intersecting these results to build a more detailed picture of people who viewed the ads?
      - tunap 6y ago
        He/she is being deliberately obtuse & slippery. I believe their NDAs prohibit any kind of frank or unscripted conversations, you know, to protect the soulless citizen, Alphabet.
        rossjudson 6y ago
        Are you talking about some kind of an "NDA" on employees? I work for Google. I am being frank when I say you are full of it, and you will not find this message in any script. Shit, I fed a troll.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        I'm combining my response to two comments. > It's great that they do that, but it's still the bare minimum over here on the Old Continent. We can and should demand more. Sure, but its been possible to do this since well before the GDPR mandated it. Now maybe you can argue that the threat of regulation is what keeps Google in check here, and ok fine that's an unfalsifiable claim but maybe it's true. But even still, that doesn't actually justify "we should demand more". Maybe more privacy regulation is justified, but "we already have some" isn't actually justification. > What's currently stopping evil actors from exfiltrating data from Google's PII through buying narrowly targeted ads, each time with slightly different targeting The snarky answer first. PII has a specific meaning. It means personally identifying information. Your ZIP code isn't PII. Your name is. No matter what ad targeting tricks you do you can't pull my name or address out of what Google sends you. So you don't get PII. Now the less snarky answer. The actual attack you're describing does this repeated targeting thing, which ties private data to some pseudonymous ID, like a browser fingerprint. At this point they don't have any PII. Then, you get the victim to enter their personal information on your site. Now you can tie the PII to the other information from the shadow profile you've built. So why isn't this useful? Mostly, cost. To get this to work, you need to have some one or some group click on multiple different ads you control ($ + time cost) and then enter their identifying information on a site you control. Click through isn't assured, and conversion to entering information is very unlikely. When you're, you know, actually selling a product, this is a worthwhile investment. But this attack is essentially paying to advertise to people with the goal of learning who you are advertising to. As a result, this only really makes sense in the context of targeted attacks or generic blackmail. Targeted attacks don't work because now you need a specific person to enter their PII in your site (and then what?, you've learned that someone is interested in LGBT topics. I'm interested in LGBT topics and straight). And similarly broad blackmail doesn't work. But I'm interested in how you think an attacker could do something in a cost effective manner.

by tunap 6y ago

joshuamorton 6y ago

Well of course Gmail scans your email. Spam filtering requires scanning, not to mention things like putting labels in the emails. Why do you think Google would sell pii? It doesn't make business sense. (I work on Gmail)

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Why do you think Google would sell pii? It doesn't make business sense. In these discussions, "selling PII" is sometimes a short for "providing a service that allows targeting ads based on PII without actually releasing PII itself to the service users", which is only a little less bad.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  Given the context, it's clear that's not what GP means. Also, from a privacy perspective, there is a vast difference between the two. One person who you trust to keep your data safe (but not to use it in ways you find ethical necessarily) is vastly different from them giving it to other parties who you don't know.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I don't think the difference is that vast in practice. What's currently stopping evil actors from exfiltrating data from Google's PII through buying narrowly targeted ads, each time with slightly different targeting, and intersecting these results to build a more detailed picture of people who viewed the ads?
    - tunap 6y ago
      He/she is being deliberately obtuse & slippery. I believe their NDAs prohibit any kind of frank or unscripted conversations, you know, to protect the soulless citizen, Alphabet.
      - rossjudson 6y ago
        Are you talking about some kind of an "NDA" on employees? I work for Google. I am being frank when I say you are full of it, and you will not find this message in any script. Shit, I fed a troll.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      I'm combining my response to two comments. > It's great that they do that, but it's still the bare minimum over here on the Old Continent. We can and should demand more. Sure, but its been possible to do this since well before the GDPR mandated it. Now maybe you can argue that the threat of regulation is what keeps Google in check here, and ok fine that's an unfalsifiable claim but maybe it's true. But even still, that doesn't actually justify "we should demand more". Maybe more privacy regulation is justified, but "we already have some" isn't actually justification. > What's currently stopping evil actors from exfiltrating data from Google's PII through buying narrowly targeted ads, each time with slightly different targeting The snarky answer first. PII has a specific meaning. It means personally identifying information. Your ZIP code isn't PII. Your name is. No matter what ad targeting tricks you do you can't pull my name or address out of what Google sends you. So you don't get PII. Now the less snarky answer. The actual attack you're describing does this repeated targeting thing, which ties private data to some pseudonymous ID, like a browser fingerprint. At this point they don't have any PII. Then, you get the victim to enter their personal information on your site. Now you can tie the PII to the other information from the shadow profile you've built. So why isn't this useful? Mostly, cost. To get this to work, you need to have some one or some group click on multiple different ads you control ($ + time cost) and then enter their identifying information on a site you control. Click through isn't assured, and conversion to entering information is very unlikely. When you're, you know, actually selling a product, this is a worthwhile investment. But this attack is essentially paying to advertise to people with the goal of learning who you are advertising to. As a result, this only really makes sense in the context of targeted attacks or generic blackmail. Targeted attacks don't work because now you need a specific person to enter their PII in your site (and then what?, you've learned that someone is interested in LGBT topics. I'm interested in LGBT topics and straight). And similarly broad blackmail doesn't work. But I'm interested in how you think an attacker could do something in a cost effective manner.