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As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingl

As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach you with a decent success rate. It's just that most companies are using crap ad tech.

alpha_squared 5y ago
> It's just that most companies are using crap ad tech. Including Facebook, apparently. About 90% of Instagram ads were irrelevant to me for about two years. Then I mentioned an interest in photography in a private conversation, now 75% of ads are photography-related.
- justapassenger 5y ago
  Let's apply occam's razor. What's more likely? 1. You mentioned thousands of other things in your private conversations. They suddenly start to narrow down on one specific one. 2. You're interested in photography, and are using service made to share photos. You follow photography accounts/search on the internet for photography related content, this signal got picked up, you clicked on some ad (by mistake most likely), and signal got amplified.
  - alpha_squared 5y ago
    To address your breakdown: 1. I distinctly hadn't mentioned photography in private or public messages. Ever. Nor had I tagged any of my camera equipment in any of my posts. Hard to believe, I know, but I created and manage the account with explicit intent and action, preferring to move personal conversations off-platform. 2. I don't follow photographers, and prefer to only follow certain friends. While I don't go to that great an extent of concealing my browsing history, I also make some effort to segregate information flow. Plus, the low-hanging fruit of Firefox + DuckDuckGo + uBlock usually does a decent job of helping with that. 3. In the two years I've had an account, I hadn't seen a single photography-related ad prior to the conversation on photography. Ads typically revolved around random tech products (many of which were irrelevant) and ads for TikTok (zero interest in it). 4. There was a dramatic shift in the content of ads within 24 hours of the conversation on photography. It's conservative to estimate 75% of ads are photo-related. I have a hard time remembering any other ad (a sign of their irrelevancy, in my opinion). 5. Given the demographics of this site, I'd appreciate (for myself and others) if you'd give at least a little bit of benefit of doubt on technical comprehension.
    - drdebug 5y ago
      If you are interested, you should know that it's possible to not be seeing any ads at all on a computer (phones are a different beast). It's a bit of a chore but it takes 3 things: firefox with ublock origin + noscript + delete cookies and history on exit. I haven't seen ads in years. You can go a step further and create startup profiles. It's a bit chore because you have to selectively allow domains for content to display (reader mode can help), but that's the price to pay to minimize tracking and remove annoying ads.
      - alpha_squared 5y ago
        Thanks! I rarely see ads on desktop because I use Firefox + ublock + Pi Hole. I do, unfortunately, have to whitelist the occasional domain because some sites that I need to access don't play well with that setup.
  - kindle-dev 5y ago
    What’s more likely? A service that vacuums up every piece of data vacuuming up microphone data, or the same service intentionally excluding this one random piece of data? Every time this comes up, people jump up and say “they’re definitely not listening!” But why do people think that? Facebook gathers as much data as possible, including buying a VPN to inspect supposedly private traffic. Why wouldn’t they listen to a microphone? As an anecdote, I know someone who worked on smart TVs. Part of what they implemented was a system to turn on the tv’s microphone to get an audio fingerprint of the content being watched.
- mitchitized 5y ago
  I once let my then 13yo borrow my laptop to do some research as he wanted to start experimenting with modded minecraft. I sat next to him while he researched minecraft plugins - no opportunity for him to hit some cough other websites, it was totally legit browsing session. Let's just say the advertising bubbles that Google rammed me into literally forced me to install adblockers just to make my web browsing experiences SFW again (also saw a huge spike in hostile ads with malware, and suspect it was too drastic and immediate a change to be mere coincidence). Saying "crap ad tech" is giving way, way too much credit to ad tech. I'd argue current ad tech IS crap, because the overall methodology and approach is fundamentally crap.
  - KingMachiavelli 5y ago
    Might not be that strange. The Minecraft plugins community is the perfect group to trick into installing malware. There are shaders and extensions that are hosted on very shady website and people just act like it is no big deal.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      A teenager searching for video game plugins is the perfect target for all kinds of scams - it is absolutely not strange, the system is working as intended within the constraints it's given. Change the constraints by introducing regulation (such as advertising networks being liable for the ads they display) and the problem will go away.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    The methodology is not completely crap. The role of the ad network is to get paid to display an ad. They aren't incentivised to ensure the ad is actually relevant - as long as they find some sucker to pay them to display the ad, they'll happily display it. Whether the mark then "converts" is not their problem. The problem is that the entire advertising industry is crap and has successfully contaminated and taken over the tech industry. The only way out is regulation so that 1) advertisers are liable for what they display (to discourage scam or illegal ads - and in some countries NSFW content would fall into this category as you're supposed to ask or verify the user's age) and 2) privacy regulations that make targeted advertising opt-in so that overall the cost of advertising becomes too great and starts allowing alternative monetization models (such as actually asking the user to pay for the service) to compete.
- phkahler 5y ago
  Yeah, I swear they are listening. But if you think about ALL avenues including the people around you then maybe not. But yeah there are still cases where audio monitoring seems to be the only explanation.
DrBazza 5y ago
Since I've been "reassured" that we're not being listened to by smart speakers, I can only assume that familial links i.e. the 'facebook graph', are also exploited by ad companies now as well. Anec-data: visiting the in-laws in a different part of the country, so my device and location is 'known' to have geographically moved by tracking, they searched for garages and glazing. We return home, and every advert is for garages and glazing.
- jahewson 5y ago
  That’s most likely because your device used their wifi and ended up behind their nat using the same ip as them. The anonymous tracking cookie ids on your device get associated with searches from that ip. (i.e. “cookie 1234 is in-market for glazing”) and you take those cookies back home with you. This is actually a massive failure because you’re not likely to purchase glazing at all.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    I'm not sure it's a failure. You could argue that showing him ads for glazing could be beneficial in case he spots a good deal and decides to talk to them about it. Now I don't think the ad network is that smart and explicitly intended for this, but presumably in aggregate they're seeing better results by merging targeting buckets by IP than not, so they continue doing it.
- deeblering4 5y ago
  What reassurances have you had about not being listened to? I keep cam/mic access switched off a lot for this reason, and I've only seen generic denials/refusals that it is or could happen but nothing concrete, much like the pre-snowden outlook towards internet surveillance.
  - _jal 5y ago
    If someone wants to convince me FB, et al are doing this, they can show me packet traces of audio being uploaded for analysis, or in the alternative (if the theory is on-phone analysis) resource consumption data from the phone doing it. There's been so much discussion of this theory that we'd have seen one of those by now. I have zero love for the surveillance shops, but there's just no real evidence this happens.
cycomanic 5y ago
So how do you morally justify your work? Do you think this work is valuable? I know I sound confrontational, but I'm seriously wondering about this. In particular because the HN crowd in general has been so highly critical of most adtech, but at the same time a significant portion of people here probably works on it or for one of the companies which are behind it.
- nawgz 5y ago
  Isn't it basically known that FAANG pays the most because they have the most invasive & powerful adtech, and adtech is actually just a euphemism for outreach and control? And I hate to say it, but they justify their work really easily: they get paid very well for it and someone else would if they didn't anyways The real battles were fought and lost long ago in this domain, and the chances of success were never high. Power is an addiction and powerful people are the most addicted, they always have and always will aim to subjugate and control, to be a pawn of such a person is definitely sad but maybe worth the lofty goal of having true financial independence
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jklinger410 5y ago
  I vote with my conscious, but I work for whoever will pay me the most money.
  - fortyseven 5y ago
    Yeah, that's uh... "cool".
    - jklinger410 5y ago
      Not everyone can just "choose" what field they want to be in. If I got to choose what I did every day, I'd be a writer or a musician. No ethical concerns there.
NoGravitas 5y ago
> As someone who works in ads Perhaps you should consider a career change?
- jklinger410 5y ago
  I think anyone who works at an ad agency can tell you that they think about a career change all the time.
gibs0ns 5y ago
Either ethical or otherwise, what are some not-crap ad tech companies, that sell their services?
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach you with a decent success rate." Lots of younger people do not have all of the above. If everyone had all the above, then the statment would not contain "if", it would be a given. But lets assume every living person can be "learned about" and "reached". That does not necessarily mean every person is worth learning about or reaching. This sounds very much like a person with a heap of surveillance data trying to make it sound valuable. "It's just that most companies are using crap ad tech." As an unwise HN commenter once said, "The market has spoken." :) "... and reach you with a decent success rate." How effective is "decent". Why should I pay for this. No doubt people are working hard trying to improve surveillance and are making progress against users who havent a clue whats going on, nor any interest in getting one. Kudos for the easy victory. Like shooting fish in a barrel. But whats the point in trying to surveil someone like Mr Peguero. Hes not hiding his identity or location, or his preferences (Silicon Valley is garbage). If "adtech" surveillance succeeds against someone blocking Google IPs, then what. Whats the end game. Anyone who is willing to take the time to block Big Tech with a firewall is, IMHO, unlikely to be a very profitable ad target. Advertisers should only care about people who are likely to spend money on their products/services. However people conducting blanket surveillance trying to pitch to advertisers ("adtech"), they are the ones who have an interest in arguing, honestly or dishonestly, that every last "identified" individual is a worthy ad target. If I am an advertiser, I am not going to be particularly interested in trying to advertise online to someone who is running OpenBSD or blocking Google IPs with nftables. Individuals like the OP are proactively saying, "No, thank you." (The OP is actually saying "FU".) Personally I find its quite easy to control/limit/stop data transfer initiated by websites/popular_browsers using a forward proxy. And I can use AI, too. However I think blocking 8.8.8.8 and other Google IPs at the firewall is also good practice, not necessarily to stop ads/tracking by websites but to limit the users resources available to Google. Given their incentives and the fact we as users do not pay them like advertisers do, I think its naive to trust Google's employees will, for example, always honour the system DNS settings. Unrelated but its possible that many OpenWRT users using default settings are actually pinging 8.8.8.8 https://github.com/openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/mwan3/files/etc/config/mwan3 https://github.com/openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/mwan3/fi...
lilsoso 5y ago
So this means privacy on the internet is now gone? Can you recommend methods to avoid the tracking?
- jklinger410 5y ago
  This is a bit old, but to answer your question. You need a pi-hole hooked to your open source router that runs traffic through a VPN. You need to use cash or stay at a credit union that doesn't sell your information (if anyone has found one of these please let me know). You need to not use a cell phone and stay off of most social media. You need to not utilize credit. You need to use single-use email addresses for everything you sign up for, and furthermore to trust the system you use to create those addresses. You need to use an OS like TAILS or QUBES and never stay logged in to any platform, reject all optional cookies and flush non-optional ones. There are going to be services that won't let you operate this way. You need to get stuff shipped to a PO Box. You somehow need to stay out of the healthcare system. There are some stuff that's out of my expertise like having a good lawyer to make sure records of your activity are expunged and that you are aggressively wiping your credit score if anything does pop up. A good way to achieve some of this would be to found an LLC and buy your house and car through it instead of your personal name. It also would be a good idea to live somewhere where you can obstruct wifi and cell signals from your house without getting into a bunch of trouble, and make sure your guests simply don't bring their devices into your home.

alpha_squared 5y ago

> It's just that most companies are using crap ad tech. Including Facebook, apparently. About 90% of Instagram ads were irrelevant to me for about two years. Then I mentioned an interest in photography in a private conversation, now 75% of ads are photography-related.

justapassenger 5y ago
Let's apply occam's razor. What's more likely? 1. You mentioned thousands of other things in your private conversations. They suddenly start to narrow down on one specific one. 2. You're interested in photography, and are using service made to share photos. You follow photography accounts/search on the internet for photography related content, this signal got picked up, you clicked on some ad (by mistake most likely), and signal got amplified.
- alpha_squared 5y ago
  To address your breakdown: 1. I distinctly hadn't mentioned photography in private or public messages. Ever. Nor had I tagged any of my camera equipment in any of my posts. Hard to believe, I know, but I created and manage the account with explicit intent and action, preferring to move personal conversations off-platform. 2. I don't follow photographers, and prefer to only follow certain friends. While I don't go to that great an extent of concealing my browsing history, I also make some effort to segregate information flow. Plus, the low-hanging fruit of Firefox + DuckDuckGo + uBlock usually does a decent job of helping with that. 3. In the two years I've had an account, I hadn't seen a single photography-related ad prior to the conversation on photography. Ads typically revolved around random tech products (many of which were irrelevant) and ads for TikTok (zero interest in it). 4. There was a dramatic shift in the content of ads within 24 hours of the conversation on photography. It's conservative to estimate 75% of ads are photo-related. I have a hard time remembering any other ad (a sign of their irrelevancy, in my opinion). 5. Given the demographics of this site, I'd appreciate (for myself and others) if you'd give at least a little bit of benefit of doubt on technical comprehension.
  - drdebug 5y ago
    If you are interested, you should know that it's possible to not be seeing any ads at all on a computer (phones are a different beast). It's a bit of a chore but it takes 3 things: firefox with ublock origin + noscript + delete cookies and history on exit. I haven't seen ads in years. You can go a step further and create startup profiles. It's a bit chore because you have to selectively allow domains for content to display (reader mode can help), but that's the price to pay to minimize tracking and remove annoying ads.
    - alpha_squared 5y ago
      Thanks! I rarely see ads on desktop because I use Firefox + ublock + Pi Hole. I do, unfortunately, have to whitelist the occasional domain because some sites that I need to access don't play well with that setup.
- kindle-dev 5y ago
  What’s more likely? A service that vacuums up every piece of data vacuuming up microphone data, or the same service intentionally excluding this one random piece of data? Every time this comes up, people jump up and say “they’re definitely not listening!” But why do people think that? Facebook gathers as much data as possible, including buying a VPN to inspect supposedly private traffic. Why wouldn’t they listen to a microphone? As an anecdote, I know someone who worked on smart TVs. Part of what they implemented was a system to turn on the tv’s microphone to get an audio fingerprint of the content being watched.
mitchitized 5y ago
I once let my then 13yo borrow my laptop to do some research as he wanted to start experimenting with modded minecraft. I sat next to him while he researched minecraft plugins - no opportunity for him to hit some cough other websites, it was totally legit browsing session. Let's just say the advertising bubbles that Google rammed me into literally forced me to install adblockers just to make my web browsing experiences SFW again (also saw a huge spike in hostile ads with malware, and suspect it was too drastic and immediate a change to be mere coincidence). Saying "crap ad tech" is giving way, way too much credit to ad tech. I'd argue current ad tech IS crap, because the overall methodology and approach is fundamentally crap.
- KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  Might not be that strange. The Minecraft plugins community is the perfect group to trick into installing malware. There are shaders and extensions that are hosted on very shady website and people just act like it is no big deal.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    A teenager searching for video game plugins is the perfect target for all kinds of scams - it is absolutely not strange, the system is working as intended within the constraints it's given. Change the constraints by introducing regulation (such as advertising networks being liable for the ads they display) and the problem will go away.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The methodology is not completely crap. The role of the ad network is to get paid to display an ad. They aren't incentivised to ensure the ad is actually relevant - as long as they find some sucker to pay them to display the ad, they'll happily display it. Whether the mark then "converts" is not their problem. The problem is that the entire advertising industry is crap and has successfully contaminated and taken over the tech industry. The only way out is regulation so that 1) advertisers are liable for what they display (to discourage scam or illegal ads - and in some countries NSFW content would fall into this category as you're supposed to ask or verify the user's age) and 2) privacy regulations that make targeted advertising opt-in so that overall the cost of advertising becomes too great and starts allowing alternative monetization models (such as actually asking the user to pay for the service) to compete.
phkahler 5y ago
Yeah, I swear they are listening. But if you think about ALL avenues including the people around you then maybe not. But yeah there are still cases where audio monitoring seems to be the only explanation.

DrBazza 5y ago

Since I've been "reassured" that we're not being listened to by smart speakers, I can only assume that familial links i.e. the 'facebook graph', are also exploited by ad companies now as well. Anec-data: visiting the in-laws in a different part of the country, so my device and location is 'known' to have geographically moved by tracking, they searched for garages and glazing. We return home, and every advert is for garages and glazing.

jahewson 5y ago
That’s most likely because your device used their wifi and ended up behind their nat using the same ip as them. The anonymous tracking cookie ids on your device get associated with searches from that ip. (i.e. “cookie 1234 is in-market for glazing”) and you take those cookies back home with you. This is actually a massive failure because you’re not likely to purchase glazing at all.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's a failure. You could argue that showing him ads for glazing could be beneficial in case he spots a good deal and decides to talk to them about it. Now I don't think the ad network is that smart and explicitly intended for this, but presumably in aggregate they're seeing better results by merging targeting buckets by IP than not, so they continue doing it.
deeblering4 5y ago
What reassurances have you had about not being listened to? I keep cam/mic access switched off a lot for this reason, and I've only seen generic denials/refusals that it is or could happen but nothing concrete, much like the pre-snowden outlook towards internet surveillance.
- _jal 5y ago
  If someone wants to convince me FB, et al are doing this, they can show me packet traces of audio being uploaded for analysis, or in the alternative (if the theory is on-phone analysis) resource consumption data from the phone doing it. There's been so much discussion of this theory that we'd have seen one of those by now. I have zero love for the surveillance shops, but there's just no real evidence this happens.

cycomanic 5y ago

So how do you morally justify your work? Do you think this work is valuable? I know I sound confrontational, but I'm seriously wondering about this. In particular because the HN crowd in general has been so highly critical of most adtech, but at the same time a significant portion of people here probably works on it or for one of the companies which are behind it.

nawgz 5y ago
Isn't it basically known that FAANG pays the most because they have the most invasive & powerful adtech, and adtech is actually just a euphemism for outreach and control? And I hate to say it, but they justify their work really easily: they get paid very well for it and someone else would if they didn't anyways The real battles were fought and lost long ago in this domain, and the chances of success were never high. Power is an addiction and powerful people are the most addicted, they always have and always will aim to subjugate and control, to be a pawn of such a person is definitely sad but maybe worth the lofty goal of having true financial independence
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jklinger410 5y ago
I vote with my conscious, but I work for whoever will pay me the most money.
- fortyseven 5y ago
  Yeah, that's uh... "cool".
  - jklinger410 5y ago
    Not everyone can just "choose" what field they want to be in. If I got to choose what I did every day, I'd be a writer or a musician. No ethical concerns there.

NoGravitas 5y ago

> As someone who works in ads Perhaps you should consider a career change?

jklinger410 5y ago
I think anyone who works at an ad agency can tell you that they think about a career change all the time.

gibs0ns 5y ago

Either ethical or otherwise, what are some not-crap ad tech companies, that sell their services?

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach you with a decent success rate." Lots of younger people do not have all of the above. If everyone had all the above, then the statment would not contain "if", it would be a given. But lets assume every living person can be "learned about" and "reached". That does not necessarily mean every person is worth learning about or reaching. This sounds very much like a person with a heap of surveillance data trying to make it sound valuable. "It's just that most companies are using crap ad tech." As an unwise HN commenter once said, "The market has spoken." :) "... and reach you with a decent success rate." How effective is "decent". Why should I pay for this. No doubt people are working hard trying to improve surveillance and are making progress against users who havent a clue whats going on, nor any interest in getting one. Kudos for the easy victory. Like shooting fish in a barrel. But whats the point in trying to surveil someone like Mr Peguero. Hes not hiding his identity or location, or his preferences (Silicon Valley is garbage). If "adtech" surveillance succeeds against someone blocking Google IPs, then what. Whats the end game. Anyone who is willing to take the time to block Big Tech with a firewall is, IMHO, unlikely to be a very profitable ad target. Advertisers should only care about people who are likely to spend money on their products/services. However people conducting blanket surveillance trying to pitch to advertisers ("adtech"), they are the ones who have an interest in arguing, honestly or dishonestly, that every last "identified" individual is a worthy ad target. If I am an advertiser, I am not going to be particularly interested in trying to advertise online to someone who is running OpenBSD or blocking Google IPs with nftables. Individuals like the OP are proactively saying, "No, thank you." (The OP is actually saying "FU".) Personally I find its quite easy to control/limit/stop data transfer initiated by websites/popular_browsers using a forward proxy. And I can use AI, too. However I think blocking 8.8.8.8 and other Google IPs at the firewall is also good practice, not necessarily to stop ads/tracking by websites but to limit the users resources available to Google. Given their incentives and the fact we as users do not pay them like advertisers do, I think its naive to trust Google's employees will, for example, always honour the system DNS settings. Unrelated but its possible that many OpenWRT users using default settings are actually pinging 8.8.8.8 https://github.com/openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/mwan3/files/etc/config/mwan3 https://github.com/openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/mwan3/fi...

lilsoso 5y ago

So this means privacy on the internet is now gone? Can you recommend methods to avoid the tracking?

jklinger410 5y ago
This is a bit old, but to answer your question. You need a pi-hole hooked to your open source router that runs traffic through a VPN. You need to use cash or stay at a credit union that doesn't sell your information (if anyone has found one of these please let me know). You need to not use a cell phone and stay off of most social media. You need to not utilize credit. You need to use single-use email addresses for everything you sign up for, and furthermore to trust the system you use to create those addresses. You need to use an OS like TAILS or QUBES and never stay logged in to any platform, reject all optional cookies and flush non-optional ones. There are going to be services that won't let you operate this way. You need to get stuff shipped to a PO Box. You somehow need to stay out of the healthcare system. There are some stuff that's out of my expertise like having a good lawyer to make sure records of your activity are expunged and that you are aggressively wiping your credit score if anything does pop up. A good way to achieve some of this would be to found an LLC and buy your house and car through it instead of your personal name. It also would be a good idea to live somewhere where you can obstruct wifi and cell signals from your house without getting into a bunch of trouble, and make sure your guests simply don't bring their devices into your home.