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> Regarding if somebody can accumulate ads to derive user data. I mean anything is technically possible but an ad provider doesn't want user data to leak becaus

by abeyer 4y ago

> Regarding if somebody can accumulate ads to derive user data. I mean anything is technically possible but an ad provider doesn't want user data to leak because it lowers the value proposition of their ad exchange Is that true? Being able to deanonymize targeted individuals or small groups doesn't really cut into a platform business, it's only a concern if you can do it at scale to meaningfully reconstruct their dataset. Sure, they'll work prevent the latter, but does it justify the costs of ensuring the former can't be done? Better targeting sells ads, privacy/security is a cost center.

lesuorac 4y ago
Who is doing the deanomymization? I'm also not sure how you're going to develop a process to deanonymize an individual that can't just be generalized to create large groups. Like just buy a dataset on people in the US and then run your process using all of them and you can make a large group then. There doesn't seem to be much information out there though but there are efforts to prevent the site from learning what ad is being displayed and the ad buyer from learning where and who is watching. I think most of this is just done via the iframe that an ad is displayed within. I would say the ad exchanges could just double dip and serve ads and sell user data if it wasn't an issue but FB did that and ended up with a big hassle from it. So it may be a marketing advantage for Google & Apple to be able to claim they don't sell user data.