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Though worrying if it's done, I doubt that it's done at any scale in the way you're suggesting. Linking accounts is PII and the GDPR would require consent, righ

by Youden 4y ago

Though worrying if it's done, I doubt that it's done at any scale in the way you're suggesting. Linking accounts is PII and the GDPR would require consent, right to view the information, right to correct the information and so on. I think it was only doable in the end in the article because the data were released as part of a legal process. Regarding your YouTube story, there are lots of examples of things like this (e.g. "I talked to someone about X in person then saw X in Facebook ads") but I haven't yet seen hard evidence. So far I've written it off as coincidence at scale.

woojoo666 4y ago
The GDPR considerations are interesting, and it does seem like GDPR can cover things like behavioral data [1]. I'm not sure how it works in regards to Newpipe, the FOSS youtube client I use though. I assume whatever scraper Newpipe uses in the background has already accepted the cookie consent dialog, which would allow Google to start scraping data like IPs and other behavioral data. Not an expert on GDPR law though obviously. As far as it being a coincidence, that's usually something I assume as well. But it really comes down to a game of probabilities. Is it more likely that it's a coincidence, or that Google is doing timing analysis? In this case, a coincidence just felt less likely. I check my youtube feed at least once a day, so I know what my recommendations look like. This recommendation was so out of the ordinary that it stood out to me in a sea of my usual recommendations. And it stood out so much that it prompted me to go back and check my Newpipe history and Reddit history, and spend like an hour investigating and trying to figure out what was most likely. I even wrote down notes about the incident. Also I should probably mention now that earlier I had said that I got those youtube recommendations the next day, but checking my notes now, it was actually within an hour. The video that was recommended to me was not some trending video, it was already a few months old. I also searched my Youtube history to see if I had watched anything else from the same channel, and I had only watched 2 videos from that channel total, and over a year prior. I know that timing analysis seems very nefarious, more high-effort and nefarious that I would expect from even a company like Google. But my guess is that they aren't doing it intentionally, they instead just feed a bunch of analytics data (that they have user consent to collect) into some giant ML model, and that ML model has learned to use timing in its predictions. [1]: https://blog.rsisecurity.com/what-is-considered-pii-under-gdpr/ https://blog.rsisecurity.com/what-is-considered-pii-under-gd...

by Youden 4y ago

woojoo666 4y ago

The GDPR considerations are interesting, and it does seem like GDPR can cover things like behavioral data [1]. I'm not sure how it works in regards to Newpipe, the FOSS youtube client I use though. I assume whatever scraper Newpipe uses in the background has already accepted the cookie consent dialog, which would allow Google to start scraping data like IPs and other behavioral data. Not an expert on GDPR law though obviously. As far as it being a coincidence, that's usually something I assume as well. But it really comes down to a game of probabilities. Is it more likely that it's a coincidence, or that Google is doing timing analysis? In this case, a coincidence just felt less likely. I check my youtube feed at least once a day, so I know what my recommendations look like. This recommendation was so out of the ordinary that it stood out to me in a sea of my usual recommendations. And it stood out so much that it prompted me to go back and check my Newpipe history and Reddit history, and spend like an hour investigating and trying to figure out what was most likely. I even wrote down notes about the incident. Also I should probably mention now that earlier I had said that I got those youtube recommendations the next day, but checking my notes now, it was actually within an hour. The video that was recommended to me was not some trending video, it was already a few months old. I also searched my Youtube history to see if I had watched anything else from the same channel, and I had only watched 2 videos from that channel total, and over a year prior. I know that timing analysis seems very nefarious, more high-effort and nefarious that I would expect from even a company like Google. But my guess is that they aren't doing it intentionally, they instead just feed a bunch of analytics data (that they have user consent to collect) into some giant ML model, and that ML model has learned to use timing in its predictions. [1]: https://blog.rsisecurity.com/what-is-considered-pii-under-gdpr/ https://blog.rsisecurity.com/what-is-considered-pii-under-gd...