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Google allowed a sanctioned Russian ad company to harvest user data for months
- Terry_Roll 4y agoWell this just backs up something I've said before, that its possible to intimidate and harass individuals with the type of adverts only Google could deliver. Does that make Google an accessory to crimes, or does business to business provide the perfect cover?
- avgcorrection 4y ago> Last April, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators sent a letter to Google and other major ad technology companies warning of the national security implications of data shared as part of the digital ad buying process. They said this user data “would be a goldmine for foreign intelligence services that could exploit it to inform and supercharge hacking, blackmail, and influence campaigns.” The US (or insert <domestic entity>) for sure has more information on US citizens so Russia can’t compete with them when it comes to influence.
- judge2020 4y agoThe letter: https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4/a/4a3293e2-b07c-49fe-b052-3b3733ee586b/598A05F2F5B91764B6652B9ED516AD3B.google-final.pdf https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4/a/4a3293...
- avgcorrection 4y ago
- avgcorrection 4y agoAn interesting thing about that letter is the atrocious typography.
- hericium 4y agoHN is flooded by "archive.ph" campaign which injects Russian (and other) tracking scripts to copies of crawled 3rd party sites and requires JS to load on Firefox/Linux (and some other browsers) while pretending to be "archiving".
- jjulius 4y ago>... which injects Russian (and other) tracking scripts to copies of crawled 3rd party site... Source?
- hericium 4y agoApologies but at the moment I'm on Firefox on Linux and can't see anything past a page pretending to look like Cloudflare's but with Google's recaptcha.
- ta988 4y agoSimply go to archive.ph and look at a website you get google.com (on front page only), buysellads.net (based in US from a quick search), mail.ru (this one Russian obviously). At least that's what I see on a couple of tries.
- cato_the_elder 4y agoIt does do archiving, and it does it very well. It's fast, provides short URLs, blocks ads in the archived pages, tries to bypass paywalls and login walls, and resists censorship. That's why people use it. And it's funded by ads, so yes, it does have tracking scripts, just like a good chunk of the internet. If you are privacy-conscious (or just don't like ads), then you can use uBlock Origin to get rid of them.
- hericium 4y agoWhy would I want to go to JS-infested copy of a site which original version does not _require_ JS? Advice to do so and use uBlock to block something that wouldn't be run on original site is ridiculous. If you guys do archiving, stop spamming HN with links that are fresh and don't need archiving, just to run your tracking on victims' devices for profit. How is it not just stealing content from other sites? > It's fast, provides short URLs, blocks ads > And it's funded by ads, so yes, it does have tracking scripts So which one is it...?
- pessimizer 4y agoIs this really a complaint that a single, well-established Russian ad company got the same information from Google that they would give to any US company with an email address? This is part of the cognitive dissonance that insists that Russia has the most effective intelligence services in the world, that can manipulate elections at will and subsume every US social movement to spread its propaganda, but is too stupid and helpless to create a US front company.
- balderdash 4y agoSo your argument is that companies and people should not follow the law or do what’s right because people can circumvent their efforts?! “Why’d you sell vodka to that 12 year old? Ahh well it’s trivial for them to go out and get a fake ID…so I don’t bother checking ID”
- pretdl 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Nextgrid 4y agoMaybe his argument is that spyware should be illegal, regardless of whether the operator is US or Russia.
- encryptluks2 4y agoI mean to be fair you sound like the type that if they made homosexuality illegal that you'd be the first to start reporting people cause you don't care of the crime makes sense only that it is illegal.
- _uy6i 4y agoGuess you just ignored the “do what’s right” part of my comment, that’s convenient. So please explain to me what part of a law that prohibits people from doing business with a Russian state owned enterprise doesn’t make sense?
- downrightmike 4y agoThis is why I have a 3.7m entry dns block list, and a few other things. EFF ads.
- tjpnz 4y agoI do too and it literally saved me not an hour ago. Why does Google publish guidelines on what is and isn't acceptable on their ad network when they don't fucking enforce any of them? They might not be distributing malware directly, but they're (IMV knowingly) allowing it to continue.
- jfim 4y agoIt's cheaper to write a set of guidelines and not enforce them than to enforce them, which might actually reduce revenue. The incentives for them are such that it's better for them not to enforce their own guidelines. If Google was getting fined say $1000 per offending ad impression, they'd clean up their act really quickly. As it is currently, they don't have a real incentive to do so.
- legrande 4y agoWhat something like this: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts I find blocking at the DNS level breaks some sites, which is why in uBlock Origin you can whitelist a domain that is causing problems.
- Jolliness7501 4y agoAs all business focused companies, Google and its shareholders cares only for money. If they only could, they would sell newborn children as target practice for muscal cолдат-s. All sanctions can be easily avoided with resellers and “good will” from management and creative paperwork. Here they even didn't try.
- blackhaz 4y agoGoogle should be made to donate a few $M (or 10s/100s) to help defend Ukraine then, although it's still a completely shitty situation that a country fighting for its freedom is being "traded" for the temporary economical benefit of certain parties. How about Western telecom carriers and IT resources stop providing services to Russian military complex? We still have Western telecommunications providers supplying IT and communications services to companies directly related to Russian Ministry of Defense and its war machine.
- BrainVirus 4y agoThe sad thing about news like this is that most people only pay attention at all because they've been bombarded with anti-Russian propaganda, not because this showcases Google's awful anti-privacy practices. Despite years of warnings, examples and analysis of where this can lead, the only thing that matters in the end is some emotional trigger word that makes the public think they are dealing with an "outgroup". The cherry on top of it all is that ProPublica uses Google Search for their website. I am moderately sure that after I post this someone will jump in to comment and defend this practice, showing nothing has been learned. Privacy is important precisely because after your data has been collected and stored, there is no telling where it will end up and what it will be used for.
- apstls 4y agoAccurate reporting of Russia's cyber activities is not propaganda.
- thereddaikon 4y agoIf its done by the government or a government owned body it is by definition. That being said, Propublica is neither a government nor is it a government owned news agency. So its not propaganda.
- freeflight 4y agoTho that's quite the overly specific, and dated, definition of "propaganda". Public relations is a way more apt term for what's going on in modern times [0], and in the "cyber" manifestation of that field, private parties are recognized as the main contributors, and actors, for a number of nation states [1] [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/17/influencers-ukrainian-pr-machine-00018299 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/17/influencers-ukraini... [1] https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cef7e8d9-27bf-4ea5-9fd6-855209b3e1f6 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cef7e8d9-27bf-4ea5-9fd6-85...
- dbtc 4y ago
- pdimitar 4y agoWhat the hell does the recent Russian hostility has to do with this? Sanctions? You mean that the privacy laws that have been ignored and laughed at are not a bad enough violation? Apparently it's not, huh. Google and Facebook have been extremely anti-privacy since practically their inception but suddenly NOW it's a problem because an attached Russian company has been doing what Google has been enabling any company to do, for decades? Gosh. If that's how humanity can be made to react to public safety issues that I am seriously not impressed by our race, to put it diplomatically and mildly.
- jollybean 4y agoIt's not about privacy from companies who want to sell you vitamins, it's about Russian government wanting to know who you are so they can target you with political misinformation etc..
- pdimitar 4y agoI get that. But what makes people think this has not been going on -- with many other governments (plus Russia) -- since Google and Facebook ads became a thing? I am pretty sure it was happening for a long time.
- angio 4y agoIf the US had serious privacy protection rules there would be no data to sell to russian companies. Obviously that also means there would be no data to pass to 3 letter agencies, so probably we won't see them any time soon.
- freeflight 4y ago> it's about Russian government wanting to know who you are so they can target you with political misinformation Which is something not only Russia is doing with that information, it's a very widespread practice [0] and one that many think should be considered a bigger issue itself, rather than who makes use of it. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-german-far-right-finds-friends-through-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa...
- unity1001 4y ago
- bastardoperator 4y agoOf course it did, it was profitable for them. Google doesn't care about laws, they have a mountain of lawyers and piles of cash that ensure they will never be held accountable at any level. Get off Google if you can, you're the product, not the customer.
- imiric 4y ago> Google Play has policies in place that prohibit using this data for purposes other than advertising and user analytics. Any claims that advertising ID was created to facilitate data sales are simply false. How do policies _prevent_ data sales exactly? Their policies can say whatever they want—if the data is available in the first place, it _will_ be misused, regardless of whatever your policies say. If your enforcement hinges on your detection algorithms that data is being misused, you can't guarantee that violations aren't taking place. This is Google's Cambridge Analytica. It's insane that these privacy abuses happen again and again, and people have no protection or ways of stopping it. At the very least, we deserve a cut of the profits they're making by selling our data on these scummy markets.
- smsm42 4y agoIt doesn't prevent anything, it just allows Google to claim it's not their fault. We "prohibited" it, what else could we do!
- theptip 4y ago> This means Google may have turned over such critical information as unique mobile phone IDs, IP addresses, location information and details about users’ interests and online activity Can someone help me to understand this? I thought Google kept this kind of user-preference (interests/activity) data to itself, and used that as the sauce powering its ad auctions. If you run a site, GA will give you IP, location, etc. for inbound traffic, but I didn't think they would give you data on other users. Does Google actually sell user preference data and IPs in bulk? What product are they referring to here?
- jonny_eh 4y ago> Google allowed RuTarget, a Russian company that helps brands and agencies buy digital ads, to access and store data about people browsing websites and apps in Ukraine and other parts of the world In other words, they collected data via websites and apps, just like any other JS or native ad library does. This wasn't data that Google collected, then handed over. It's a misleading headline IMO.
- amelius 4y agoImagine a Russian agent starting an ad campaign targeted at Ukrainian people who are interested in weapon systems. But... the actual ads are about an innocent thing, like cat food. An Ukrainian clicks the cat food ad, is directed to the Russian agent's fake cat food shop, places an order and fills in their address. How is Google not leaking information here?
- freeflight 4y agoThe whole "Google is not selling your data" excuse never held up to practical reality, it was always only a semantics argument along the lines of "They sell it, but not directly!". This whole case exemplifies that very much, but it only garners attention due to who did it, Russia, not due to why and how this is actually possible.
- theptip 4y ago
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhy is it so hard not to share user data? Is sharing user data the lazy path you take when you cannot use that data to create a product and provide value yourself?
- freeflight 4y agoLarge parts of the modern economy are driven solely by sharing and selling user data. "Oil of the 21st" century and all that.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoSharing and selling the data? Or sharing products built with the data?
- sroussey 4y agoThe report this article is based had an added word: may. Google may have this company in their systems and turned on, but they don’t know.