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I cannot understand the fear this article explains. If it tried to express that it came from the fear of having his private data known to the world or even a fe

by lomegor 15y ago

I cannot understand the fear this article explains. If it tried to express that it came from the fear of having his private data known to the world or even a few people, I would understand. But the article explains that he doesn't want targeted advertisement that no one knows about. In fact this is kind of a fear that machines will find out about his data. And although AI has really grown into something powerful, it has not yet come to the level of conscience, so I cannot relate to the fear of a computer having my data. (P.S.: I do understand if we are talking about Google handing data to other companies or the government, but that goes unmentioned here)

tzs 15y ago
This may sound overly paranoid, but it is an explanation for why some might not want targeted ads on their private pages. If they click the ad, the company that bought the ad gets some information. At a minimum, it gets their IP address and an identifier that identifies which of their ads was clicked. The advertiser also presumably knows what they were targeting the ad to. So now the advertiser has some information that can be used to infer that whoever is at that specific IP address is in the demographic they were targeting. Suppose the advertiser decides to sell a database that gives demographic hints by IP address. Now toss in social networks, and the ever increasing use of them to provide login services for other sites, and you have an ever increasing number of sites that can potentially map your IP address to your identity, and that might sell that information. Combine that with the demographic data from ad clicks, and that targeted ad on a private page can end up telling other sites about your private interests. A few years ago I would have thought this was ridiculously paranoid--but now that we've seen the impressive feats the data miners can accomplish I'm not so sure that it is paranoid to be worried about EVERY information leak, and a targeted ad is an information leak as soon as you click on it. You might not intend to click on these, but just having them there runs the risk of accidentally doing so.

by lomegor 15y ago

tzs 15y ago

This may sound overly paranoid, but it is an explanation for why some might not want targeted ads on their private pages. If they click the ad, the company that bought the ad gets some information. At a minimum, it gets their IP address and an identifier that identifies which of their ads was clicked. The advertiser also presumably knows what they were targeting the ad to. So now the advertiser has some information that can be used to infer that whoever is at that specific IP address is in the demographic they were targeting. Suppose the advertiser decides to sell a database that gives demographic hints by IP address. Now toss in social networks, and the ever increasing use of them to provide login services for other sites, and you have an ever increasing number of sites that can potentially map your IP address to your identity, and that might sell that information. Combine that with the demographic data from ad clicks, and that targeted ad on a private page can end up telling other sites about your private interests. A few years ago I would have thought this was ridiculously paranoid--but now that we've seen the impressive feats the data miners can accomplish I'm not so sure that it is paranoid to be worried about EVERY information leak, and a targeted ad is an information leak as soon as you click on it. You might not intend to click on these, but just having them there runs the risk of accidentally doing so.