5 ms·

I work in the ad industry. We take pains to make sure that everything is hashed as early in the process as possible, so we're basically just correlating hashes

by jbooth 15y ago

I work in the ad industry. We take pains to make sure that everything is hashed as early in the process as possible, so we're basically just correlating hashes with each other. There's nothing personally identifiable. I understand that it sounds creepy, but it's worth noting that advertising is what pays for all the free content you enjoy on the internet. EDIT: Downvoted for comments from the industry. Thanks! Let me know if there's any questions I can answer for you guys.

dawgr 15y ago
You don't need to track people to show them ads and in no case should you track people without their consent.
- jbooth 15y ago
  That's awfully sanctimonious. Do you cut personal checks to websites who's content you enjoy? If not, they need advertising dollars, and advertising can bring in way more money when anonymized tracking is used.
  - WayneDB 15y ago
    Well, paying for content sounds great but most websites that I visit don't even offer that choice. Sorry, but you're wrong that tracking is required. TV, Radio and Newspaper have been making money hand over fist for decades without tracking.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Newspapers are making money hand over fist? Funny, I thought they were being massacred and increasing CPMs on their remnant inventory is one of the few bright spots in their finances. If you visit someone's website, they're not violating your rights by noting that you visited. You're free to not visit, in fact. Or to register yourself on a do-not-track registry, enable ad block, and visit without contributing towards their bottom line. Whatever you want.
      - WayneDB 15y ago
        I said "TV, Radio and Newspaper" and I also said "for decades" not just the last decade. > ...they're not violating your rights... I didn't say squat about "rights". I simply disagreed that tracking is "required" for web sites to make more money on advertising because that is utter hogwash. The ability to track people is a relatively new thing.
  - falcolas 15y ago
    Yes, actually. If a web site has content worth consuming, and gives me the option, then I make sure they get money. I know I'm not alone - so why do so few sites make this option available? Probably because of the pervasive attitudes like yours that ads are the _only_ way to make money on the internet.
slowpoke 15y ago
The thing I have with collecting data, even if depersonalized, is that it's practically taken without consent. I'm completely fine, for example, with giving detailed, but anonymous usage statistics to Mozilla, because they nicely asked me if they may do that, to improve Firefox. I'm not okay with people just "taking" those statistics from me. Tracking should be opt-in, not opt-out. I shouldn't have to tell you to stop tracking me, you should need to get my consent to start tracking me. >it's worth noting that advertising is what pays for all the free content you enjoy on the internet Which is why I whitelist trustworthy domains I frequent in Adblock Plus. Again, opt-in. Also, advertisement need not necessarily be targeted. You can run generalized ads just as well. Sure, it might not be as profitable, but if the trade-off for more profit is less privacy, then I'm afraid I'll give priority to the latter.
- jbooth 15y ago
  I can understand your point, although I have a small beef with the consent point (you're visiting the website on your own consent, after all). More importantly though, you're basically pitting your privacy against someone else's money. Of course you're going to rank your privacy higher. What if it was your privacy vs less content on the internet because more sites go out of business?
  - alexqgb 15y ago
    Gosh I don't know. Maybe sleazy sites getting pushed to the margins would have to develop non-sleazy business models or die trying. In either case, it's a win for the Internet.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Sleazy sites like the new york times? Come up with a list of your favorite sites and I bet, aside from Ycombinator, all of them sell ads on the exchanges. And the only reason ycombinator doesn't have ads is because it is an ad. If you visit a website, I don't see how it's such a violation of your rights for them to take a note of your visit.
- 15y ago
bobds 15y ago
I don't think hashing by itself means much. Especially when working with tightly-constrained values. How about k-anonymity?
- jbooth 15y ago
  Can you explain how hashing is insufficient? You're saying someone could use a lookup table of hashcodes for all the URLs on the internet and deanonymize the URLs? The browser's identity is still unrecoverable. EDIT: Ah, just looked up k anonymity. We don't store any of the information that they're protecting for, like age, sex, any other personal attributes.
  - falcolas 15y ago
    If you obtain my gender, DOB and zip code (which is not hard - Google demonstrated that had all of that data even though I never gave it to them directly), you can uniquely identify me 80% of the time. That's insufficient, in my book.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      I'm a little skeptical of this claim in light of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem 23 people means a 50% chance that 2 of them share a birthday. Assuming that your gender and zip code put you in a pool of people > 23, I'm not sure how your statistic holds up. Do you have a citation?
      - hackerblues 15y ago
        I believe the previous commentator was referring to the work conducted by Latanya Sweeney http://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pdf http://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pd... "In this document, I report on experiments I conducted using 1990 U.S. Census summary data to determine how many individuals within geographically situated populations had combinations of demographic values that occurred infrequently. It was found that combinations of few characteristics often combine in populations to uniquely or nearly uniquely identify some individuals. Clearly, data released containing such information about these individuals should not be considered anonymous. Yet, health and other person-specific data are publicly available in this form. Here are some surprising results using only three fields of information, even though typical data releases contain many more fields. It was found that 87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on {5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth}. About half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only {place, gender, date of birth}, where place is basically the city, town, or municipality in which the person resides. And even at the county level, {county, gender, date of birth} are likely to uniquely identify 18% of the U.S. population. In general, few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person."
joering2 15y ago
> I understand that it sounds creepy, but it's worth noting that advertising is what pays for all the free content you enjoy on the internet. I found your statement bit cocky, but you may not see it the same way since you work "in the field". And you are pretty much wrong. Large part of web is free. Wikipedia? Sure they ask for money and every year they come up with just enough, since people appreciate free content and asked are willing to donate. Heck, people even write free software that you can download from websites that are free of ads [Apache is the first thing came to my mind]. I am sure web would look different have Google not based its business model on advertising, etc, but I would never say that the internet fundamentals are based on paid advertise-displaying model. I don't believe Tim thought it will or should as well.
- jbooth 15y ago
  Ok, allow me to amend my sentence: "It's worth noting that, aside from a few laudable charitable organizations, advertising is what pays for all of the free content you enjoy on the internet". Wikipedia and Apache are both one of a kind. 95% of the great content out there (and 100% of the shitty content) is supported by ads.

by jbooth 15y ago

dawgr 15y ago

You don't need to track people to show them ads and in no case should you track people without their consent.

jbooth 15y ago
That's awfully sanctimonious. Do you cut personal checks to websites who's content you enjoy? If not, they need advertising dollars, and advertising can bring in way more money when anonymized tracking is used.
- WayneDB 15y ago
  Well, paying for content sounds great but most websites that I visit don't even offer that choice. Sorry, but you're wrong that tracking is required. TV, Radio and Newspaper have been making money hand over fist for decades without tracking.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Newspapers are making money hand over fist? Funny, I thought they were being massacred and increasing CPMs on their remnant inventory is one of the few bright spots in their finances. If you visit someone's website, they're not violating your rights by noting that you visited. You're free to not visit, in fact. Or to register yourself on a do-not-track registry, enable ad block, and visit without contributing towards their bottom line. Whatever you want.
    - WayneDB 15y ago
      I said "TV, Radio and Newspaper" and I also said "for decades" not just the last decade. > ...they're not violating your rights... I didn't say squat about "rights". I simply disagreed that tracking is "required" for web sites to make more money on advertising because that is utter hogwash. The ability to track people is a relatively new thing.
- falcolas 15y ago
  Yes, actually. If a web site has content worth consuming, and gives me the option, then I make sure they get money. I know I'm not alone - so why do so few sites make this option available? Probably because of the pervasive attitudes like yours that ads are the _only_ way to make money on the internet.

slowpoke 15y ago

The thing I have with collecting data, even if depersonalized, is that it's practically taken without consent. I'm completely fine, for example, with giving detailed, but anonymous usage statistics to Mozilla, because they nicely asked me if they may do that, to improve Firefox. I'm not okay with people just "taking" those statistics from me. Tracking should be opt-in, not opt-out. I shouldn't have to tell you to stop tracking me, you should need to get my consent to start tracking me. >it's worth noting that advertising is what pays for all the free content you enjoy on the internet Which is why I whitelist trustworthy domains I frequent in Adblock Plus. Again, opt-in. Also, advertisement need not necessarily be targeted. You can run generalized ads just as well. Sure, it might not be as profitable, but if the trade-off for more profit is less privacy, then I'm afraid I'll give priority to the latter.

jbooth 15y ago
I can understand your point, although I have a small beef with the consent point (you're visiting the website on your own consent, after all). More importantly though, you're basically pitting your privacy against someone else's money. Of course you're going to rank your privacy higher. What if it was your privacy vs less content on the internet because more sites go out of business?
- alexqgb 15y ago
  Gosh I don't know. Maybe sleazy sites getting pushed to the margins would have to develop non-sleazy business models or die trying. In either case, it's a win for the Internet.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Sleazy sites like the new york times? Come up with a list of your favorite sites and I bet, aside from Ycombinator, all of them sell ads on the exchanges. And the only reason ycombinator doesn't have ads is because it is an ad. If you visit a website, I don't see how it's such a violation of your rights for them to take a note of your visit.
15y ago

bobds 15y ago

I don't think hashing by itself means much. Especially when working with tightly-constrained values. How about k-anonymity?

jbooth 15y ago
Can you explain how hashing is insufficient? You're saying someone could use a lookup table of hashcodes for all the URLs on the internet and deanonymize the URLs? The browser's identity is still unrecoverable. EDIT: Ah, just looked up k anonymity. We don't store any of the information that they're protecting for, like age, sex, any other personal attributes.
- falcolas 15y ago
  If you obtain my gender, DOB and zip code (which is not hard - Google demonstrated that had all of that data even though I never gave it to them directly), you can uniquely identify me 80% of the time. That's insufficient, in my book.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    I'm a little skeptical of this claim in light of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem 23 people means a 50% chance that 2 of them share a birthday. Assuming that your gender and zip code put you in a pool of people > 23, I'm not sure how your statistic holds up. Do you have a citation?
    - hackerblues 15y ago
      I believe the previous commentator was referring to the work conducted by Latanya Sweeney http://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pdf http://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pd... "In this document, I report on experiments I conducted using 1990 U.S. Census summary data to determine how many individuals within geographically situated populations had combinations of demographic values that occurred infrequently. It was found that combinations of few characteristics often combine in populations to uniquely or nearly uniquely identify some individuals. Clearly, data released containing such information about these individuals should not be considered anonymous. Yet, health and other person-specific data are publicly available in this form. Here are some surprising results using only three fields of information, even though typical data releases contain many more fields. It was found that 87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on {5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth}. About half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only {place, gender, date of birth}, where place is basically the city, town, or municipality in which the person resides. And even at the county level, {county, gender, date of birth} are likely to uniquely identify 18% of the U.S. population. In general, few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person."

joering2 15y ago

> I understand that it sounds creepy, but it's worth noting that advertising is what pays for all the free content you enjoy on the internet. I found your statement bit cocky, but you may not see it the same way since you work "in the field". And you are pretty much wrong. Large part of web is free. Wikipedia? Sure they ask for money and every year they come up with just enough, since people appreciate free content and asked are willing to donate. Heck, people even write free software that you can download from websites that are free of ads [Apache is the first thing came to my mind]. I am sure web would look different have Google not based its business model on advertising, etc, but I would never say that the internet fundamentals are based on paid advertise-displaying model. I don't believe Tim thought it will or should as well.

jbooth 15y ago
Ok, allow me to amend my sentence: "It's worth noting that, aside from a few laudable charitable organizations, advertising is what pays for all of the free content you enjoy on the internet". Wikipedia and Apache are both one of a kind. 95% of the great content out there (and 100% of the shitty content) is supported by ads.