5 ms·

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
better to torrent down the pdf/mp3
playingalong 2y ago
> The only correlating factor between the two devices is the IP address While certainly possible, it is unlikely. It takes a lot of rigor not to provide a correlation between two identities. All it takes is logging in to a service from both devices (not necessarily simultaneously) or probably even some less obvious events.
- habosa 2y ago
  I assumed IP address tracking was easy? I seem to often get ads relevant to people who share my home WiFi network.
bagels 2y ago
"I listen to the books on my iPhone and often search for and check out books there too," So, contrary to what one might infer, this was not paper books at a physical library. Still vile though.
munchler 2y ago
I’d like to know what subgenre is so specific that the attorney was sure the ad was targeted, yet is general enough to warrant its own ad, and is sensitive enough that she didn’t want it named in this article.
- slavboj 2y ago
  Monster romance.
  - doubled112 2y ago
    Is that what the kids grew up to call it?
- defrost 2y ago
  To paraphrase another tale; you can clerk for the supreme court for decades, but if you read just one book about sexy fun times with that cute goat from the hot yoga class . . .
- mistrial9 2y ago
  of course you want to know -- yet the attorney is protecting that part of the story (I agree with that stance). it is not anyone's business what she reads. Mechanisms for recording and building a dossier on each device user is exactly to make it a business.. so there are conflicting drives. If you use a device to access digital content, must your search and preference be made into the fodder of someone else's business ? Access to written material of your choice, without prejudice, is fundamental in the West. These battles were bitterly fought in previous generations.
  - munchler 2y ago
    It’s certainly her right to withhold that information, but it leaves a hole in the published story that makes it much harder to assess whether her description of what happened is likely true. Right now, I’d say it’s about a 6 on a plausibility scale of 0-10. With the relevant details, she could maybe boost that to an 8… or drop it to a 4.
    - orev 2y ago
      Vetting things like this is literally the job of journalists so a story can be told while allowing the subjects a level of protection. It’s the difference between a published story and someone just making things up. As a reader, you make the credibility assessment based on trust in the author and the publication.
zeitgeistcowboy 2y ago
I wonder if she also did a Google search for the same genre and if this is why she was retargeted.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  She did. This seems like a complaint about getting personalized ads. > Dudley said she typically listens to 30 to 40 audiobooks a month, most of which are fiction. "I listen to the books on my iPhone and often search for and check out books there too," she said.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    To be fair, I do hate personalized ads.
  - jrmg 2y ago
    I’m a little skeptical of this story - but that quote is not evidence that she used a search engine. She could mean searching and checking out books in the library apps or on the library web site.
    - ImJamal 2y ago
      It is possible. Apple does have an ad network so it is quite possible that this is just Apple logging searches in their apps and showing ads in other apps.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Or did some searches on other device but just don't remember doing so. Then again some tracking info somewhere linking up could also be reasonable. There is reasons for GDRP...
- Suppafly 2y ago
  That's almost certainly what happened. It's the same thing that happens in all of these stories.
schmidt_fifty 2y ago
This would be a lot more interesting of an article if we could tell what this mysterious genre is.... I'm guessing they don't like their taste being called out as predictable.
hyping9 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lefstathiou 2y ago
The sites she visited are likely using Google Analytics. Not much of a conspiracy imo.
- soared 2y ago
  Data from GA itself isn’t used/sold for audience targeting
fallinditch 2y ago
I've always felt that advertising is fundamentally a bad thing for the Internet. I feel this strongly when I experience episodes of privacy-invading ad targeting. I set my privacy preferences in Google settings to not show me ads based on my interests and I'm quite diligent about opting out of sending cookie data to third parties. It's like I'm protesting in my own small way to try to minimize any benefit the ad ecosystem gets from me. However, sometimes I do get ads for products or services that are so appropriate and tempting that I temporarily put aside my high-minded ideals ;-)
kkfx 2y ago
Ehm... HN readers are typically tech savvy people so... Let's say you have a connected computer, formally not in your hand, but practically still yours, since you deploy it, you provision it etc during it's entire life. The user have almost no control on it. It's a closed system. Well... How many will try, even just for fun, to do something they like on that said computer? Now imaging it's not one but a gazillion and you are a company known to someone in your country intelligence offering you a significant amount of money for some "OSINT-alike help", than there is even a law that mandate "helping" under certain not exactly strict circumstances... The Attorney should be surprised if some snooping DO NOT happen, nor for the contrary. A bottomline: this is why we MUST MANDATE FLOSS by law, and we MUST own our tools. Just a small example: I bet anyone reading this comment know that banks can give their customer a {PDF/PADES,XML/XADES,JSON/JADES} signed receipt for any transaction (stocks ops, transfers etc), I'm also pretty sure NOBODY reading this have ever seen such perfectly feasible receipts EVER. All though those not to young probably remember on-paper receipts for most common operations back than. Why? Technically if all parts are fair it's simply a good practice, any party involved have a double signed proof of a transaction, every party have a copy of it, signed by both counterparts easily verifiable with their respective public keys registered in a large network of keyservers some owned and granted by the Government. Why not? It's a protection for all "no one can say to have ordered something different". Why this does not exists? Why while all the western automakers who suffer a significantly growing Chinese industry while we, once the best in the world now almost lag behind, do not decide to respond with an open design, imposing all using it remaining equally open, GPL-alike for hw, since we still rule in software and high tech stuff? Such an open design, offering FLOSS cars allowing to connect directly to them, having the car web-served by the car itself as a personal subdomain, no crapplications and crappy slow and unreliable services will be a significant incentive to buy our models. Why not teaching FLOSS desktops and model at school to form IT-literate Citizens instead of clueless users https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-useful-idiot-capitalism/615031/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-usef... of modern old mainframes now renamed cloud services with dumb terminals now renamed "endpoints"? Answer this and you'll discover the rest.

better to torrent down the pdf/mp3

> The only correlating factor between the two devices is the IP address While certainly possible, it is unlikely. It takes a lot of rigor not to provide a correlation between two identities. All it takes is logging in to a service from both devices (not necessarily simultaneously) or probably even some less obvious events.

habosa 2y ago
I assumed IP address tracking was easy? I seem to often get ads relevant to people who share my home WiFi network.

bagels 2y ago

"I listen to the books on my iPhone and often search for and check out books there too," So, contrary to what one might infer, this was not paper books at a physical library. Still vile though.

munchler 2y ago

I’d like to know what subgenre is so specific that the attorney was sure the ad was targeted, yet is general enough to warrant its own ad, and is sensitive enough that she didn’t want it named in this article.

slavboj 2y ago
Monster romance.
- doubled112 2y ago
  Is that what the kids grew up to call it?
defrost 2y ago
To paraphrase another tale; you can clerk for the supreme court for decades, but if you read just one book about sexy fun times with that cute goat from the hot yoga class . . .
mistrial9 2y ago
of course you want to know -- yet the attorney is protecting that part of the story (I agree with that stance). it is not anyone's business what she reads. Mechanisms for recording and building a dossier on each device user is exactly to make it a business.. so there are conflicting drives. If you use a device to access digital content, must your search and preference be made into the fodder of someone else's business ? Access to written material of your choice, without prejudice, is fundamental in the West. These battles were bitterly fought in previous generations.
- munchler 2y ago
  It’s certainly her right to withhold that information, but it leaves a hole in the published story that makes it much harder to assess whether her description of what happened is likely true. Right now, I’d say it’s about a 6 on a plausibility scale of 0-10. With the relevant details, she could maybe boost that to an 8… or drop it to a 4.
  - orev 2y ago
    Vetting things like this is literally the job of journalists so a story can be told while allowing the subjects a level of protection. It’s the difference between a published story and someone just making things up. As a reader, you make the credibility assessment based on trust in the author and the publication.

zeitgeistcowboy 2y ago

I wonder if she also did a Google search for the same genre and if this is why she was retargeted.

ImJamal 2y ago
She did. This seems like a complaint about getting personalized ads. > Dudley said she typically listens to 30 to 40 audiobooks a month, most of which are fiction. "I listen to the books on my iPhone and often search for and check out books there too," she said.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  To be fair, I do hate personalized ads.
- jrmg 2y ago
  I’m a little skeptical of this story - but that quote is not evidence that she used a search engine. She could mean searching and checking out books in the library apps or on the library web site.
  - ImJamal 2y ago
    It is possible. Apple does have an ad network so it is quite possible that this is just Apple logging searches in their apps and showing ads in other apps.
Ekaros 2y ago
Or did some searches on other device but just don't remember doing so. Then again some tracking info somewhere linking up could also be reasonable. There is reasons for GDRP...
Suppafly 2y ago
That's almost certainly what happened. It's the same thing that happens in all of these stories.

schmidt_fifty 2y ago

This would be a lot more interesting of an article if we could tell what this mysterious genre is.... I'm guessing they don't like their taste being called out as predictable.

hyping9 2y ago

[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lefstathiou 2y ago

The sites she visited are likely using Google Analytics. Not much of a conspiracy imo.

soared 2y ago
Data from GA itself isn’t used/sold for audience targeting

fallinditch 2y ago

I've always felt that advertising is fundamentally a bad thing for the Internet. I feel this strongly when I experience episodes of privacy-invading ad targeting. I set my privacy preferences in Google settings to not show me ads based on my interests and I'm quite diligent about opting out of sending cookie data to third parties. It's like I'm protesting in my own small way to try to minimize any benefit the ad ecosystem gets from me. However, sometimes I do get ads for products or services that are so appropriate and tempting that I temporarily put aside my high-minded ideals ;-)

kkfx 2y ago

Ehm... HN readers are typically tech savvy people so... Let's say you have a connected computer, formally not in your hand, but practically still yours, since you deploy it, you provision it etc during it's entire life. The user have almost no control on it. It's a closed system. Well... How many will try, even just for fun, to do something they like on that said computer? Now imaging it's not one but a gazillion and you are a company known to someone in your country intelligence offering you a significant amount of money for some "OSINT-alike help", than there is even a law that mandate "helping" under certain not exactly strict circumstances... The Attorney should be surprised if some snooping DO NOT happen, nor for the contrary. A bottomline: this is why we MUST MANDATE FLOSS by law, and we MUST own our tools. Just a small example: I bet anyone reading this comment know that banks can give their customer a {PDF/PADES,XML/XADES,JSON/JADES} signed receipt for any transaction (stocks ops, transfers etc), I'm also pretty sure NOBODY reading this have ever seen such perfectly feasible receipts EVER. All though those not to young probably remember on-paper receipts for most common operations back than. Why? Technically if all parts are fair it's simply a good practice, any party involved have a double signed proof of a transaction, every party have a copy of it, signed by both counterparts easily verifiable with their respective public keys registered in a large network of keyservers some owned and granted by the Government. Why not? It's a protection for all "no one can say to have ordered something different". Why this does not exists? Why while all the western automakers who suffer a significantly growing Chinese industry while we, once the best in the world now almost lag behind, do not decide to respond with an open design, imposing all using it remaining equally open, GPL-alike for hw, since we still rule in software and high tech stuff? Such an open design, offering FLOSS cars allowing to connect directly to them, having the car web-served by the car itself as a personal subdomain, no crapplications and crappy slow and unreliable services will be a significant incentive to buy our models. Why not teaching FLOSS desktops and model at school to form IT-literate Citizens instead of clueless users https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-useful-idiot-capitalism/615031/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-usef... of modern old mainframes now renamed cloud services with dumb terminals now renamed "endpoints"? Answer this and you'll discover the rest.