We are literally frogs in the internet pan of water, with Google at al just incrementally turning up the surveillance capitalism flame every so gently that we just never notice the boil.
So yes, it’s a tad creepy to see ads show up in say Instagram for products I have recently been searching for in Google (never stopping to think how this data is traveling between 2 of the big data competitors). But I keep on clicking, Maybe even marvel.
It’s warm in the pan.
But this is now past just creepy weird. Google is serving up ads in a CBC News story that include my name in the graphics. This is the link that set the heat in here https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5061778
This iPhone screenshot is from a CBC news story about land acknowledgments. It is served up by Google AMP technology. Google runs the ad show.
I am now in boiling water trying to figure out how my reading of a CBC News story on my iPhone has been able to extract my last name, and embed it as an image in an advertisement, Not having it available on a device I can inspect, I cannot tell if the lettering of my name there is done dynamically with SVG graphics or somehow an adserver somewhere has images of tacky sweatshirts with our names on it.
I do notice on revisiting the site now to test (I get different ads, now for something sports related) that when the page loads, Google announces that I am logged in under my email address:
Google definitely knows my name (and more). But I have yet no idea how they knew to serve me up an ad with my last name displayed.
It is effing hot in here.
Hey Google, how did my name end up in an advertisement you served me?
I’m standing up to jump out of this boiling pot, and I am going to hound Google to explain. And CBC News out to be ‘splaining too.
Because if they can show me my name, why not a short with my Social Security number? My home address? a picture of my home, car?
The line has been crossed here.
It’s not a Levine thing at all. It’s much bigger.
How long will you sit blissfully in the surveillance bath? Who do I have to bark at to get an explanation?
Updates
Thanks to Bill Fitzgerald for some tweeted insight.
I did some digging at the CBC web site, here on their site about CBC and Your Data Privacy, is a telling section on Ad Targeting.
The data collected when you visit our website or click on our digital ads is used to show you future ads that match your interests. Ad targeting is used to create larger group profiles and larger audience segments made of users across Canada that share common interests.
For example, if we notice that a group of people (audience segment) has a keen interest in cars, we could show them content or ads about cars. We would then be able to find out how many people in the segment saw the ad or content, without identifying them personally.
Ad targeting data is anonymized to prevent a given person from being identified. Interactions with our products cannot be associated with any particular person.
(My emphasis added)
I am rather sure I have provided concrete p[roof that my ad targeting data is not anonymized and that interacting with CBC content is clearly associated with me (how does the ad know my last name?)
I found the CBC web form to submit an issue with privacy with this message:
CBC states that my data is anonymized, but I am sharing proof that advertisements on CBC News are targeting my last name. I am asking for not only an explanation, but that you write a story to investigate your own site. See https://cogdogblog.com/2021/07/google-crossed-the-line/
-submitted via https://cbchelp.cbc.ca/hc/en-ca/requests/new
I was pleased to get a quick response, but it was just idiot-splaining what cookies are:
Thank you for reaching out to CBC. We fully acknowledge your concerns regarding your data, privacy, and anonymity.
I have spoken with a member of our Ad Operations team regarding this issue, and this was their response:
“Let him know that Advertisers use cookies. Cookies are used to identify your computer as you use a computer network. Data stored in a cookie is created by the server upon your connection. This data is labeled with an ID unique to you and your computer.”
In less technical terms, the ad you are seeing is unique only to you, and the portion that contains your last name is shown only on your device.
I tried again:
I work in IT and education and have a full understanding of how cookies work. The information a web site provides via the HTTP header protocol includes my IP address, browser, version, etc but in no way transmits my last name. That information is coming from elsewhere. I understand that the ad served is targetted to me, the concern is that according to your referenced CBC data statement, my interactions with a CBC is anonymized; I have shown that it is not.
While CBC is not the source of connecting my identity, it is in partnership with ad agencies that do. I analyzed that a visit to the CBC web page in question includes connections to maybe 15 ad serving entities, and likely the one in question is Doubleclick. And what this means is that CBC is passing off responsibility to other companies that are invisible to a general user.
I am asking if CBC might do an investigative story on how this works. The typical data elements of an ordinary browser interaction (like an IP address, a device fingerprint, a location, a list of sites visited) do not include my last name (and how does an individual know what other personal information is tracked). If that is something ad agencies are using to target, is it not worth a story?
Might you connect me to a writer who would want to do a story on this? The public should know what is happening when it visits a CBC web site.
All I got are some links for reaching CBC offices. So now I need to find a reporter that might want a good juicy story (I think) on the myth of data anonymization.
Note: I tried saving bunch of tweets as a Twitter moment, but oh how badly broken is that functionality!
https://twitter.com/i/events/1420486566196224001
Featured Image: 2009/365/300 Mixed Message? flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) remixed to change the text on the sign and put in the ever watching Google logo.
At the end of the day it’s not just CBC or Google it’s the bigger data “aggregators” who correlate the disparate, standalone collectors of this or that tidbit. The correlation occurs because while they may see or get just an IP address, they can match that up in other records. Same for Phone Number which is a defacto identifier for ALL the web these days. When I was locked on FB some years ago, I was doing an experiment with someone who was my “name twin” and tried to make my FB profile look smell feel like my name Twin on FB. That triggered an automatic lock on the account. To get my account back FB demanded a cell phone number. And that is when I got out of the pot,… Gave up FB. Later I did the same stunt on Twitter, found my name twin there, and attempted to make my profile, look, smell, feel like that other person’s profile on Twitter. Same thing, automatic lock. And a requirement to give them a phone number in return for my Twitter profile. I told Twitter the same thing I told FB, no way in hell am I giving you something you likely already know, just so you can confirm the correlation on the back end. And I will sign my name to this posting, ‘cuz I can and I trust this blog more than I trust Social Media in general.
Aww shucks, thanks Eric, and there is no name twin here.
Yeah, I get that data is aggregated, but it’s one thing to correlate stuff that is sent in an HTTP header (IP, browser, operating system, version, etc), and another thing to toss my name or phone number into the mix. And it’s not the data aggregators doing this, someone (cough, Google? Apple?) tossed my name into the vat. Or is that the part that comes from them tying data to other sources?
There needs to be more transparency, less mystery.
Agreed, less mystery is a thing. And if they would be clear where they derive the correlation, that would be refreshing. I only know they buy as much as they collect. So there’s no account for what they can correlate. But I dare say there’s probably even things like ol’ fashioned “peering agreements” with teh big gunz, where they will share/swap ‘cuz they can. So no financial transaction, no trace. Only just the big AI, Tensor units taking those million or so variables and making the Social Graph each and every second, of every hour of every day of every year going back to when Gmail accounts were in limited supply and you had to hit-up a friend to get one. Boy were we naive back then.
Keep barking at them until you get a bite!
I remember from data warehousing over 10 years how easy it was to link bits of data for analysis. I can only imagine how big and prolific they are at doing it now.
Alan – let me know if you’d like some more resources to divorcing yourself from Google (and the rest of the risible Frightful Five: Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon) and also Twitter, Adobe, and others who are not working in our interest… Life is not only possible without them, but satisfyingly and positively blissful once we’ve put in the work required to get there. And it’s not as much work as many would think.
I know you are the one to go to. This is less about the divorce process, and from the bits I understand, Google is not directly responsible for what I documented, though they provide the infrastructure. Sites like CBC News rely on advertising revenue to underwrite their costs and then farm out that responsibility to all the ad networks, who co mingle cookie tracked activity with those dark data sources. But bottom line, CBC News claims that their use of ad networks anonymizes data when I show it does not, but maybe they just mean the parts they control.
No one takes responsibility.
But yes, I might be at that point, thanks!