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High-Frequency Trading For Your Private Data
New submitter fierman writes "In a work to be presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (ISOC NDSS'14), INRIA researchers show the privacy risks of Real-Time Bidding (PDF) and High-Frequency Trading for selling advertisement spaces. Combining Real-Time Bidding and Cookie Matching, advertisers can significantly improve their tracking and profiling capabilities. Both technologies are already prevalent on the Web. The research discusses the value of users' private data (browsing history) retrieved directly from the advertisers, leveraging an exposed information leak in RTB systems. Advertisers will pay about $0.0005 to display a targeted ad to a single user, while at the same time acquiring information about them. The research also shows evidence of price variation with users' profiles, physical location, time of day and content of visited sites."
You fail to think the issue all the way through.
I would MUCH rather pay 0.00005 cents per page view in cash then have someone bartering my private information. Ill put 10 bucks on the account and probably not have to refill it all year.
Oh yeah, totally. IF, and this is a big if:
* advertising were always clearly labeled as advertising
* advertising were off to the side rather than being interstitial or overlapping with content
* advertising didn't play music, jump around wildly, flash, grab your focus, attempt to create new windows, or do anything else distracting you from what you were trying to do
* advertising didn't try to download megs of data and refuse to fully render the page until it was done
* advertising never showed images that were NSFW (either because they were disgusting pictures of morbidly obese people, or because they were giant pictures of half-exposed breasts, and I have seen both of those exact ads on sites that had no business displaying either of those things)
* advertising actually announced what it was advertising, and in a way not clearly anticipating that I have the brain of a 4 year old
* advertising was actually relevant to my interests
IF all of those things were true, then I would totally be willing to turn internet ads back on, and might actually even click on them occasionally.
Unlikely, though.