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Tracking Caucusgoers By Their Cell Phones (schneier.com)
Okian Warrior writes: Dstillery gets information from people's phones via ad networks. When you open an app or look at a browser page, there's a very fast auction that happens where different advertisers bid to get to show you an ad. Your phone sends them information about you, including, in many cases, an identifying code (that they've built a profile around) and your location information, down to your latitude and longitude. On the night of the Iowa caucus, Dstillery flagged auctions on phones in latitudes and longitudes near caucus locations, some 16,000 devices. It then looked up the characteristics associated with those IDs to make observations about the kind of people that went to Republican caucus locations versus Democrat caucus locations. It drilled down farther by looking at which candidate won at a particular caucus location.
what next?
Anybody else read that as "Tracking Caucasians By Their Cell Phones"?
I must say I was rather interested in the technology involved.
Sex. Drugs, and Unix.
I wonder what people would think if they fully understood how they are being tracked by ad companies.
While disturbing, this news is by no means surprising.
Advertastards can wave their hands and shout "we're just trying to see what you like so we can send you info on stuff you might find interesting!" until they're blue in the face, but simply having the vast reams data considered 'necessary' to 'get to know' the vict^H^H^H^Hcustomer is too much temptation for some to resist.
Of course, political advertising is still, well, advertising, and they're still trying to sell something to you, even if it's only a predefined set of prejudices or empty promises. So I suppose in the broadest sense this is a legit business purpose for Dstillery...but the ramifications are just a wee bit chilling. The stakes on this sort of ad campaign are a bit higher than whether people buy a Ford or a Toyota, and the one that they don't 'buy' doesn't have access to a list of people who ultimately didn't buy what they were selling...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Track me bitches
...And you think you're so clever that you felt the need to share that bit of stupidity. If enough people point out your an idiot will you get a clue and shut up?
They were able to track the former by the swastika wallpaper on their smartphones.
I know plenty of good, honest, moral, non-racist people on both the democrat side and the republican side. Many of them are more similar that they are willing to admit. I think the people in congress know this and it's all a game to them. If they keep both sides fighting over trivial things and demonizing each other then they can run the country however they want.
In every state I've ever lived in, when you went to cast your vote in the primary elections, you had to ask for the ballot of a specific political party, because that is what a primary is. You narrow down the candidates from a political party into a single candidate for that political party for each specific public office.
The ballot you ask for is public record, which is how you always seem to get advertisements in the mail for one party but not the other, robo calls that attack one party but not the other, etc.
If some advertising company already knows who you are, they probably also already know who you vote for. Except in Iowa, apparently.
I currently live in Illinois and our election schedule is insane. We have elections twice a year sometimes it seems. If I don't particularly care about anyone in particular in an election, I will randomize which ballot I ask for in the primary. That seems to be very confusing to the people who profile me; I get asked to be a republican poll worker at the same time I get calls from Democrats, etc.
The only questions this should raise is how much jail time these data grabbers should get and why there's no one campaigning on privacy rights.
Because they need to be able to do this, for your safety.
Can you cite any neo-Nazi or KKK groups that are supporting the Democrats in 2016?
Nah, didn't think so.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When you open an app or look at a browser page, there's a very fast auction ... where different advertisers bid to .. show you an ad
Very fast? Not in my experience - it's fucking slow, so much so that it turns me off many websites. Now, if a website spends more than about ten seconds doing these shinanegins (as can be seen in the staus bar) I go elsewhere.
It suprises me that most people (even a website developer I was talking to recently) are unaware that this bidding goes on. They just think that their connection is slow.
Another good reason to use an ad-blocker.
Android question. I already have Firefox with addblock on my phone, but how do I make sure the browser and/or the adds (in case they are handled externally from the browser ) NEVER has access to the GPS ? Note that I don't want to turn GPS off since I often use it for navigation...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Melissa Harris-Perry, the former MSNBC host, isn't a group, but she is a racist. She has a problem with interracial adoption, specifically criticizing Mitt Romney's son and daughter-in-law for adopting an African-American child. Harris-Perry supports Bernie Sanders, a Socialist who is currently lying and claiming to be a Democrat.
The NEA wants to keep inner city minority kids in failing schools, rather than send them to the kind of private schools that rich white people send their kids too. I'm not sure if Bull Connor was formally a Klansman, but his policy on school choice ("Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!") was certainly not a high point in American history. The NEA supports Hillary Clinton, a Democrat who is currently lying, although about matters unrelated to her party affiliation. (It's not fair to hang Connor around the necks of the modern Democratic party, but Connor was, of course, a Democrat.)
Did you know that the KKK hates Jewish people? It's true. You know who else is an anti-Semite? Al Sharpton, MSNBC host and special advisor to President Obama on race. On two different occasions, Sharpton incited race riots where a mob killed Jewish people. Sharpton routinely supports Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. Clinton is probably telling a different lie than the last time we checked in with her.
Now, find me a racist organization supporting Cruz, Rubio, or the other guy, you duplicitous piece of shit.
Can you cite any neo-Nazi or KKK groups that are supporting the Democrats in 2016?
Nah, didn't think so.
Just because a group supports you doesn't mean that you support that group. Every racist, pedophile, etc.. out there that votes has to pick a side. The racists tend to vote for republicans while the pedophiles tend to support democrats. There might be some subtle reasons for this but that doesn't make the republican candidates racist any more than it makes the democrat candidates pedophiles. That's like saying airline pilots support clinton so that makes clinton an airline pilot. See how absurd that sounds?
Joke's on them...I don't carry a cell phone everywhere I go. I rather enjoy escaping life's parasites for a few hours when I go out. They'll still be there when I decide to return home, all while the privacy invaders think I never left in the first place.
Maybe not, but it definitely demonstrates one of the properties of your appeal.
If all the neo-Nazis and KKK groups support you, then it might be time to do a little self-examination, no? Maybe just ask yourself, "Why are these people all coming to my side?"
You are welcome on my lawn.
He's also not a True Scotsman, from what I hear.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Generally speaking, if you can see multiple separate requests visible in your browser then what is going on is a traditional "waterfall" approach, where code in the page tries one ad server at a time until one succeeds.
The auction (real-time bidding, or RTB) model was invented to get around the limitations that the waterfall presents, allowing a middle-man (the "ad exchange") to accept an impression request, then take bids from many potential advertisers in parallel (generally they only got on the order of hundreds of milliseconds to respond) and then give the impression to the highest bidder.
Properly-implemented RTB should actually speed things up, since the action request from your browser should take no longer than 500ms. Of course, once the auction is completed the ad must still be downloaded and rendered and that itself can take some time depending on how "heavy" the ad is.
[Trump is] also not a True Scotsman, from what I hear.
Actually, he is. Apparently, if your mother was born in a country, you're entitled to citizenship in that country. Trump's mother is from Scotland, and so he's not eligible to be president. Because he's a True Scotsman. I think I did that right.
More to what I assume to be your point, the problem with the KKK isn't that their name is the Ku Klux Klan. It's that they're a bunch of racists and general bigots and they use violence and intimidation to attain their evil ends.. Plenty of violent racists/bigots both support Democrats and attain evil ends through violence and intimidation. The Black Panthers are an example of such a group. They hate white people, Jews, and Catholics. They're no better or worse than the KKK, who hates black people, Jews, and Catholics. And the Black Panthers were convicted of standing in front of polling places in Philadelphia in 2008 and scaring off white people who came to vote. Just like the KKK used to do to black people.
It's not fair to say that every Democrat is a racist because the Black Panthers showed up at polling places to intimidate people into voting for a black guy who happened to be a Democrat*. In campaigns, the right to free speech overrides the right to free association, which means that shitty groups like the KKK or the Black Panthers or the Nazis or whoever are allowed to endorse candidates and parties even if the party or candidate doesn't want their name associated with the hate group.
*It's also fair to say that President Obama probably agrees with THE NON-RACIST goals that the Black Panthers have, such as their economic goals. He would probably have their support even if he wasn't black. (If he gets the nomination, expect to see Bernie Sanders in a similar spot.) Agreeing with the non-racist parts of the Black Panthers' platform, of course, does NOT make either politician a racist.
Hey everyone, while we're on the topic of race, REPUBLICANS HATE BLACK PEOPLE.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Dickhead. Keep throwing swastikas around. Al Sharpton is a prominent DEMOCRAT. On multiple occasions, he incited race riots where a bunch of black people killed Jewish people. There is NO ONE in the Republican Party at a similar level of prominence as Al Sharpton that's done that.
You're a miserable human being. I wish I could figure out how to keep my cell phone logged into Slashdot so it would consistently hide your low grade trolling bullshit. Hey Whiplash, if you're reading this, that's a feature request.
Except the Black Panthers never hung white people from trees.
Do you have any evidence of Black Panthers using "violence and intimidation"? Ever? Anywhere?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Except the Black Panthers never hung white people from trees.
Do you have any evidence of Black Panthers using "violence and intimidation"? Ever? Anywhere?
They used guns, jackass. And plenty of them. I already told you about the intimidation part. (In 2008, they were "guarding" Philadelphia polling stations to keep white people out.) As for violence, they led ambushes on the police, robbed armored cars, tortured and murdered informants, and executed their accountant after she threatened to go public about financial irregularities. That's just what a quick scan of Wikipedia turned up.
But because they are racist against white people, they're not True Scotsmen. Got it.
Just came from the Wikipedia article. There is not a single item demonstrating that the Black Panthers used violence and intimidation against white people.
So, either give an example or you're a liar.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Maybe not, but it definitely demonstrates one of the properties of your appeal.
If all the neo-Nazis and KKK groups support you, then it might be time to do a little self-examination, no? Maybe just ask yourself, "Why are these people all coming to my side?"
But the appeal of a party to a group still doesn't say anything about that party.
For instance, people who want to blow up whaling ships are most likely democrats.
But it's a one way arrow: wants to blow up whaling ships->cares about environment->votes democrat
It says nothing about whether democrats in general want to blow up whaling ships.
No, they're most likely Green Party members.
You are welcome on my lawn.