Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Is Helping Some 60 Companies Track People Across Devices (neowin.net)
Neowin reports of Adobe's recent announcement of its new Marketing Cloud Device Co-op initiative: The announcement of the new solution for tracking customers across devices was made at the Adobe Summit this week in Las Vegas to a digital marketing conference. According to an Adobe blog post released earlier this month citing Forrester, consumers are increasingly accessing multiple devices before making a purchase decision -- an average of 5.5 connected devices per person. This behavior creates a challenge for retailers, who cannot easily target people in their marketing campaigns, ultimately depending on Facebook or Google to track people instead of devices. Both Facebook and Google are able to do this job because of the massive amount of users logged into their ecosystems regularly, so most retailers have been opting to use those platforms as a way to reach potential customers. But Adobe's approach is to provide a platform agnostic solution acting as a glue between the world's biggest brands' own data management platforms.
In order for Device Co-op to work, each company that has joined the initiative will provide Adobe with "cryptographically hashed login IDs" and HTTP header data, which Adobe claims will completely hide the customer's identity. This data will be used to create groups of devices used by the same person or household, which will then be made available to all the members of the initiative so they can target people on different devices, instead of creating one customer profile per device, as can be seen from the example given in the image above. Until now, some 60 companies have joined the Adobe initiative, including brands such as Subway, Sprint, NFL, Lenovo, Intel, Barnes & Noble, and Subaru. Also, preliminary measurements made by Adobe indicate that Device Co-op could link up to 1.2 billion devices worldwide, based on the amount of accesses seen by current members. But it is important to note that the initiative is currently collecting data of U.S. and Canada users only. Adobe is claiming the initiative will not disclose a user's identity to its members, including any personal data, but, given the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, many will be skeptical of those claims. Thankfully, Adobe is allowing users to completely opt out all of their devices from the services via this website.
In order for Device Co-op to work, each company that has joined the initiative will provide Adobe with "cryptographically hashed login IDs" and HTTP header data, which Adobe claims will completely hide the customer's identity. This data will be used to create groups of devices used by the same person or household, which will then be made available to all the members of the initiative so they can target people on different devices, instead of creating one customer profile per device, as can be seen from the example given in the image above. Until now, some 60 companies have joined the Adobe initiative, including brands such as Subway, Sprint, NFL, Lenovo, Intel, Barnes & Noble, and Subaru. Also, preliminary measurements made by Adobe indicate that Device Co-op could link up to 1.2 billion devices worldwide, based on the amount of accesses seen by current members. But it is important to note that the initiative is currently collecting data of U.S. and Canada users only. Adobe is claiming the initiative will not disclose a user's identity to its members, including any personal data, but, given the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, many will be skeptical of those claims. Thankfully, Adobe is allowing users to completely opt out all of their devices from the services via this website.
Maybe these companies should start actually providing a service or product that people will want to buy instead of wasting money on this crap. It's a shame that companies make more money on what they can sell about you than what they sell you.
We DON'T WANT TO BE TARGETED!!!!!!
When are people going to realize that online marketing and advertising is a joke? The "targeted" ads I see are for things I have already bought.
Thankfully, Adobe is allowing users to completely opt out all of their devices from the services
Why not opt in? If the service is valuable to me I'd want to opt in, wouldn't I?
Use a device to search for the reviews.
Use a different device to search for the best price.
Buy on a very different device.
Use a few different computers to spread out shopping. Make ads and tracking difficult.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
By not developing proper alternatives to Adobe products. Many enterprises and video sites are still using flash and the gimp still can’t even draw a circle properly. By supporting Adobe’s monopoly you brought it on yourselves.
when you install everybody's "app" on all your devices. quit doing that, already. it's not worth the dollar-off a shitty coffee.
...and while you're at it, uninstall (or disable if you cannot uninstall) the pre-loaded crap (Facebook app, Amazon app, etc.) Even if you don't log into or even open them, odds are good it's being siphoned, and the information cross-checked against other bits on your phone (email addy, phone #, etc. They may not get a perfect bead on you, but they can get close enough with what they can get; especially Google if that phone runs Android.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If enough people don't boycott, it just means they dont care.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Let them track my bot...see how great and awesome I am :P
[($)]
Learned my lesson years ago, so unless they do a drive by download I'm good.
In addition to the stupidity of all those people out there who don't know and don't care about the danger this initiative represents, there is a fair measure of stupidity in big corporations signing up for Adobe to be their sole source for all that data.
Just for a moment, let's adopt the worldview of power-hungry despotic corporations and the marketards that serve them. In the first place, how much less valuable is the anonymized data than the data that is traceable to specific, named people? I'd say it's a LOT less valuable, probably from the standpoint of fleecing their marks, and almost certainly from the standpoint of power over their customers.
In the second place, putting all your eggs in one basket is one thing, but putting them all in somebody else's basket is quite another. Do they really want to hand over data collection to a company that can just turn off the tap at will? Is it a good idea to have a monoculture of privacy-invading tech that potentially provides a single point of failure vulnerable to browser extensions, specialized third-party services, and plain old hackers?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
and all the other ad networks do? Congrats adobe, you're building tech from the 90s. Somehow that's fitting...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
https://helpx.adobe.com/analyt...
Add those to your host files.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
The problem with anonymized data is that it's not really anonymous.
All you need are multiple datasets to figure out who is who. For example, Google buys another dataset from Adobe. Even though no names are in it, they can use patterns in it checked against their own non-anonymous data to figure out who you are.
Anonymized data is just a nice term used to fool the masses.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Help... create an ecosystem we can trust. plz
[($)]
and they want to sell it... :(
[($)]
with that new network of satellites hes putting up there... give us something extraordinary plz.
[($)]
This violates GDPR. Any information is personal as soon as you can associate it with any other information about me, which distinguishes it as mine. So as soon as they know - this is the same user as that, they have my private information, regardless of name, birthdate presence. And more, as soon as I click on one such ads and buy some horse raddish, they combine some very personal identity info. When I buy something, I do not want them know of all my devices. I can only accept opt in, without bedsheets of smalfonted jura lingo. So, Adobe, you gonna get some lawsuits coming. Up to 5% of annual turnaround fines. Can't wait.
Facebook users think its benign right until it's not.
For my wife, the day a violent ex of her friend turned up at her door to threaten her (warning her not to let his ex GF stay) was the day she realized that FB is giving friends of friends access to her posts.
One of Facebooks 'sharing, connecting' tweeks done with a dodgy privacy policy change. She was unaware of, until she wised up, then she ditch FB.
After that, she deleted it all and simply moved to a non-FB messaging platform. Since FB isn't the only social thing in town, it was trivial to ditch them. Her friends have likewise moved on.
You can see this (before the latest incident) in the falling numbers of Facebook users among the young.
The more advertisers try to target me the more vehement I get about ignoring ads. I don't read them, I don't watch them, I generally ignore them. Unless they are some kind of ad that is either difficult or impossible to ignore, then I get good and mad and make a point to remember the ad. Well, actually, I remember precisely two details: who the ad was for, and how incredibly angry their attempts to influence me made me, and to make sure never to buy their products, patronize their services, etc. (I am keenly aware that there is a danger that the memory of the company, brand, organization, etc., will outlast the anger, so every time I see their name, logo, or another ad, I make it a POINT to get GOOD AND ANGRY, to counteract their efforts to subvert my will and alter how I make decisions. It never quite develops to the point of murderous rage, but I like to keep it at a gentle boil to ensure that anyone attempting to mess with me that way, and (as far as I'm concerned, rip me off,) NEVER, EVER gets a penny from me.
I am also of course, aware of the possibility of astroturfing, but I believe advertisers believe that astroturfing in this particular way, (trying to piss people off by making an annoying ad that pretends to boost a competitor's product(s) so they'll AVOID that brand,) would, in most sales contexts, be counterproductive. So mostly when it comes to ads, I just ignore them if I can possibly manage it, unless and until I decide to seek a good, a product, or a service. I am probably not the only one who thinks and operates this way, but there are brands I can tell you, that when I see their ads, I deliberately contemplate how much I hate them, how much they suck, how much they've pissed me off, and if it is, for example, for food, a restaurant, etc., I tell myself their food tastes like shit, their employees don't wash their hands, or possibly are jerking off into the food. It really helps counteract their efforts, and on-balance, I think, makes me LESS likely to patronize them.
Now you might of course think, "but hey, ads fund the internet, so by refusing to buy..." but let me just stop you right there. The companies that make ads COULD fund websites and NOT try to track everything I do, and follow me around the internet, effectively shouting advertising messages at me. But they choose the shotgun approach to advertising and I reserve the right NOT to patronize someone just because they fund a website I use. As for all the unobtrusive ads I block or ignore, and the companies behind THOSE, I say, "blame the ones who have pissed me off, because they're the ones who fucked it all up for you." They're the reason your messages have basically zero chance of reaching me. But hey, be comforted. I might use your service or buy your product, but only when, where, how, and if I decide to do so. When *** I *** decide. Not when you decide. Got it? So Adobe and Google and Apple and Facefuck and all the others can try to "track" me all they want, but the more ads they shove at me, the angrier I get, and the less likely the ads are to do any good.
Also, I think there's an ideal saturation point that when they pass, even people who don't normally operate as I do, vis-a-vis advertisements, who will tend to start acting more as I do, the more ads that are blasted at them. At that point, advertising actually will do the advertisers themselves more harm than good, so... keep it up, assholes.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
I've been using Adobe products since 1995. As their products got more and more bloated I grew disenchanted. Then they switched to a subscription model because people wouldn't upgrade their software often enough for Adobe's liking, and I got pissed. Moved to using Affinity products and haven't looked back. Now Adobe wants to be a marketing company as well? It's like you're trying to make me hate you more. It's too bad... Adobe used to be cool software tools, now they're just tools.
I don't know about all of them, but that's currently my default assumption for any of them.
OTOH, why would anyone be surprised at any foul deed performed by or attributed to Adobe which might make them some more money?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.