Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Unearthed Emails Show Google, Ad Giants Know They Break Privacy Laws (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by BeauHD on from the smoking-gun dept.

AmiMoJo shares a report from The Register: Privacy warriors have filed fresh evidence in their ongoing battle against real-time web ad exchange systems, which campaigners claim trample over Europe's data protection laws. The new filings -- submitted today to regulators in the UK, Ireland, and Poland -- allege that Google and industry body the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) are well aware that their advertising networks flout the EU's privacy-safeguarding GDPR, and yet are doing nothing about it. The IAB, Google -- which is an IAB member -- and others in the ad-slinging world insist they aren't doing anything wrong. The fresh submissions come soon after the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) revealed plans to probe programmatic ads. These are adverts that are selected and served on-the-fly as you visit a webpage, using whatever personal information has been scraped together about you to pick an ad most relevant to your interests. [...] The ICO's investigation will focus on how well informed people are about how their personal information is used for this kind of online advertising, which laws ad-technology firms rely on for processing said private data, and whether users' data is secure as it is shared on these platforms.

24 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Not likely by 110010001000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Google was founded on the principle of "Don't be Evil". So I sincerely doubt they would do this even in exchange for tens of billions of dollars.

    1. Re:Not likely by neilo_1701D · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Google was founded on the principle of "Don't be Evil". So I sincerely doubt they would do this even in exchange for tens of billions of dollars.

      I think you forgot the sarcasm tag!

    2. Re:Not likely by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      The mods here are intelligent, so the sarcasm tag is not needed.

    3. Re: Not likely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think you forgot the sarcasm tag!

    4. Re:Not likely by gweihir · · Score: 1

      I am just glad they did not hire me way back, I may have had to become complicit in "not" doing evil!

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    5. Re:Not likely by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      Well, look at it this way, they are not doing for the money but for the power. Every possible politician having done something stupid in their teen years, perfect material for extortion and hell tracking down adult politicians, well Google's lobbyists run around with a data set for the politician they wish to offer the carrot or the stick.

      Google 'don't be evil', it's called marketing, as are all those really progressive research projects the often amount to nothing but advertising served.

      Reality is you should be using https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck... and you should delete you Gmail account and block incoming Gmail (mark it as spam) and Android, well, it is getting more and more privacy invasive. Not to forget, flooding social media with bullshit about yourself, misinformation is often more effective than trying to keep secrets. That and of course legislating Google out of existence ie nuke it from orbit, the only way to be sure.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    6. Re:Not likely by sconeu · · Score: 1

      People ignore the tag.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    7. Re:Not likely by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      I can't shake the feeling that they may have dropped a word from that principle.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  2. The only solution is jail by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hard time in prison.

    We all know it.

    And yet they continue to violate the GPDR and the Canadian Constitutional Right of Privacy.

    Because you won't jail them.

    Fines won't work.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:The only solution is jail by Freischutz · · Score: 1

      Hard time in prison.

      We all know it.

      And yet they continue to violate the GPDR and the Canadian Constitutional Right of Privacy.

      Because you won't jail them.

      Fines won't work.

      The only thing these bozos learn from is what the EU does, fines, lots of fines in amounts so high it makes them squeal like boar on the end of a spear.

    2. Re:The only solution is jail by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      Hard time in prison.

      I know that's a turn on for some people, but wage/salary garnishment and making them clean up litter in the park is sufficient. Also it would be a justifiable use of asset forfeiture, including copyrights and patents.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    3. Re:The only solution is jail by WCMI92 · · Score: 1

      I agree. But this needs to be someone high up at Google. Just like it needs to be Zuckerberg for Facebook's many foibles.

      The problem is the suits at these companies NEVER see the real consequences of their actions. So they keep going on flouting the law.

      --
      Corporatism != Free Market
    4. Re:The only solution is jail by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think in this case it's not the right to privacy, it's lack of consent. When they run that auction they don't appear to have affirmative, opt-in consent from the user to use their data for that purpose.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:The only solution is jail by WCMI92 · · Score: 1

      Absolutely. Until someone goes to prison a real "pound me in the ass" prison they will keep doing these things. Because they are out for all the money they can make by however they can steal it.

      --
      Corporatism != Free Market
    6. Re:The only solution is jail by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because you won't jail them.

      And who, pray tell, is going to do that? The bought and paid for politicians?

      People need to let go of the fantasy that governments are their daddy. Defend your own privacy if you actually value it, like an adult.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    7. Re:The only solution is jail by epine · · Score: 1

      Hard time in prison.

      That's a dog whistle for anal rape.

      Dog whistles are themselves the spittle rain bird of all hat, no cowboy.

      Because this kind of lip-licking line-item assuredly never comes to pass IRL.

    8. Re: The only solution is jail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If I pay for my protection racket (taxes), the least we can expect is to be actually protected from the other gangsters in town.

    9. Re:The only solution is jail by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The bought and paid for politicians who introduced the biggest fines for privacy violations ever seen? 4% of global turnover is painful for companies like Google. Around â5.5 billion in Google's case.

      No, the reason there isn't jail time is because the politicians are not completely crazy and didn't bring in a very strong privacy law that would take a few years for everyone to comply with that also has an extremely harsh penalty. Rest assured the penalties will ramp up over time as the requirements become better understood and compliance near universal.

      GDPR is working well. Really well. One of the best designed laws for a long time.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. The key word here is NEW laws by presidenteloco · · Score: 1

    The technology and the way it works, exchanging privacy for free services, came first.

    The law come very recently.
    I guess if the law is fully implemented, it will kill the "you are the product" free internet services business model.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  4. Needs a No-Shit-Sherlock flag by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    Definitely!

  5. Surprising by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Not that they are knowingly doing criminal things, that is a given. But that they are so stupid as to put their crimes in writing...

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  6. Re:Worked in RTB for four years... by Okind · · Score: 1

    When Proctor & Gamble comes to you and says "we'll pay $0.01 for you to play this paper towel roll ad, but ONLY three times to each person per week"... well uh. I just don't know how you would do that under the GDPR.

    The correct response to Proctor & Gamble is: "we'll do this in every case where it's lawful to do so."

    Note that even with an id in a cookie (that persons name in your system), you cannot rule out family members using the same computer, strangers using the same (library) computer, etc.
    Anecdotal evidence (I work for a fairly large webshop in the Netherlands) suggests that people who don't consent are about as many as the number of people who use the same computer: a few percent.

  7. The "stop" argument by DrYak · · Score: 1

    So stop using those creepy "services."

    The problem, when non-tech, non-/. people try to stop using creepy services, is that you end up with that :

    • https://gizmodo.com/life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056 (for the article version)
    • https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx1XbvvfIlc4zQgE5ohJA9EJ2NCcGc2QQ

    We here around just have no clue how much "normal" people have been becoming dependent on "those creepy service", and are completely oblivious to even the possibility of not relying on a 3rd party.
    (e.g.: The first reflex of my s.o. for extremely simple task (make a collage of picture to build a banner) is to *google* around, find a *web app* and upload her pictures to that. I would just fire up any software enabling me to place picture on a field. Be it something dedicated like GIMP or Inkscape, or repurposing something simple like LibreOffice Impress)

    The Gizmodo "I shut down the big five" piece above is very telling once you look at the journalist's complete inability to send a big file over the internet. She's completely at lost because she's cut off dropbox and google drive and completely panics. Whereas it's something that I - like anyone else - regularly do (using a mix of SFTP/RSYNC, FTP/S and/or HTTP, between machine I own like servers and/or raspberries plugged at home and/or servers I rent at a local datacenter business).

    At that point I wouldn't have been surprise (and was almost expecting) if I had read a couple of paragraphs later that she'd been unable to cook her own dinner because she completely at loss about how to operate a modern IoT-enabled stove without blurting commands to Alexa/Siri/Cortana/OkayGoogle/whatever...

    We have the automatic reflex of using our solution and not trust "somebody else's cloud" for anything, because back when we began as kids, there wasn't even a cloud to begin with.

    So for us it's completely trivial to think "Why should I use service X, Y or Z if I'm creeped out by the company running it ?"
    Whereas most of the society needs to completely rethink how they interact with technology.

    Use protonmail instead of gmail, searx.me instead of google.com, Brave instead of Chrome, etc etc...

    Again, we have a completely different approach to things, we don't have that many marbles stored at someone else's computer.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  8. Re:Worked in RTB for four years... by Okind · · Score: 1

    Wrong. Your premise is flawed. No one consents to advertising online, for the sole reason that advertisers DO NOT ASK FOR CONSENT.

    I never said anything about consenting to advertising, for the very simple reason that advertisements can be safe for privacy (even if online they hardly ever are). Hence, consent is never required.

    But some advertisers DO ask for consent for personalized advertisements (sites like e.g. slashdot are a good example). This is how you can recognize the good ones. Scumbags like Facebook never asks for consent, but collect personal information anyway.