An advertising industry worker's take on adblockers

I worked at an ad agency and we'd literally have every user's email, name, phone etc in random spreadsheets that everyone had access to.

As an intern I had root access to just about everything on the company server because I was one of the people who "knew computers" who wasn't a dev.

There was constant debate about how to trick people into giving over their data etc (e.g. email sign-up for some free crap that you never actually got). Or getting people to allow apps permission to access their contacts, as then you've got 100 new people, and enough info about them to get them to open a spam email.

Also, if the user fell for a trick, their details are suddenly high value, as they are dumb enough to be a "mark" (or maybe their English isn't very good), so their stuff can be sold to scam companies or just scummy people.

Privacy is a layer of defence, and shitty people feel entitled to take it away from you.

"...root access to just about everything on the company server."
The urge to set up a cron for a random time after my departure to sudo rm -rf / would be so strong.
Or a Python script that quietly swaps all the data tables' values, so the aggregate information looks valid but is functionally worthless.
That last sentence is a beautiful summary. I'm totally going to steal it. I promise to try and remember to give credit.

Some things that my company does:

Has someone watching you browse our site live. We can see everything you do in real time. All your searches, missclicks, mouse movements, etc. Only thing it cant see is credit card info.
Uses these live views to create a profile on you. Are you in the deep south and searched for something that could be "conservative"? Your now on our Conservative mailing list. Vise-versa as well, We have email marketing campaigns that are written to cater to demographics. For each email sales campaign we put out, there are about 8 varieties of those emails that are tailored to what we think you want.
Keep databases of all our customers and people who visit the site, with as much info as possible. IP, location, estimated salary, spending potential, whether or not you are more likely to click on our links. All kinds of info that isnt really protected in any meaningful way. Most of it is just on a Google Drive.
For our big spenders and repeat customers, we have a separate database that has even more personal info. The marketing manager has even gone so far as to look up Facebook and Linkden and whatnot on you and take whatever they can find. Family, friends, hobbies, jobs, anything that they think can be useful to sell more stuff. Again, none of this is really secured to well.

Im not in the marketing department of my job so theres probably a lot more that im not aware of. These are just a few things we do and im sure this is mild in comparison to bigger companies. My job is a small family business with like 10 people working there.

Yeah, the first time I saw he granularity of what Analytics could collect on a site, I was mortified. Like yeah, they may not record your specific name, but if they know every page you visit and everything you buy, you're still a unique and trackable entity.
This is why I run several layers of adblock on my network and use plugins to search random terms that seem real, while also clicking every ad that makes it through.
My goal ceased being to contain my interests/info when I realized how much they knew. Now my goal is to just make the data as poisoned as possible.
But what does your company do with this data? You put me on an email list, but if you have my spam only email... Then what? What do I stand to lose by your company doing research on me?
- Why don't you give everyone here that kind of info then?
  
  What are you going to give me in return?
  
  It sounds like everyone already has all that info, and all they seem to do with it is recommend gifts my mom would like based on her search history.
  I get targeted political ads, but who cares about those? I don't form my opinion based on ads.
  
  You are so special thinking you are immune to propaganda.
  
  It's pretty easy for ads, they're clearly labeled and anything in an advertisement is propaganda with little merit.
  
  Ah, who among us hasn't been through an "I'm not influenced by propaganda because I know it's propaganda (even if it's granularly targeted to my biases)" phase? Many of us never get past it. I hope you manage to.
  
  We're on Lemmy, formerly of Reddit. We sling propaganda at each other for fun, you think the Moms for America PAC can outdo the constant scrum on the politics subs?
  If you think I'm wrong, please offer more than just "(((They))) have all your info and will 'propaganda' you, it's very scary and you'll never know it's happening!"
  It sounds like fearmongering to me
  
  Price discrimination is a major risk of lack of privacy.
  
  Thank you for an example
  
  Sorry, what's your argument here? That you're immune to propaganda because you're exposed to so much of it? Maybe that you're immune to propaganda that you (presumably) disagree with, like Moms for America, because you ingest so much propaganda that matches your existing opinions (political subs/communities)?
  What about consumer propaganda (i.e. marketing/advertising)? Do you think your purchasing decisions are influenced by brand awareness and other marketing effects?
  Genuinely trying to understand what you're trying to say here.
  
  My argument isn't that I'm immune to propaganda, it's that Google, Amazon, and however many other unknown data hoarders have all my info already and aren't using it for anything important.
  If anything, it's helpful. I got a suggested news article for some new research into my chronic condition, in it were targeted ads:
  Some sort of dental credit card
  A "smart" ring
  Xfinity
  Instacart
  I don't use any of those, congrats on spending money harvesting all my data to give me ads for products I won't use.
  I'm sure my purchasing habits are influenced by advertisers, especially new purchases into an area I don't know, power tools, for example. I've definitely started my research into purchases with "that brand I've heard of before".
  But people in this thread are acting like AdSense is sewing my eyes open and mind controlling me into sending them my bank account details.
- My job specifically? Probably nothing major except for some spam. We dont sell our customers info like a lot of places do. If we did then, the profile we have on you could be cross referenced with other companies and build a more complete profile on you. Allowing less scrupulous people to infer and fill in the blanks on the missing info for you and try to profit off that.
- What do I stand to lose by your company doing research on me?
  Nothing really. Most people are fine with it, and it's ok if you're fine with it too.
  For me it's just the principle. Honestly my life would be more enjoyable if I could just switch this off but I fucking hate advertising. It really, really bothers me on an uncomfortable level. Basically, I want to choose the products and services I'm interested in engaging with at any time, I do not want products and services to be proposed to me.

I think you’re the only person who I have ever seen say this aloud in a public forum—I totally agree. This doesn’t just apply to advertising. “I used to work for a plastics company—YOU DONT EVEN KNOW HOW BAD MICROPLASTICS ARE” No further elaboration

Like, how bad are they?! Tell me! You can’t just say that and leave!

I KNOW HOW BAD MICROPLASTICS ARE
- Let me guess, the knowledge is at the bottom of that cliff and I can see it if I stand at the edge?

Attribution (how do I prove the ad I bought actually influenced a person’s decision to do something) is still not a solved problem. If a company’s furniture business increased revenue 10% in a quarter, what percent of that was due to marketing. Also which campaign attributed the most to that increase? Because companies often run multiple campaigns through different channels and vendors.

If I can prove spending 50M on TV ads resulted in 150M in additional sales, that company would probably spend 150M on the next campaign to try and generate 450M.

The problem is what kind of data it takes to prove attribution. If I could say ID 123 saw an impression on Jan 31, made an Internet search in that vertical on Feb 1, and traveled to a location with that product on Feb 2. That would be pretty fucking convincing, but it also involves knowing ID 123 person’s activities in extreme granularity.

That’s a use case for selling furniture, but what else could you accomplish? Honey pot people seeking abortions in places where it use illegal? Identify people who maybe politically subversive. Scams on scams.

Pretty much anyone with a budget and a goal can access a commercial surveillance network.

I used to work in ad-tech and this is exactly right. We had a lot of problems that caused a considerable amount of noise on the results:
Cookie trackers getting added to the main blocklist for ad blockers basically rendered them useless
IP tracking was basically done by matching IPv4 addresses which are not permanent. Apple launched a feature which made every person who had ever paid for an iCloud subscription resolve to the same IP in any given country.
People generate so much data that it's actually hard to try to tell a meaningful "story" out of it. Like GP is saying 90% of a marketing budget is wasted but it's hard to tell which 90% that is.
I also think "attribution" is fundamentally flawed. Like the Coca Cola ads they show at Christmas are the most successful ad campaign ever but no one goes on their website after watching one of them.

Glad to see someone say this. It's a total appeal to authority argument. With they would've explained why they think it's bad and let us come to our own conclusion.

I work for a major data aggregator of public records, which uses a lot of the same techniques the these ad places use to profile people.

You would be astounded by the sheer amount of information we have on individual people from addresses, hard pii such as criminal and finance records and your ssn if in the USA, who your neighbors and family are, your assets such as housing/vehicles etc, and even your individual devices like your phone.

I was done dirty by one of these ‘services’. I was applying for housing and the report came back and had mixed my background up with a multiple felon who had inly a vaguely similar name. It turns out I was denied the chance to rent and I had very little recourse to correct the record. Laws around this stuff really stink in the USA.
In summary, CoreLogic/SafeRent can get stuffed.
Not to mention if you use a bit of game and network theory you can extrapolate political leanings, health conditions, sexual preferences, affairs, etc. All of the most personal and intimate details of a person's life are one data analysis away if you have a few things. Purchase histories from your rewards cards, browsing history, viewing history, most watched tv shows, if you mute ads or not; everything is tracked and aggregated and available for purchase. Even supposedly anonymized data can be de-anonymized with relative ease.
I remember a story from years ago where a woman started getting pre-natal coupons from Target. She didn't even know she was pregnant. She took a test a couple of days later and found out. They had determined she was likely pregnant due to the changes in her food-purchasing habits that she had been doing instinctually.
- I read about that Target thing as well. I seem to remember someone who worked for them stated that their shopper data analysis algorithm was so accurate, it was able to predict a pregnancy's due date within about a five to seven days margin of error. I'm in the US, with conservative states passing all these draconian anti-abortion laws, I saw a ton of women searching for "period tracking" apps that didn't share data for fear of being tracked by the government. Someone should be able to use technology to track and maintain their own health without fear of big brother snooping around.
  It's wild how much data is collected and what companies and governments can do with it.

Ad companies like Google run on your digital exhaust. They make it easy to embed their analytics, login, payment, crash reporting, and other tools into websites and applications.

This data is collected and combined with their other data sources. They know your physical location via GPS or approximate based on your internet provider. If you use Google DNS they know all the websites you are going to and when. Not using Google DNS?, That's cool, most websites have some component that integrates with Google. Use android apps? Almost all of those use play services, so Google gets that info too.

Hanging out with your friends tonight? Ad companies can use location data to figure out who you hang with and build a social graph of people who are around you all the time. It's almost Valentine's Day.. better buy a gift for that person you live with. Here are some suggestions based on what they have been looking at.

They own most people's email accounts, they know what you watch on YouTube, they know about your preferences, they know what you might buy and when. They are a search company so they will ingest any and all data about you on the web. If you bought it with Google pay or see an email receipt they know if their advertising is effective.

On top of that, now this data is all fed into machine learning algorithms to further mine the dataset.

They know more about you than you do.

Exactly, this is just a baseless statement of something we all know to be true and already agree with. It's like those posts that basically just say "rich people don't pay much tax, this is bad!", I'd love to read some details but just stating the obvious isn't informing the interested or convincing the uninterested.

Can't find it rn but there was a mastodon post a while back about a surveillance program using data sold for advertising purposes. Maybe someone remembers what it's called. The degree of information that program advertised as being able to find was insane.

They may have an NDA.

The key word here is 'security.'

Ad networks have been used to spread malware before, for example.

The data aspect does allow for much more nuanced pictures of people's lives than you might think - Google the story about the teenage girl who Target knew was pregnant before she'd told her family as a sample (and that was only from purchase data).

But realistically advertisers know a lot less than you think they do. They have the data, but don't know what to do with it outside of aggregate approaches that move the needle for a subset of their audience (who tend to just be very suggestible in general).