advertising Archives : Page 2 of 3 : PIA VPN Blog

Sep 30, 2020 |
Glyn Moody |
Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Guides, Surveillance,

How Blacklight illuminates the murky world of ad tracking, key logging, canvas fingerprinting, Facebook pixels, and more

It is hardly news that we are being tracked as we visit Web sites, and move around the Internet. As this blog has reported, it’s the basis of today’s main online business model: using information about where we go, and what we view, in order to allow advertisers to offer highly-targeted advertising based on the … Continue reading “How Blacklight illuminates the murky world of ad tracking, key logging, canvas fingerprinting, Facebook pixels, and more”

Dec 31, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

As public fears mount over online surveillance and lack of control, advertising industry gets privacy religion – sort of…

A new Pew Research Center survey confirms what readers of this blog already know: many people are deeply worried about the routine tracking of their activities online: A majority of Americans believe their online and offline activities are being tracked and monitored by companies and the government with some regularity. It is such a common … Continue reading “As public fears mount over online surveillance and lack of control, advertising industry gets privacy religion – sort of…”

Nov 25, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

EU’s ePrivacy regulation is being subverted by publishers who want their “right” to use tracking cookies enshrined in law

Last year, Privacy News Online wrote about the important EU ePrivacy legislation. As that noted, it was moving through the EU’s legislative process slowly because of massive lobbying against the new law, which aims to regulate how metadata is gathered and used, and to limit how people are tracked online, for example using cookies. A … Continue reading “EU’s ePrivacy regulation is being subverted by publishers who want their “right” to use tracking cookies enshrined in law”

Oct 4, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

Web sites have a problem after top EU court rules that pre-ticked checkboxes for tracking cookies aren’t valid for consent

Last week we wrote about two important judgments from the EU’s top court – the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It has just released another long-awaited ruling that is likely to have an even bigger impact on privacy and the Internet. It involves the use of pre-ticked checkboxes for allowing cookies. It’s … Continue reading “Web sites have a problem after top EU court rules that pre-ticked checkboxes for tracking cookies aren’t valid for consent”

Sep 19, 2019 |
Caleb Chen |
Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Social Media, Surveillance,

Researchers show that smart TVs are sending your private information back to third parties like Netflix and Facebook

While most people have long suspected that their smart TVs are spying on them, there is now definitive proof. Two new studies have highlighted that smart TVs are still not good for your privacy. Two sets of researchers – one from Princeton University and the University of Chicago and a second from Northeastern University and … Continue reading “Researchers show that smart TVs are sending your private information back to third parties like Netflix and Facebook”

Sep 18, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

Now is the time to defend the final haven for privacy: your brain

One of the principal concerns of privacy is to prevent others – typically governments or companies – from monitoring what we think. They have to do that indirectly, by spying on what we say or write, and inferring what is going through our minds from that data. We assume that our actual thoughts are immune … Continue reading “Now is the time to defend the final haven for privacy: your brain”

Aug 31, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Surveillance,

Google says: “Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do”; here’s why that can’t be true

Back in May Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed: the future is private“. Now Google is joining in: Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do. So today, we are announcing a new initiative to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web. We’re calling this a Privacy Sandbox. As a slogan, … Continue reading “Google says: “Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do”; here’s why that can’t be true”

Jul 8, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

The writing is on the wall for ads based on real-time bidding in the EU – and maybe everywhere

Privacy News Online noted back in February a growing disquiet at the huge amounts of personal information that sites like Facebook and Google routinely gather about us, and how it is used for personalized advertising. Of particular concern is real-time bidding (RTB), which sees often extremely private information sent out to hundreds of potential advertisers, … Continue reading “The writing is on the wall for ads based on real-time bidding in the EU – and maybe everywhere”

Apr 12, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media,

Zuck’s back, calling for “new rules” for the Internet, which will entrench Facebook’s power, but do nothing for privacy

Last month, Privacy News Online looked at a 3000-word essay entitled “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking“, written by Mark Zuckerberg. It’s a measure of the political pressure that Facebook finds itself under that Zuckerberg has published another big “thought piece”, where he is obviously trying to steer public discussions to his company’s advantage. This … Continue reading “Zuck’s back, calling for “new rules” for the Internet, which will entrench Facebook’s power, but do nothing for privacy”

Mar 16, 2019 |
Glyn Moody |
General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media, Surveillance,

Don’t be fooled: the main beneficiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s apparent embrace of privacy is Facebook, not you

Last week, you could have been forgiven for thinking that privacy had finally arrived. Mark Zuckerberg published a 3000-word essay entitled “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking“, and wrote: As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms. Privacy gives … Continue reading “Don’t be fooled: the main beneficiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s apparent embrace of privacy is Facebook, not you”