Tag: micro-targeting
  • Oct 8, 2021 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media, Surveillance,

From Surveillance Capitalism to “Influence Government”: Using Microtargeted Ads to “Nudge” People’s Everyday Behavior

Privacy News Online has written a number of times about “surveillance capitalism“, and its use of micro-targeted advertising to influence people’s buying decisions. But the worrying power of such highly-targeted advertising is not restricted to the world of commerce. As the Cambridge Analytica saga shows, it is also deployed in the world of politics, to … Continue reading “From Surveillance Capitalism to “Influence Government”: Using Microtargeted Ads to “Nudge” People’s Everyday Behavior”

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  • Aug 9, 2021 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media, Surveillance,

Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of Hardware, Sets a Global Standard with China’s Toughest Local Privacy Law

For many Westerners, China is a country associated with widespread surveillance, stringent censorship, and human rights abuses in regions such as Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Despite that, the Chinese government is well aware that the country’s billion Internet users care deeply about personal privacy, and has been steadily introducing surprisingly strong data protection laws to … Continue reading “Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of Hardware, Sets a Global Standard with China’s Toughest Local Privacy Law”

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  • Jul 29, 2021 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media, Surveillance,

How Discussions at the World Wide Web Consortium Could Undermine Efforts to Strengthen Privacy

One of the surest signs that privacy is becoming a major factor in the online world is the attempt by major Internet companies to claim that they value it. Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that “The future is private“, while Google wrote that “Privacy is paramount to us“. As part of that attempt to jump on the … Continue reading “How Discussions at the World Wide Web Consortium Could Undermine Efforts to Strengthen Privacy”

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  • May 25, 2021 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Censorship, Encryption, General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media, Surveillance,

How data minimization can protect privacy and reduce the harms of collecting personal information

It’s no secret that many companies and governments try to collect as much personal information as possible. This might be because they believe this will improve the results of their analyses, or simply “just in case” they need something at a later date. According to a new paper from the digital rights organization, Access Now, … Continue reading “How data minimization can protect privacy and reduce the harms of collecting personal information”

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  • May 7, 2021 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Governments,

McKinsey & Company agrees that the time is up for the current model of online advertising: here’s what it thinks comes next

Highly-paid management consultants are generally regarded with a certain suspicion and perhaps envy by many people. A popular joke has it that a management consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time, and then keeps your watch. Whatever your views on management consultants, there is no denying their influence on businesses. … Continue reading “McKinsey & Company agrees that the time is up for the current model of online advertising: here’s what it thinks comes next”

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  • Mar 25, 2021 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Social Media, Surveillance,

Everything you wanted to know about “surveillance advertising” – and how to avoid it

In the four years since Privacy News Online first wrote about corporate surveillance as the principal business model for much of the Internet, the practice has become a mainstream concern. People and politicians are now aware of the dangers of both micro-targeted advertising and the real-time bidding that goes with it. Reflecting the broad-based resistance … Continue reading “Everything you wanted to know about “surveillance advertising” – and how to avoid it”

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  • Jan 6, 2021 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media, Surveillance,

Today’s online advertising not only seriously harms privacy, but is seriously broken in other ways; we need to fix it

For three and half years now, Privacy News Online has been warning about the huge, and largely ignored, danger of micro-targeted ads and real-time bidding (RTB). The approach sounds plausible. Advertisers bid in real time to place ads on sites that are tailored to the person who is loading a Web page. But the price … Continue reading “Today’s online advertising not only seriously harms privacy, but is seriously broken in other ways; we need to fix it”

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  • Oct 27, 2020 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Censorship, General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

EU politicians want Europe’s next big digital law to tackle micro-targeted advertising, by regulating or even banning it

Although privacy is by its very nature personal, it is also something that concerns everyone. As a result, local data protection laws can have a global impact. That’s certainly been the case with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has often figured on this blog. The EU is currently working on its next … Continue reading “EU politicians want Europe’s next big digital law to tackle micro-targeted advertising, by regulating or even banning it”

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  • 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”

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  • Sep 23, 2020 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Governments, Social Media, Surveillance,

Web sites shared over 100 trillion pieces of our personal data last year: time to stop real-time bidding’s blatant disregard of privacy

Last week Privacy News Online wrote about developments in the long-running battle between the privacy campaigner Max Schrems and Facebook. One of the key issues there is the failure by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) to act on the initial complaint made by Schrems seven years ago. That matters, because under EU law, Ireland … Continue reading “Web sites shared over 100 trillion pieces of our personal data last year: time to stop real-time bidding’s blatant disregard of privacy”

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