[pdkl95]

You do know that the ad won't necessarily be relevant to you, right? The ads will be "relevant" according to the advertisers who think you're the kind of target they want to trick into buying their product.

Regarding that "minor event": it is minor in isolation, but the point is that you are generating a large amount of those events that are being aggregated into databases where they are unlikely to be deleted. The ad(s) you might get isn't important. What you should be concerned about is the detailed pattern-of-life analysis that can be done at any time in the future by anybody that buys a copy of that database.

[SquareWheel]

>You do know that the ad won't necessarily be relevant to you, right?

Perhaps, but I don't really see the difference in the end. Anecdotally, I see ads for IntelliJ IDEA because I look up a lot of coding-related things. So does it matter that I'm getting this ad because Google's ad network has decided I like coding, or because IntelliJ selected some parameters and said "send this ad to coders"?

The goal of either operator would be to send me an ad they think I'm most likely to click on, and so from the user perspective it's indistinguishable where the ad is actually directed from.

>Regarding that "minor event": it is minor in isolation, but the point is that you are generating a large amount of those events that are being aggregated into databases where they are unlikely to be deleted.

Alright, here's the thing. I don't love the idea of tracking but I'm not repulsed by it either. I always see "tracking is evil!" as if it's the final say on the matter, especially on this website. But I've yet to see a convincing argument that it's something which I should be actively concerned about, or that it's something making my life worse in any way.

Often what I see is people using emotional words like "surveillance", when really we're talking about a computer algorithm that matches ads with interests groups. It inspires imagery of somebody watching you through your computer which I suspect is the point. This sort of language strikes me as hyperbolic, and in some cases dishonest.

I realize this is outside the scope of your original comment, but understand that when making claims like "tracking is evil", or some variation of that view, unless there's something tangible to point to and say "this is how it makes your life worse", it just doesn't register on my radar.

It might be easy to dismiss that view as short-sighted, but ultimately I consider it more pragmatic than placing ethical stances on what seems to be largely speculative concerns. Why would an ad company sell user data when that's their entire competitive advantage? In the case of Google (and I suspect most others), their privacy policy explicitly prohibit them from selling user data.

Ultimately I find that technology improves my life in many ways, and I try not to fear it unless I see a real cause for concern. And on this particular issue I haven't seen that yet.

[SomeStupidPoint]

They're used to develop accurate psychological profiles, which are then exploited by government agencies, data aggregators, etc.

I find surveillance economy to be worrying, because while it makes the market efficient, it makes government too efficient and allows for bad behaviors on the part of marketers (eg, targeting addiction susceptible people via "machine learning" for deniability).

Leaking my personal information to pay for websites isn't economics I like.

[pdkl95]

> making my life worse

> technology improves my life in many ways

First of all, it might not be about you. If you are privileged enough to not have to worry about being the target of prejudices, hatred, or the occasional witch hunt, then you might not see the necessity of keeping secrets. Some people are not that lucky.

> making my life worse

It probably isn't making your life worse at the moment. Right now we have barely scratched the surface of what is possible. Most of the current uses are fairly benign (such as ads). The concern isn't about current uses. The problem is the open-ended risk of anyone abusing that data in the future.

You are essentially making the bet that either 1) nobody will ever invent a use of your data that is harmful to you, or 2) nobody will ever abuse your data, or 3) that your data won't actually live forever. Clause 1 is already broken in some areas, clause 2 denies human nature, and clause 3 has a lot of evidence suggesting data rarely disappears.

> something tangible

Ok, lets consider insurance companies and/or banks. These businesses would really like more to get their hands on data that could give them excuses to raise your rates, deny your loan or insurance coverage. Sure, we have laws and regulations that theoretically prevent some types of data from being used. The legal situation becomes less clear when none of the prohibited data is used directly but it can be inferred from other types of data that is.

If you think this is a theoretical concern, then you need to read about the deplorable practice known as "redlining"[1], where data was used as a cover for racial hatred and forced segregation. We already see problems with various types of data being used in police work and judicial situations where certain combinations of "unrelated" data is actually a reasonable proxy for race.

Can you say with certainty that a future insurance company won't be able to take all of the data points you've been generating in ad networks - with absolutely no "PII" - and find some pattern in your history that can be used as a reason to raise your rates? Or deny coverage? This is only one stupid example; it will be a lot more subtle as we learn new analysis methods and creative data manipulation methods.

However, you asked for something tangible, so you should look at this[2] map of Amsterdam. Each black dot on the map represents 10 Jews. The Nazis commissioned this map from the local civil servants that managed the census data. I doubt they thought that their recent change to the census to include a question asking for religious affiliation could ever be dangerous. 3/4 of the dots on that map were murdered in the camps. Yes, this is an extreme example. I hope ad tracing data won't end up being used for that level of evil. Unfortunately, there are a lot of possibilities between "serving an ad" and "genocide", even though they are both data problems.

> Why would an ad company sell user data when that's their entire competitive advantage?

Selling data can become another source of revenue if the company has significant financial problems. Given the recent-ish trend of companies to agglutinate into a single power (or small group of powers), the transfer of data might be "internal" instead of a sale. Also, you're assuming it would be the ad companies choice; bankruptcy courts may see it as a valuable asset to be liquidated, and governments may simply take the data using various methods.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

[2] https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/uploads/archive/museum/topstuk...

[SquareWheel]

Interesting points, thanks for sharing.

>you might not see the necessity of keeping secrets

I wanted to address this first. I'm not a believer in "you have nothing to hide if you're not doing anything wrong", so I can appreciate the argument that some people may be more vulnerable than others. For instance whistle blowers that may need to maintain anonymity in all situations.

In these cases however, I believe some responsibility lies to those at risk to opt out of appropriate settings, or avoid using services that require tracking. Similarly, responsibility exists for the companies involved to make those opt-outs accessible, and to not use misleading language.

>Ok, lets consider insurance companies and/or banks. These businesses would really like more to get their hands on data that could give them excuses to raise your rates, deny your loan or insurance coverage.

As you said, laws do exist to protect the user against discrimination in these cases. If there's ways for companies to route around it then I'm not familiar with them, but I would imagine that opens them up to the potential of being heavily fined.

>If you think this is a theoretical concern, then you need to read about the deplorable practice known as "redlining", where data was used as a cover for racial hatred and forced segregation.

This is a good example, and certainly drives your point home. I agree it's absolutely a concern how data is collected in cases such as these. That said, open data can also be used for good. Consider medical studies that can look at entire populations for trends, or data that can help inform governments to the pain points in their region. My takeaway is that we need to be very careful about how data is aggregated and anonymized to avoid this sort of targeting.

So on that point I don't necessarily disagree with you, but my stance is that we shouldn't throw the baby away with the bathwater. Like any tool, data collection can be used for good or evil. We should be concerned with how we enable its use for evil rather than demonize the tool itself.

[lonewolf_ninja]

Your point is quite valid about using data for financial decisions and underwriting which is in-fact already happening in a lot of scenarios.