Eight Unbelievable Things You Never Knew About Tracking

Introduction to Tracking Through Clickbait (0m00s)

Laura Kalbag opens her talk by examining targeted advertising on Pink News, revealing how clickbait advertisements demonstrate sophisticated tracking capabilities. She discovers that Taboola, the advertising provider, appears on nearly 5% of popular websites and leverages massive amounts of user data to target audiences when they're most receptive.

"It knew I was in Cork. It knows the broad subject matter of the content that I'm reading, and so perhaps I will be interested in the surprising gay men, and suspects I'm a woman."

"Taboola itself, its aim is to drive marketing results by targeting your audience when they're most receptive to new messages."

"They provide a handy graphic which is very hard to read because they've put text in an image showing some of the information that might be useful about a site's visitor."

The Myth of Anonymised Data (3m28s)

Kalbag debunks the notion that pseudonymised or anonymised data provides privacy protection, explaining how individuals can be re-identified through data point comparison. She cites research showing that 99.98% of Americans can be correctly re-identified using just 15 demographic attributes.

"It only takes a small named database for someone to pry the anonymity of a much larger anonymous database."

"Using our model, we found 99.98% of Americans would be correctly re-identified in any dataset using 15 demographic attributes."

Data Brokers and Personal Information (5m05s)

The talk explores how data brokers like Acxiom and Oracle collect and trade vast amounts of personal information, including sensitive details about health, finances, and personal beliefs. Kalbag reveals the extensive and invasive nature of data collection, from ethnic codes to likelihood of pregnancy.

"Acxiom provides up to 3,000 attributes and scores on 700 million people in the U.S., Europe, and other regions."

"Oracle sorts people into thousands of categories and provides more than 30,000 attributes on two billion consumer profiles."

"And search history, including whether a person searched about abortion, or legalising drugs, or gay marriage, or protests, or strikes, or boycotts, or riots."

Cambridge Analytica and Political Manipulation (8m08s)

Kalbag connects tracking to democratic manipulation, explaining how Cambridge Analytica used personality profiling to influence elections. She details how psychological operations techniques, including disinformation and fake news, were employed in both the Trump campaign and Brexit campaigns.

"Cambridge Analytica itself claimed to be able to analyse huge amounts of consumer data and combined that with behavioural science to identify people who organisations can target with marketing material."

"SCL's expertise was in psychological operations, or psyops, changing people's minds not through persuasion but through informational dominance, a set of techniques that includes rumour, disinformation, and fake news."

Individual Privacy Protection Challenges (11m09s)

The speaker outlines various methods individuals might use to protect their privacy, whilst acknowledging the difficulties and limitations of these approaches. She emphasises that the burden shouldn't fall on individuals and that many protective measures can break website functionality.

"That's why it's unfair to blame the victim for having their privacy eroded. Because we're actually having our concept of privacy twisted by the people who have an agenda to benefit from that."

"Don't use Gmail. Your email not only contains all of your communication, but the receipts for everything you've bought, the confirmations of every event you've ever signed up for."

Corporate Redefinition of Privacy (16m02s)

Kalbag critiques how companies like Facebook and Google attempt to redefine privacy to suit their business models. She challenges Eric Schmidt's infamous quote about privacy and exposes the inadequacy of privacy policies and consent mechanisms.

"Privacy is the ability to choose what you want to share with others and what you want to keep to yourself. It's as straightforward as that. Facebook shouldn't be telling us otherwise."

"If you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

"The clicks that pass for consent are uninformed, non-negotiated, and offered in exchange for services that are often unnecessary, are often necessary for civic life."

Social and Economic Implications (21m44s)

The talk addresses how privacy erosion disproportionately affects marginalised communities and economically disadvantaged individuals. Kalbag explains how refusing to consent to tracking can result in lost opportunities and social isolation.

"Some focus group participants reported that in an effort to maintain data privacy, they modify online activities in ways that harm personal relationships and force them to forego job opportunities."

"I can't help but wonder if only privileged people can afford to take a position of social media puritanism."

"Technology can't fix the issues of domination or oppression, or discrimination. In fact, it often makes them much worse."

Building Ethical Technology (27m51s)

Kalbag presents a framework for creating "small technology" - everyday tools designed to increase human welfare rather than corporate profits. She provides practical guidance on making technology easy to use, inclusive, non-colonial, personal, private by default, zero-knowledge, shareable, and non-commercial.

"As an antidote to big tech, we need to build small technology. Everyday tools for everyday people designed to increase human welfare, not corporate profits."

"Privacy is the ability to choose what you want to share with others, and what you want to keep to yourself."

"We need to make easy-to-use technology that is functional, and I include accessibility, because if it is not accessible, it is not functional, convenient, and reliable."