
What Are 'Data Brokers,' and Why Are They Scooping Up Information About You? - dsr12
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjpx3w/what-are-data-brokers-and-how-to-stop-my-private-data-collection
======
rb808
I think its always worth clicking on random ads to feed random interests to
these guys. Yup I'm really interested in Peruvian pottery and Polka music. If
its on an interesting site that you want to give revenue, even better. Would
be nice to have a bot do it in the background.

EDIT: mesothelioma is a great search. Highest pay per click by ambulance
chasing lawyers.

~~~
908087
This is what you're looking for:

[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

~~~
rb808
> Built atop uBlock Origin, AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad,
> registering a visit on ad networks' databases.

Nice. Pity its banned on Chrome.

~~~
908087
I agree to an extent, but using Chrome to begin with kind of seems like it
would be antithetical to the use of AdNauseam, or at least somewhat self-
defeating given the support you'd be giving to Google.

------
drewmol
Lol, I've been emailing back and forth with LogMeIn, trying to understand the
privacy policy regarding Lastpass. This is my fourth reply, starting to get a
bit of details, reps statements are in italics:

 _While we may have some level of customization in our advertising to each
user (if the product they are using has in-product advertising)_

I'm going to assume "may" can be understood as "do" and the section before and
then inside parenthesis can be taken as:

if the web page is serving ads, "we use http ad-removal & ad-injection to
replace those ads with our own" , however the "our" part is still unclear...

Do you serve those ads solely in house?

Do you only have ad servers injecting pages for "your own" products?

Is it possibly you use 3rd party ad-servers/ providers?

Do you preform requested targeting on behalf of someone else using this
marketing profile data? And if so, do you get compensated somehow other than
"for profit purposes"?

 _they may opt-out of external marketing, and as stated, we are not selling
their marketing profile data to a third party for profit purposes._

------
api
Stuff infosec people have known about for many years continues to break
through into the public as if it's something new.

~~~
pmlnr
Even worse: stuff people involved in IT had been screaming about for years,
but always got dismissed as paranoid nerds.

~~~
hkmurakami
I am often reminded of a friend's quip: "Stallman may be crazy, but he is not
wrong."

Emblematic of the overall dynamic between IT insiders and the general public.

------
owly
[https://www.abine.com/deleteme/](https://www.abine.com/deleteme/) Anyone have
direct experience with Abine’s deleteme service?

~~~
Rjevski
But the issue is that they only delete stuff that's public - the issue with
data brokers is that it happens underground - you can't just search your name
and get all the data brokers that have your info.

So while this might be a good service for people who had their personal
information disclosed publicly (doxxing, etc), it will do little against data
brokers.

------
soared
Name a keyword or audience and I'll post the number of unique devices in the
audience, the cost, and broker who provides it.

~~~
thewarrior
Hacker News Readers :P

~~~
soared
[https://i.imgur.com/aKhr8uW.png](https://i.imgur.com/aKhr8uW.png)

~~~
siruncledrew
Where do you find that? Is there proof it's legitimate?

~~~
soared
It's from the trade desk's data management platform (ttd dmp). You can
probably find other screenshots online.

It's where advertisers find audiences, I think the minimum for ttd is $10k/mo
spend to use the platform.

