
Woman registers period late on app, is starts seeing baby related ads - jacquesm
https://twitter.com/TaliaShadwell/status/1191054331119837185
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throwawaycanada
Reminds me of a story maybe ten years ago where a daughter had her pregnancy
outed to her parents due to all the "you're pregnant!" spam being sent to
everyone in the house all of a sudden.

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copperx
Wasn't that caused by Target physical mail spam? At least that's what I
remember.

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fzil
Yes, I remember reading this in the book about building habits(?) I believe.

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phonon
Doesn't Facebook allow you to see why an ad targets you?

[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/07/understand-why-youre-
se...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/07/understand-why-youre-seeing-ads/)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/facebook-new-tool-
explains-w...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/facebook-new-tool-explains-why-
am-i-seeing-this-post-on-news-feed.html)

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moltar
Moms-to-be leads are the most expensive consumer leads.

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sixtypoundhound
That's a big privacy issue if you start doing IP address based targeting on a
residential address....

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rambojazz
This looks like confirmation bias to me.

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mindslight
Surveillance app is to personal data as woodchipper is to arm.

It's a gross failure of professional ethics to allow these attractive
nuisances to exist and trip people up.

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NullPrefix
Was the app's name mentioned?

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beerandt
No, she's a reporter, and wasn't confident enough to out the app without
proof.

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alpb
I am not convinced that an app like that would share potential pregnancy data
with ad networks, if there’s even such a channel to begin with. It would be
good to have the app’s name, and investigate if this is reproducible.

Without that we’re just looking at very complex ad networks/algorithms and
trying to reason about them without seeing thousands of signals they might be
seeing. For example, age and other interests based on browsing history
would’ve triggered this, too.

~~~
beerandt
1) she claims the ads abruptly stopped as soon as she corrected/updated the
app to show she wasn't late.

2) There is huge demand for finding out about a consumers pregnancy.

It's one of the "big events" that marketers sometimes pay $10s-$100s for a
jump on competitors, along with weddings, buying a house, & going to college.

It's one of the few windows in a person's life where they 1) are about to
spend a bunch of money on products they have no/little prior opinion on, and
2) are willing to substantially change previous habitual behaviors, including
where to shop.

