Capturing sensitive data is possible thanks to real-time bidding, a hugely popular approach to digital advertising and part of the lifeblood of Google and Facebook
Along with the Pixel phones, watches and earbuds at Google’s annual showcase of software and devices last week came a pair of nifty-looking translation glasses. Put them on and real-time “subtitles” appear on the lenses as you watch a person speaking in a different language.
Each time you open an app on your phone or browse the web, an auction for your eyeballs is taking place behind the scenes thanks to a thriving market for personal data. The size of that market has always been hard to pin down, but a new report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, which has aggressively campaigned for years in the US and Europe to put limits on the trade of digital data, has now put a figure to it.
The council says its unnamed source has special access to a manager of an ad campaign run by Google. The precise movements of people who used the gay-dating app Grindr were also made publicly available to buy from a mobile-advertising company, until Grindr stopped sharing location data with ad networks two years ago.
The data can go to dozens or even hundreds of companies for each auction. Google says it transmits the data of US users to about 4,700 companies in total across the world. Each “broadcast” — as they are called in the industry — typically shares data about a person’s location, including “hyperlocal” targeting, according to Google own pitch to advertisers, personal characteristics and browsing habits to help ad firms build user profiles.
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