News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads. Parent comment

Re:Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads by mrisoli on Friday June 23, 2017 @02:21PM (#14621415)
Big companies can't hide this stuff forever, you can eventually figure out, it is just better business-wise for them to just state they read your emails for ads, it can cost them a lot if they don't, plus most people don't really care.

A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking exclusively through WhatsApp about a trip to London(in Portuguese with our very unusual jargon), I didn't do any search for anything related it was all within our conversation, a couple days later Facebook had a post on my timeline saying: "heading to London? Check what your friends did there".

I don't remember reading anywhere that WhatsApp reads your conversations for ads, but it was clear to me that's where they got the information, it was spooky at first.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads by MajesticHobo on Friday June 23, 2017 @02:46PM (#14621659)
WhatsApp doesn't read your conversations for ads because it can't. Message content is end-to-end encrypted. You must have leaked your plans through some other medium inadvertently.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads by sedachv on Friday June 23, 2017 @03:23PM (#14622005)
This is called retargeting and is even worse from a privacy perspective: now your data is going through multiple layers of ad buying tools, analytics, ad exchanges, aggregators, ad networks, etc.: http://2bd2y2367xnj3kpntjsifzmf-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads by andrepd on Saturday June 24, 2017 @12:22AM (#14624342)
That is actually an interesting argument, that they don't lie about this because if it ever came out they would be in deep shit.

Speaking of which, I had a similarly creepy moment just yesterday. I was watching an episode of the Simpsons, and wanted to Google the Bart blackboard gag in the intro because I didn't get it. Just I type the first word and it immediately suggested the rest. Very creepy because I wasn't watching through any Google service (on an Android phone though).

[ Parent | on HN ]