Citation needed.

Google makes it pretty clear that they do not sell any personal information to advertisers: https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/

The catch here, in many ways, is Google owns the advertiser marketplace. Literally, if you want to sell ads on common android settings based on a user's location, you have to do it with Google's data.

So, in many ways they don't sell a person's data to advertisers, per se. However, they do control access to people located in a given area. Not sure there is much of a meaningful difference, for most people.

Yes which is also in their interest because once personal information is sold someone else can use it without going through Google. And they benefit by having more personal information than anyone else. Instead they sell access to advertising on very personal information to you via them as a proxy. I don't see that being that much better and it is almost impossible to avoid. Which is why Google is worried if the government starts cracking down further on this it will hit them too. I don't want Google selling any information about my location or carriers as well directly or indirectly

> Google makes it pretty clear that they do not sell any personal information to advertisers

Facebook’s used that like, too.

Facebook also doesn't sell personal information to advertisers. Both Facebook and Google let advertisers target ads based on location and other personal info, which is not the same thing as actually providing that information to third parties.

I suspect JumpCrisscross is referring to the data leak scandals via the API that have been in the news in the last year. Of course, this was also not Facebook selling information. Rather, it was Facebook allowing users to share information about their friends automatically and without the friends' consent via the API. Not great, but not selling user information either.

But they do. They let them target ads based on your location. It's the same thing as selling personal data. If someone clicks a location targeted ad the advertiser know the persons location.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722043?hl=en

"Google Ads location targeting allows your ads to appear in the geographic locations that you choose: countries, areas within a country, a radius around a location, or location groups, which can include places of interest, your business locations, or tiered demographics.

Location targeting helps you focus your advertising on the areas where you'll find the right customers, and restrict it in areas where you won't. This specific type of targeting could help increase your return on investment (ROI) as a result."

In a sense Google is spyware and adware at the same time. It shame these two terms are used less now then they used too, since they lost their meaning when so many apps and your Android phone itself is one.

Letting someone target you with their ad based on your location is not the same thing as from telling them where you are

Or telling them who you are. Google knows, but AFAIK they don't pass that along to the advertiser.

And that's important. I'd rather just Google (which isn't great) have that information than literally anyone willing to pay $0.50 for it (which is infinitely worse).

How do I use Google Ads to send a tow truck driver to repossess a car when the debtor gets home?

That’s what the phone carrier is doing.

They monetize location, but from my perspective they do so in a way that’s more respectful of the person, because it’s in their interest to do so.

The carriers just sell data points and lack the ability or desire to add value to them.

You're not going to be able to uniquely target someone in a radius, since the minimum is 1km (and I guess Google would artificially widen the radius to prevent uniquely identifying people in sparsely populated areas). You've also got to entice them to click, and that's notoriously difficult.I mean it might work occasionally but it's never going to be the shortest path to surveiling an individual. I would guess that ~nobody is successfully using ads to determine individual people's locations.

https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Advanced-Features/...

Disclosure: I work at big G, not on ads.

Yes. I'm not saying it is as bad as selling the information verbatim to banksters to collect someone's debt.

However, it's still selling personal information to adbuyers. And, I don't think you can say "nobody is successfully using ads to determine ad clickers general location with a X mile radius".

This surveillance thing is getting out of hand and Google is annoyed that shady corporations tries to get ground which might bring new laws.

> And, I don't think you can say "nobody is successfully using ads to determine ad clickers general location with a X mile radius".

Of course. And I'm sure that you can find some people who would get riled up that they incremented a counter in a location-oriented semi-anonymous bucket of clicks. But I think most people are substantially less riled up about that than they would be if Google were actually disclosing their individual locations directly to buyers. It seems like a lot of the anti-Google folks on here equivocate between these two, and I speculate it's because consciously or subconsciously they realize the latter narrative is much more emotionally compelling to a much broader segment of the population. To me, that's deceptive rhetoric.

There is location leakage but it's clearly not the same because:

- they don't get your location if you don't click on the ad. Since people don't click on ads very often, only rarely does an advertisers get a person's location, and without a name attached.

- Mobile phone companies were letting people query a user's location based on their real name. How would you do that with advertising?

We need to move beyond one-bit thinking. Location-revealing services aren't all the same.

Website owners already have your general location based on IP - they're not getting 'leaked' any information from location-based ad targeting that isn't already available to them when you visit the site.

Geo ip doesn't have that accuracy, right? Google use GPS.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2453995?hl=en "Device location: Depending on a user's location settings, we may be able to use a precise location for advertising, based on one of these sources of location data:

GPS: Accuracy varies depending on GPS signal and connection. Wi-Fi: Accuracy should be similar to the access range of a typical Wi-Fi router. Bluetooth: If Bluetooth and/or Bluetooth scanning are enabled on a device, a publicly broadcast Bluetooth signal can provide an accurate indication of location Google's cell ID (cell tower) location database: Used in the absence of Wi-Fi or GPS. Accuracy is dependent on how many cell towers are located within an area and available data, and some devices don't support cell ID location."

Google doesn't share device GPS. Ad location targeting is at the country, state, and city level, or in increments as small as 3 sq. km.

Geo IP data is accurate ~85% at the city level and ~99% at the state level, meaning they're approximately the same.

A bill board also lets advertisers target me by location.

They don't sell your location data, they sell targeting options for specific geographic locations. These are quite different. I'm okay with seeing an ad targeted at anyone within walking distance of a cafe. I'm not okay with my personal location getting sold to whoever thinks they have a valuable enough use for it.

Location information leaks from ad targeting. Maybe that doesn't bother you, but it might bother other people.

One way it leaks is that an advertiser generally knows what ad campaign a user clicked on. So if that ad campaign was only sent to a particular location, you know where the user was when they clicked on the ad.

Knowing the city that someone clicked your ad in because you targeted the ad in that city isn't 'leaking' location data.

These advertiser websites know your city already by the act of you visiting their website.

It's not city accuracy. It's 1000 m nominal. If you could target a peak or small island and get better effective accuracy, I would not be surprised.

"You can choose one of the default radius settings or set a custom radius from a minimum of 1 km to a maximum of 1,000 km."

https://support.google.com/richmedia/answer/7279179?hl=en&re...

Ad location targeting at best is in a 3 sq. km area, not 1 km. For an average city in the U.S. (like St. Louis) that's an aggregate density of 6,000 people.

Knowing that someone in 6,000 people in an area clicked on your coffee ad is not leaking GPS data. Which is probably why bounty hunters are buying the data directly from cell carriers and not running targeted Google ads.

It's a leak of location information, which is what this sub-thread is about. The location information was only inside of Google, and now the advertiser has it.

It's also not "one in 6,000 people" if it's someone who signs up for some service via the ad. That particular someone might not realize that the service knows their location.

And that's the same deal with Geo IP, which this sub thread is about.

The point in 1:6,000 is that whether it's ad targeting or just regular internet traffic, there isnt enough specificity to "leak" data about the person.

You can split hairs over, "Well what of they join that 1:6000 with other PII" and it's the same with Geo IP. The user gives up that data but it's not different than just visit the page normally.

Website owners already know your rough geographic location via IP address. If it's that big of a concern for you, you should route 100% of your traffic through a VPN.

GeoIP is not that accurate in many situations, and note that a VPN does not protect you against this kind of targeted ad location leak.

I'm confused by your reference to me and my concerns. This isn't a discussion about me; I was making a point about leakage of location information.

I was using the generic you throughout - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you

Google uses that information to serve ads but they don't sell the location data to advertisers.

Do you have evidence of this?