{"id":81822,"date":"2016-10-24T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=81822"},"modified":"2016-10-23T18:40:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T17:40:24","slug":"google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user\u2019s names. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Update 21 Oct 2016: <\/strong>After we published this story, Google reached out to say that it doesn\u2019t currently use Gmail keywords to target web ads. We\u2019ve updated the story to reflect that.<\/p>\n

21 Oct 2016 – <\/em>When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company\u2019s \u201cnumber one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick\u2019s massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the names and other personally identifiable information Google has collected from Gmail and its other login accounts.<\/p>\n

But this summer, Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand \u2013 literally crossing out the lines<\/a> in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits \u201cmay be\u201d combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.<\/p>\n

The change is enabled by default for new Google accounts. Existing users were prompted to opt-in to the change this summer.<\/p>\n

\"google-propublica-privacy-spy-surveillance-big-brother\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on your name and other information Google knows about you. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct.<\/p>\n

The move is a sea change for Google and a further blow to the online ad industry\u2019s longstanding contention that web tracking is mostly anonymous. In recent years, Facebook, offline data brokers and others have increasingly sought to combine their troves of web tracking data with people\u2019s real names. But until this summer, Google held the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that DoubleClick data wasn\u2019t being regularly connected to personally identifiable information was a really significant last stand,\u201d said Paul Ohm, faculty director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a border wall between being watched everywhere and maintaining a tiny semblance of privacy,\u201d he said. \u201cThat wall has just fallen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville emailed a statement describing Google\u2019s change in privacy policy as an update to adjust to the \u201csmartphone revolution\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe updated our ads system, and the associated user controls, to match the way people use Google today: across many different devices,\u201d Faville wrote. She added that the change \u201cis 100% optional\u2013if users do not opt-in to these changes, their Google experience will remain unchanged.\u201d (Read Google\u2019s entire statement<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Existing Google users were prompted to opt-into the new tracking this summer through a request with titles such as \u201cSome new features for your Google account.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cnew features\u201d received little scrutiny at the time. Wired wrote that it \u201cgives you more granular control<\/a> over how ads work across devices.\u201d In a personal tech column, the New York Times also described the change as \u201cnew controls<\/a> for the types of advertisements you see around the web.\u201d<\/p>\n

Connecting web browsing habits to personally identifiable information has long been controversial.<\/p>\n

Privacy advocates raised a ruckus in 1999 when DoubleClick purchased a data broker that assembled people\u2019s names, addresses and offline interests. The merger could have allowed DoubleClick to combine its web browsing information with people\u2019s names. After an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission<\/a>, DoubleClick sold the broker at a loss.<\/p>\n

In response to the controversy, the nascent online advertising industry formed the Network Advertising Initiative<\/a> in 2000 to establish ethical codes. The industry promised<\/a> to provide consumers with notice when their data was being collected, and options to opt out.<\/p>\n

Most online ad tracking remained essentially anonymous for some time after that. When Google bought DoubleClick in 2007, for instance, the company\u2019s privacy policy stated<\/a>: \u201cDoubleClick\u2019s ad-serving technology will be targeted based only on the non-personally-identifiable information.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2012, Google changed its privacy policy to allow it to share data about users between different Google services – such as Gmail and search. But it kept data from DoubleClick \u2013 whose tracking technology is enabled on half of the top 1 million<\/a> websites \u2013 separate.<\/p>\n

But the era of social networking has ushered in a new wave of identifiable tracking, in which services such as Facebook and Twitter have been able to track logged-in users when they shared an item from another website.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Facebook announced that it would track its users by name across the Internet<\/a> when they visit websites containing Facebook buttons such as \u201cShare\u201d and \u201cLike\u201d \u2013 even when users don\u2019t click on the button. (Here\u2019s how you can opt<\/a> out of the targeted ads generated by that tracking).<\/p>\n

Offline data brokers also started to merge their mailing lists with online shoppers<\/a>. \u201cThe marriage of online and offline is the ad targeting of the last 10 years on steroids,\u201d said<\/a> Scott Howe, chief executive of broker firm Acxiom.<\/p>\n

To opt-out of Google\u2019s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls<\/a> on Google\u2019s My Account page<\/a>, and uncheck the box next to \u201cInclude Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services.” You can also delete past activity<\/a> from your account.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Julia Angwin is a senior reporter at <\/em>ProPublica. From 2000 to 2013, she was a reporter at <\/em>The Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2011 and won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 propublica.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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