UK ICO not happy with Google's plans to allow device fingerprinting

Google has announced plans to allow its business customers to begin "fingerprinting" users next year, and the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) isn't happy about it.  Fingerprinting involves building a user profile using information about a device's software and hardware, rather than the use of something like cookies …

[Headley_Grange]

Traditions

"The Chocolate Factory cited connected TVs as one device type that needs to serve ads that can't collect user data in the traditional manner."

Yeah, I remember how the advertising industry was on the bones of its arse when all it knew was that my mum was watching Corrie while my dad was reading the Mirror and I was reading the NME.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: one device type that needs to serve ads

Those few words describe just how far disconnected Google (and others) are from the real world.

Those devices don't need to serve ADS. Their content streams do that already...

FSCK Google.

Come on people just give Google the big finger. Their quest for more and more data on you will never end until people just block them and move elsewhere... You know just like Twatter is losing active subscribers are a great rate of knots because of the obnoxiousness of US President Elongated Muskrat.

He wants to 'own' the UK next and anyone who supports Farage and his crew will be supporting them. A few hundred million ££££ can buy you a lot of people.

Disclaimer. I am not on any of the main social media platforms and I'd rather vote for a dead parrot then any one from Farage's party.

[Tubz]

Re: one device type that needs to serve ads

"I'd rather vote for a dead parrot then any one from Farage's party."

well a large amount of the population voted for huge Liebour Tool and it doesn't work !

[LBJsPNS]

Re: one device type that needs to serve ads

Don't cry, dearie, your mascara will run.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: one device type that needs to serve ads

A large amount of the population of Clacton voted for the huge beer-swilling Delboy lookalike and he doesn't work there either

Good to see he's earning plenty of air miles...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Traditions

Upvoted despite the NME (it's Christmas after all). I was more a Melody Maker reader until Jazz Journal came out.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Traditions

I liked Melody Maker too but my dad hated the NME for some reason so it was a no-brainer which one to have delivered.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: Traditions

Do the Trouser Press, baby!

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Traditions

>> connected TVs as one device type that needs to serve ads

I don't think that they _need_ to do anything, except display whatever video I choose to throw at them. (Not even audio, since I've _never_ seen a TV with speakers that don't dent my ears).

Google has this incredibly odd idea that any and all connected devices must show adverts... they're going to be right there with the Sirius Cybernetics execs, first against the wall when the revolution comes.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Traditions

first against the wall when the revolution comes.

When you start adding all the other transgressors such as the crypto bros, AI mafia etc etc you will require a bloody long wall which might indicate prophetic insight on the part of the Chinese.

[John Smith 19]

"you will require a bloody long wall "

No probs.

In the UK they'll use Hadrian's wall.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Traditions

"you will require a bloody long wall"

That's ok. We'll build new wall. A beautiful wall, the bigliest bestest wall ever. And we'll make them pay for it.

[John Smith 19]

"I don't think that they _need_ to do anything, "

But it's not about you. It's about their needs. And about desperate people. IE People they desperately need to know more about.

Their need to collect data.

To sell data to their customers.

Data fetishists aren't all working for governments.

[Helcat]

Re: Traditions

You are going to hate Win11 then (if you don't already).

Why an OS needs to feed you ads is bonkers. But that's what MS has decided: They take your money then make more from feeding you ads you don't want and the only option they'll give you is to turn off targeted ads. Unless you find a third party tool to block them entirely.

(Looks to be since KB5036980 update if you're wondering)

[veti]

Re: Traditions

Using Win 11 for 18 months now. Yet to see an ad.

[Wyrdness]

Re: Traditions

I suspect that, in the US, Google execs wouldn't be quite the first choice of an angry populous, as recent events in New York have shown.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Re: Traditions

A. No TV, just a computer playing ad-free media on those extremely rare occasions when I feel like watching something.

B. No budget for extras that they advertise. I buy what I need when I need it and ignore the internet advertising unless it makes me laugh.

[alain williams]

Google analytics should be under the spotlight

as it, without permission, tracks users and abuses personal data.

But big money is involved so I expect Google to prevail - money usually speaks loudly.

[Dr Paul Taylor]

Re: Google analytics should be under the spotlight

I have Google Analytics permanently blocked in NoScript, apparently without ill effect.

Please can we have a more detailed explanation of how "fingerprinting" is done and how we can obstruct it.

[Alumoi]

Re: Google analytics should be under the spotlight

Oh, the usual. A mix of telephone number, IMEI, MAC, IP, Google login, installed programs, web history, SMS and chat history, etc.

Oh yes, I know, they pinky swear they don't collect them. And I have a bridge to sell.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Oh the usual...

Including your Inside Leg Measurement, size of you know what and angle of dangle.

and other essential but similar measurements that Google simply must have in order to function, NOT!

[PB90210]

Re: Google analytics should be under the spotlight

Look at the data collection policies of a lot of sites and they include the right to 'fingerprint' you and track you 'across various devices'

The horse is crossing the finishing line while the ICO are just starting to check the stable door

[alain williams]

Re: Google analytics should be under the spotlight

Look at the data collection policies of a lot of sites and they include the right to 'fingerprint' you and track you 'across various devices'

My point is that they should only be able to follow those policies once a user has agreed to them, just viewing a web page is not enough.

[Victor Ludorum]

Re: Google analytics should be under the spotlight

Try these two for starters:

EFF Cover Your Tracks and Am I Unique

Merry Christmas everyone!

V.

[ecofeco]

Re: Google analytics should be under the spotlight

Nice! And even nicer that I've passed both with flying colors.

To everyone else, follow the links and check your system!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Google analytics should be under the spotlight

In my case, my rather old (but otherwise perfectly adequate) graphics card seems to leak fingerprinting bits... :-/

[Anonymous Coward]

Having seen just how much Krispy Kreme are prepared to try and charge for iced doughnuts, I'd put them at about the same level of social acceptability as ransomware scum

[Giles C]

They don’t sell doughnuts, they sell blocks of sugar with some alternative in the middle.

I love normal jam doughnuts but one of those is just a sugar rush. So best avoided in my opinion, I know others must like them but not me.

[alain williams]

I love normal jam doughnuts but one of those is just a sugar rush. So best avoided in my opinion, I know others must like them but not me.

They are a short cut to diabetes.

[Anonymous Coward]

" They don’t sell doughnuts, they sell blocks of sugar "

Technically incorrect, they sell blocks of sugar stuck together with fat, probably hydrogenated or saturated.

[ecofeco]

Exactly Giles. That's exactly what they are.

[ecofeco]

The first time I tried their donuts I choked on the sugar. It was also the last time.

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be so bad if targeted advertising actually WORKED.

All I see at the moment is ads for:

Stuff I've already bought and don't have any need to buy more.

Stuff I've looked at and decided I don't want

Stuff other people bought (as if that's somehow relevant to me)

Stuff that's "trending" (as if that's somehow relevant to me)

Stuff that's a bit like what I just searched for (but only in the coke addled imagination of an intellectually malnourished B-Ark marketing droid)

In short, targeted marketing is shit.

[Like a badger]

"In short, targeted marketing is shit."

Indeed. But that doesn't matter to Google when idiot companies continue to pay Google (and others) to serve adverts.

Like you, all I see is garbage, and since I run adblockers, that garbage is from companies who actually know what I've bought. Amazon, for example, is offering me "gift ideas" that include a 600x600 ceiling mount LED panel, wonder how the missus will react when she unrwaps that? Or some plumbing valves - "Oooh, thank you darling, how did you know I wanted a chrome plated 15mm x 3/8" flat face 90 degree isolation valve!"

Until marketing dweebs stop being credulous fools happy to pay for internet advertising that doesn't work we will continue to have this problem. I don't see that situation changing anytime soon.

[Doctor Syntax]

As I keep saying, the only thing Google sells is advertising. As to the marketing dweebs, I suspect a lot of them know perfectly well that it's crap. It's also their job, that budget has to be spent somewhere. The real dweebs in this situation are the boards and C-suite who are handing their marketing departments this money without paying the slightest attention to how it's spent.

[ICL1900-G3]

Hey! I got my wife one of those as well!

[John Brown (no body)]

Me too! But she took it back. It was the wrong size.

[Jamie Jones]

How do you know ICL1900-G3S's wife? Small world, eh?

[stiine]

targeted advertising

You're lucky. All of the ads I've had to endure until they were nextable/skippable, while watching one of my favorite automotive youtube channels on my tv for the last 90 minutes while logged in as myself, were ads for crap that I won't be purchasing for my other half or her kid. Oh, and a 90+ minute ad for youtu.be itself..i skipped that one immediately, after 55 seconds and the skip button appeared.

On another note, does anyone know how to pause coundown timers in the javascript, for example by redefining them to sleep()? Apparently google thinks that wiping the DOM on timer expiration is amusing.

[Yorick Hunt]

Re: targeted advertising

Install SmartTubeNext and revel in the improved experience.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

"It wouldn't be so bad if targeted advertising actually WORKED"

I think that's the whole point. Targeted ads don't work and companies like Google want them to work. The only way they can see of making them work is to use huge amounts of intrusive personal information about people.

Personally, all the stuff in the article about fingerprinting devices and building user profiles, I presumed was already happening and has been for years. And that's not me being all tin-foil hat. Wasn't this why Google started slurping WiFi SSIDs all those years ago for example, to track where people go, how much time they spend there, what they buy while they are there (via Google pay/wallet) etc? Maybe what's new is the amount of this type of data Google etc. would like to collect and use.

[Like a badger]

"Targeted ads don't work and companies like Google want them to work."

Doubt that. If targeted advertising worked well, then there would be considerably less total advertising, if only because there's only so many eyeballs belong to people who do (or might) want a given product, and only so much screen real estate to use. Google are close to coining in a billion dollars a day precisely because ad targeting is inefficient, and whilst they want to convince their customers that it is well targeted and effective, the last thing they actually want is that outcome. If an ad placement ticks the placement criteria boxes, Google still get paid for showing it to me, even for something I bought last week and won't need another for a decade, or for showing my wife an ad for Makita power tools. Are you really sure Google want to walk away from easy money like that?

[ChrisElvidge]

Targeted ads

In the good old days, we had media departments that targeted ads. Food processor ads in/before/after food orientated programmes, car ads in/before/after car orientated programmes. Relevance!

Now targeted seems to mean what the ad slingers (not the agencies, not the clients) want us to see.

[abend0c4]

A lot of advertising isn't really aimed at getting you to change the categories of stuff you purchase, it's aimed at getting you to purchase different brands. The international soap powder, food and household conglomerates simply wouldn't exist without advertising - and their increasing globalisation is as much driven by greater marketing efficiency as it is by production efficiency.

But most of what they're pushing is stuff that everyone buys - soap powder, floor cleaner, biscuits, breakfast cereal - so it's not clear that targeting (except by gender, since women typically make purchasing decisions) is terribly useful. However, ever since Lord Leverhulme famously complained "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don't know which half" the pressure has been on to find the answer. But, from a consumer point of view, it's the wrong question. Without the cost of sales associated with marketing, these products would be significantly cheaper - compare the cost of your supermarket's own brand with the Reckitt-Benckiser-Kraft-Mondelez-Unilver-Procter & Gamble alternative. But that also proves that advertising in some form *does* work - because why else would so many people buy the overpriced alternative? And as long as it works, there'll always be someone claiming to know how to make it more efficient and someone else willing to believe them,

[ChoHag]

It's not the lack of advertising (supermarkets do advertise their own dreck) that drives the own-brand costs down since it's the same product from the same manufacturers in a different bottle. What drives the price down is the added water (sorry, "aqua") and accepting more things that would otherwise end up in the factory's reject bin.

[Tubz]

only targeted advertising I see, is targeted at everybody from the scammers willing to pay Google to turn a blind eye and Advertising Standard Authority unwilling to do anything!

[xyz]

I have great fun with my Hotmail account these days. MS automation obviously reads the content of incoming emails and rustles up some AI guff advertising and if it can't find an ad to suit

the email, it makes one up.

Best one I had was I sent an email about death from another account to my Hotmail account and the ad generated was a coffin on grass. That's it, a coffin on some grass. PMSL.

[Korev]

My HoTMaiL only has spam these days, so my MSN adverts are mostly for Reach-style Clickbait

[Tron]

True.

You have to be impressed at Google's ability to sell an absolutely crap product to huge numbers of people for millions of bucks for decades. If these companies ever did any competent due diligence, they would realise that it was bollocks and advertise in other ways, getting more people to buy stuff for much less money.

The 'people who bought what you bought also bought this' adverts on Amazon and the persistent search options on ebay are much better and often very useful.

[GNU Enjoyer]

Any kind of advertising is unacceptable

For the good of the human race, or even to simply to cut out the massive amount of utter waste it causes, advertising should be totally eliminated.

Targeted ads via proprietary software should be regarded as a minor crime against humanity.

[Doctor Syntax]

Krispy Kreme bandits raise sticky fingers to take credit

Shouldn't that me "kredit"?

[Arthur the cat]

Re: Krispy Kreme bandits raise sticky fingers to take credit

Shouldn't that me "kredit"?

Muphry's Law strikes.

[nobody who matters]

So, The Information Commissioners Office is "not happy" with this. Perhaps they should take some decisive action and enforce it for a change.

For companies and organisations which transgress the permitted limits on privacy at present, being savaged by the ICO is about as effective as having an elephant attacked by a sleeping dormouse.

[Arthur the cat]

So, The Information Commissioners Office is "not happy" with this. Perhaps they should take some decisive action and enforce it for a change.

I'm sure they're wagging their finger very seriously.

[Dinanziame]

Well they're not happy because so far Google said they would enforce this on their advertisers; now Google is openly saying they won't do anything about it so the ICO will have to do it themselves.

Funnily, this was one of those anti-competitive rules that Google created in order to minimize the data that third parties could have, so that everybody would be forced to use Google's services to target the users. I'm not sure if they removed the rules because they thought they could get more money from advertisers by being nicer to them, or because they thought that they were unable to prevent it anyway, or even they were afraid that this would be counted against them in the many anti-monopoly lawsuits they are fighting. Could be all three.

[Anonymous Coward]

The ICO likes going after some ordinary bloke or woman who's done something a bit silly with some data (not seriously silly, or with any ill intent, and generally though ignorance rather than specific intent). It seems to see dragging them through the crown court, where the judge tells them not to do it again (which they wouldn't have done anyway) and might order them to pay costs as a good use of ICO powers.

After all, that allows them to say that they are "getting tough" on data breaches, and it's far easier than going after the big boys who do what they like with data - and who will be fully lawyered-up and prepared to drag it out indefinitely if the ICO tries to go after them.

[PCScreenOnly]

Isn't that the same with all government depts. Especially hmrc

[Tubz]

2-Tier Starmer will tell the ICO to back off, he likes the idea of fingerprinting everybody one way or another, to ensure no anti-government discussions or negative reaction to his utopian dictatorship

[veti]

Can we please dispense with the empty shitposting?

We get it, you don't like the government. Fine, you can have the same vote as everyone else in a few years. And in the meantime, feel free to tell us what you don't like. But base it on something real, not just your own fantasy.

[anonymous boring coward]

The tin hat still isn't working?

[PB90210]

I think you are mixing the present lot up with the previous lot...

[Mr Anonymous]

My next phone is a pixel

Wiped and installed with GrapheneOS.

[Alumoi]

Re: My next phone is a pixel

And I will install Whatsapp, Tik-tok, Facebook, Twitter et all so I can be tracked by everybody BUT Google.

[seven of five]

Re: My next phone is a pixel

Actually... Pixels aren't *that* good. IMHO. Given how bloody expensive they are, I must admit I am pretty disappointed. Maybe read a few more reviews before buying. YMMV.

[skswales]

I love YouTube ads. Last year they were pushing me a commuter yacht to get from my private island to fleet of Maseratis to whisk me to my fractional ownership jet. Oh, and the ThermoFisher-equipped biolab (2 1/2 mins!). I have also been recommended to purchase super-modern infantry fighting vehicles, to attend a military satellite exhibition, and a Finance Conference in Doha. And buy cat food, of course (zero cats at last count).

[Jamie Jones]

So... How are the yacht and tank running these days?

[PB90210]

All I get are semi-naked heavily tattooed ladies looking bored and offering to... sorry, wrong site!

[Anonymous Coward]

How does the privacy threat from this fingerprinting compare to Online Safety Act and Investigatory Powers Act when combined, in terms of peoples privacy and rights? Is it really much worse?

[anonymous boring coward]

Worse than what? Acts?

[Anonymous Coward]

@anonymous boring coward

You might want to look into those acts a bit deeper, a couple (among other aspects) of interesting parts:

- Investigatory powers act forces all ISPs to record all internet connection records (which websites were visited), and allows agencies to access this information without a warrant.

- Allows various agencies to hack your devices. (Warrant may be needed)

The online safety act:

- Will require messaging services to use AI or other methods to scan all your messages.

This is among other aspects. The privacy intrusions from these laws far outweigh any 'privacy' you may loose from a minor bit of tracking from Google or other companies, your privacy is already long gone. At this point it's simply a matter of "who has it" as opposed to "how do we stop it", as it's too late for that. So what the ICO is trying to do is kind of pointless at this moment in time.

If you truly want privacy, disconnect from the internet and don't go outside (CCTV). :-).

[Rich 2]

I hate the tech world

“… cited connected TVs as one device type that needs to serve ads that can't collect user data…”

No. It doesn’t NEED to serve ads. NOTHING NEEDS to serve ads.

[andy the pessimist]

spoofed?

Could the data be spoofed? For example everyone in the usa gets the Whitehouse details. Or crazy locations such as the ico"s location. It'd be a laugh.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: spoofed?

On Android, GPS data can be spoofed. Search "android mock locations"

[Paul Kinsler]

Re: On Android, GPS data can be spoofed. Search "android mock locations"

Hmm. Recently Google used raw GNSS data to run a study on android phones without explicit permission:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08072-x

If they can yank raw code phases and pseudodistances, what makes you think a position spoofing app is a bulletproof solution?

[anonymous boring coward]

"Like all advertising technology, it must be lawfully and transparently deployed"

Must it be deployed?

How about some laws?