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 …
"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.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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)
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
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.
Try these two for starters:
EFF Cover Your Tracks and Am I Unique
Merry Christmas everyone!
V.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
"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?
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
Shouldn't that me "kredit"?
Muphry's Law strikes.
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.
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.
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.
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).
@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). :-).
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?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
