Another Privacy Abuse Scandal Brewing For Big Tech

App developers working for ad agencies that use Google ad servers are scanning your email to improve ad targeting.

Image source: www.tripwire.com

Google, not a corporation that ever takes ethics seriously, even by corporate standards, made a pledge about this time last year that it would stop its servers scanning the inboxes of Gmail users for information to personalize advertisements, hypocritically stating that it was committed to protecting data so users could “remain confident that Google will keep users privacy and security paramount ”

However the internet search and advertising giant continues to let hundreds of outside software developers scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users who signed up for email-based services offering shopping price comparisons, automated travel-itinerary planners or other tools. Google does little to police those developers, who train their computers—and, in some cases, employees—to read their users’ emails, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

WSJ is behind a pay wall but you can read a summary of the full article at

FromTheTrenches report


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To Those Web Sites That Complain About Ad Blockers - Two Words. The Second Is OFF!

Forbes Mag are pissed off with me. Although I only look at their site if I follow somebody else's link, whenever I do I get a teaser and this pithy little message about how monstrously unfair I am being to sites like their which depend on advertising revenue for income. OK, I understand that, and if I particularly want to look at an item I will whitelist the site (any site, not just Forbes), read the article, not click on any ads (not so much as a matter of principle as because everything advertised on the web is shite,) and then block them again.

Is this not hypocritical of you Boggart Blogger, you might well ask because this site runs a couple of ads. It could be considered so, although we have no ethical objection to internet advertising. The reason we block ads is so many of them are intrusive, violate privacy by collecting user data, and slow down older computers by employing CPU heavy scripts. And we don't object to people running ad blockers, if you don't want to see advertising, its your choice and we respect that. We can't guarantee ads on our pages don't violate your privacy but as the host, blogger, is owned by Google, your privacy is being violated already.

Now I read that those of us running ad blockers are involved in a protection racket (yeah, we are protecting our personal data)

from a BBC report:

In a speech at the Oxford Media Convention earlier this year, the culture secretary said the fast-growing use of software that blocked advertising presented an existential threat to the newspaper and music industries.

He vowed to set up a round table involving major publishers, social media groups and adblocking companies in the coming weeks to do something about the problem.

“Quite simply – if people don’t pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist,” he said. “And that’s as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse.”

Note how the government, which ought to protect our interests seeks to help corporate bastards like Forbes. On yes, they'll be representated at the round table, they government will help them violate our privacy, steal our personal data and target us with ads for shite no sane person would buy. Not usof course,not the poor punters driven to use ad blockers to shut out those irritating little animations because they drive us bonkers (and on mobile devices use up data allowance.) No, not us, but the poor, hard - up corporate media including hard up billionaire Steve Forbes.

What will these fuckwits in the political establishment impose on us next, an idea I trod on while setting up a privatised phone network in Sweden 20 years ago, giving people free phone calls so long as they allowed the network to interrupt calls with messages from sponsors? Forcing us to watch the ads on the telly? Making the shopping channel the co - producer of all popular dramas, soaps, talk shows and Strictly. I don't mind non - active ads on the net, for example a little pucture of a widget and the slogan, "Buy Wignall's wonderful Widgets because they're good." It's unlikely I would ever click on the ad but static ads are easily ignored, just as websites like Huffington Post and The Daily Beast are easily ignored.

As for paying for content on the web, the idea is bollocks. There is a wealth of free information out on the net, published by amateurs like the people who contribute to this blog. Much of it (Facebook excepted) is of a far higher quality and far more accurate than the chumps in the MSM produce. Who wants to read about Kim Kardiashian's arse, she didn't grow it herself after all.

I would not mind paying for a newspaper, but the cupid stunts who own them think they can get away with charging me the same for an online edition as for the print version. No paper and ink to buy, no printing machines to maintain, vastly reduced staff (no printers, labourers, typesetters), no distribution costs, no newsagents margin. And they want a pound a day. Do they think us punters are really that stupid?

I use a Kindle and it's a bit of a bummer having to pay almost the same for ebooks from a leading other as print books (see above re print newspapers). But I've had several really good books self published or from small publishers for £0.99, £1.99, £2.99 which makes up for it and gets one back at the thieving corporations. Music and video again is different from news content, musicians deserve to be paid, buy vinyl or CDs or at least pay for downloads (although the corporate piracy comes into play here - we should not have to pay the same for a digital download album as for a CD, again there are no production or distribution costs)

So websites that rely on ad revenue, give your ad brokers some earache, tell them punters do not want intrusive ads, we are suspicious of what scripts might be doing with the 90% of CPU capacity they grab, we hate cutesy - pie little animations so you can take your condescending attitude and fuck the fucking fuck off.



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Music is an entirely different matter. I buy my music on CD and then rip it for playing in the car. I do, occasionally download directly if it is not available on CD – and I pay for it. So fuck off with the adverts.