Glia
10-31-2012, 05:07 PM
Another good reason to delete your browser's cookies every day.
*******
How Companies Have Assembled Political Profiles for
Millions of Internet Users
by Lois Beckett
ProPublica
October 22, 2012
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-companies-have-assembled-political-profiles-for-millions-of-internet-us
If you're a registered voter and surf the web, one of
the sites you visit has almost certainly placed a tiny
piece of data on your computer flagging your political
preferences. That piece of data, called a cookie, marks
you as a Democrat or Republican, when you last voted,
and what contributions you've made. It also can include
factors like your estimated income, what you do for a
living, and what you've bought at the local mall.
Across the country, companies are using cookies to
tailor the political ads you see online. One of the
firms is CampaignGrid, which boasted in a recent
slideshow, "Internet Users are No Longer Anonymous." The
slideshow includes an image of the famous New Yorker
cartoon from 1993: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're
a dog." Next to it, CampaignGrid lists what it can now
know about an Internet user: "Lives in Pennsylvania's
13th Congressional District, 19002 zip code, Registered
primary voting Republican, High net worth household, Age
50-54, Teenagers in the home, Technology professional,
Interested in politics, Shopping for a car, Planning a
vacation in Puerto Rico." Interactive Features
The slideshow was online until last week, when the
company removed it after we asked for comment. (Here is
the full slideshow.) Rich Masterson, CampaignGrid's
chairman, wrote in an email that the slideshow was
posted in error: "It was an unapproved version of a
sales deck that was posted by an intern who no longer
works for the company."
CampaignGrid does indeed collect 18 different
"attributes" for every voter, Masterson told ProPublica,
including age, gender, political donations, and more.
Campaigns use this data to tailor the online ads you
see.
Online targeting has taken off this campaign season.
ProPublica has identified seven companies that advertise
the ability to help campaigns target specific voters
online. Among them is Experian, the credit reporting
company. Datalogix, a company that works with Facebook
to track users' buying patterns, is also involved. (Here
are marketing materials and comment from the seven
companies). CampaignGrid and a few, similar firms have
been profiled for their innovative approaches. Yet the
scale of the targeting and the number of companies
involved has received little notice.
Few of the companies involved in the targeting talk
about it publicly. But CampaignGrid, which works with
Republicans, and a similar, Democratic firm, Precision
Network, told ProPublica they have political information
on 150 million American Internet users, or roughly 80
percent of the nation's registered voters.
The information - stripped of your name or address - is
connected to your computer via a cookie. Targeting firms
say replacing your name with an ID number keeps the
process anonymous and protects users' privacy.
But privacy experts say that assembling information
about Internet users' political behavior can be
problematic even if voters' names aren't attached.
"A lot of people would consider their political identity
more private than lots of information," said William
McGeveran, a data privacy expert at the University of
Minnesota Law School. "We make more rules about medical
privacy. We make more rules about financial privacy. So
if you think private political beliefs are in that
category, maybe you're concerned about having them
treated like your favorite brand of toothpaste."
Google has stayed away from this kind of targeting. It
classifies political beliefs as "sensitive personal
information," in the same category as medical
information and religious beliefs.
But other big players have embraced the "political
cookie," as one company branded it.
As we reported in June, Yahoo and Microsoft sell access
to your registration information for political
targeting. That's one way CampaignGrid and other
companies find you online. Political targeting firms say
they also work with other websites, but would not name
them.
While campaigns and the firms working with them can buy
reams of data about voters, voters have been left mostly
in the dark.
Many online ad companies mark targeted ads with a small
blue triangle symbol, or the phrase "Ad Choices," and
offer surfers a chance to opt out. But even if web users
know what the triangle means, they get no information
about how or why they were targeted.
"Consumers don't really understand what's going on and
haven't given their permission," says Joseph Turow, a
digital marketing and privacy expert at the University
of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.
There are few legal regulations governing how online
targeting works, or what notification consumers must
receive.
Online advertising experts point out that individual
voting records are public information and have long been
used to target voters through direct mail. And targeting
companies say they are offering a valuable service.
Instead of seeing random ads, users get to see ads from
candidates they might actually want to support.
"We empower voters," Jeff Dittus, co-founder of Campaign
Grid and now head of Audience Partners, wrote in an
email. "We give voters information that is meaningful to
them and helps them make choices."
Stuart Ingis, a lawyer for the Digital Advertising
Alliance, an industry group, said that voter file
targeting is a First Amendment issue, and that targeting
should be protected as part of political speech.
"These technologies provide a method for politicians
inexpensively to improve our democracy," he said. "I
would say that the founding fathers firmly believed in
the ability - I think our society very much values the
ability - to efficiently reach a desired audience with a
political message."
Not everyone seems to agree. A recent study from the
University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School found that
86 percent of surveyed adults did not want "political
advertising tailored to your interests," and that 77
percent would not return to a website if they knew it
"was sharing information about me with political
advertisers."
While targeting firms promise a wealth of individual
detail, it's hard to know how much information most
campaigns are actually using.
"The more third-party data providers you use, the
smaller the universe of people who you can reach
becomes," CampaignGrid's Masterson said. "Republican
women 25-34 who drive SUVs and have American Express
cards, and go to the theater once a month - that might
be four people."
One place online voter targeting has been used
successfully is in the state senate primary race of
Morgan McGarvey, a Kentucky Democrat who faced off
against three other Democratic candidates this May.
With four liberal candidates competing for a liberal
district, McGarvey told ProPublica, he needed to
convince the small number of voters who would turn out
in the primary that they should vote for him.
His campaign worked with Precision Network to show
online McGarvey ads to local voters under 35, and to
female Democrats who had voted in at least three of the
past five primary elections. (Two of his challengers
were women.)
"When every dollar counts, when literally every vote
counts, you have to be more targeted," he said.
"I do think it helped us win."
McGarvey is now running unopposed in the November
election.
*******
How Companies Have Assembled Political Profiles for
Millions of Internet Users
by Lois Beckett
ProPublica
October 22, 2012
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-companies-have-assembled-political-profiles-for-millions-of-internet-us
If you're a registered voter and surf the web, one of
the sites you visit has almost certainly placed a tiny
piece of data on your computer flagging your political
preferences. That piece of data, called a cookie, marks
you as a Democrat or Republican, when you last voted,
and what contributions you've made. It also can include
factors like your estimated income, what you do for a
living, and what you've bought at the local mall.
Across the country, companies are using cookies to
tailor the political ads you see online. One of the
firms is CampaignGrid, which boasted in a recent
slideshow, "Internet Users are No Longer Anonymous." The
slideshow includes an image of the famous New Yorker
cartoon from 1993: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're
a dog." Next to it, CampaignGrid lists what it can now
know about an Internet user: "Lives in Pennsylvania's
13th Congressional District, 19002 zip code, Registered
primary voting Republican, High net worth household, Age
50-54, Teenagers in the home, Technology professional,
Interested in politics, Shopping for a car, Planning a
vacation in Puerto Rico." Interactive Features
The slideshow was online until last week, when the
company removed it after we asked for comment. (Here is
the full slideshow.) Rich Masterson, CampaignGrid's
chairman, wrote in an email that the slideshow was
posted in error: "It was an unapproved version of a
sales deck that was posted by an intern who no longer
works for the company."
CampaignGrid does indeed collect 18 different
"attributes" for every voter, Masterson told ProPublica,
including age, gender, political donations, and more.
Campaigns use this data to tailor the online ads you
see.
Online targeting has taken off this campaign season.
ProPublica has identified seven companies that advertise
the ability to help campaigns target specific voters
online. Among them is Experian, the credit reporting
company. Datalogix, a company that works with Facebook
to track users' buying patterns, is also involved. (Here
are marketing materials and comment from the seven
companies). CampaignGrid and a few, similar firms have
been profiled for their innovative approaches. Yet the
scale of the targeting and the number of companies
involved has received little notice.
Few of the companies involved in the targeting talk
about it publicly. But CampaignGrid, which works with
Republicans, and a similar, Democratic firm, Precision
Network, told ProPublica they have political information
on 150 million American Internet users, or roughly 80
percent of the nation's registered voters.
The information - stripped of your name or address - is
connected to your computer via a cookie. Targeting firms
say replacing your name with an ID number keeps the
process anonymous and protects users' privacy.
But privacy experts say that assembling information
about Internet users' political behavior can be
problematic even if voters' names aren't attached.
"A lot of people would consider their political identity
more private than lots of information," said William
McGeveran, a data privacy expert at the University of
Minnesota Law School. "We make more rules about medical
privacy. We make more rules about financial privacy. So
if you think private political beliefs are in that
category, maybe you're concerned about having them
treated like your favorite brand of toothpaste."
Google has stayed away from this kind of targeting. It
classifies political beliefs as "sensitive personal
information," in the same category as medical
information and religious beliefs.
But other big players have embraced the "political
cookie," as one company branded it.
As we reported in June, Yahoo and Microsoft sell access
to your registration information for political
targeting. That's one way CampaignGrid and other
companies find you online. Political targeting firms say
they also work with other websites, but would not name
them.
While campaigns and the firms working with them can buy
reams of data about voters, voters have been left mostly
in the dark.
Many online ad companies mark targeted ads with a small
blue triangle symbol, or the phrase "Ad Choices," and
offer surfers a chance to opt out. But even if web users
know what the triangle means, they get no information
about how or why they were targeted.
"Consumers don't really understand what's going on and
haven't given their permission," says Joseph Turow, a
digital marketing and privacy expert at the University
of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.
There are few legal regulations governing how online
targeting works, or what notification consumers must
receive.
Online advertising experts point out that individual
voting records are public information and have long been
used to target voters through direct mail. And targeting
companies say they are offering a valuable service.
Instead of seeing random ads, users get to see ads from
candidates they might actually want to support.
"We empower voters," Jeff Dittus, co-founder of Campaign
Grid and now head of Audience Partners, wrote in an
email. "We give voters information that is meaningful to
them and helps them make choices."
Stuart Ingis, a lawyer for the Digital Advertising
Alliance, an industry group, said that voter file
targeting is a First Amendment issue, and that targeting
should be protected as part of political speech.
"These technologies provide a method for politicians
inexpensively to improve our democracy," he said. "I
would say that the founding fathers firmly believed in
the ability - I think our society very much values the
ability - to efficiently reach a desired audience with a
political message."
Not everyone seems to agree. A recent study from the
University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School found that
86 percent of surveyed adults did not want "political
advertising tailored to your interests," and that 77
percent would not return to a website if they knew it
"was sharing information about me with political
advertisers."
While targeting firms promise a wealth of individual
detail, it's hard to know how much information most
campaigns are actually using.
"The more third-party data providers you use, the
smaller the universe of people who you can reach
becomes," CampaignGrid's Masterson said. "Republican
women 25-34 who drive SUVs and have American Express
cards, and go to the theater once a month - that might
be four people."
One place online voter targeting has been used
successfully is in the state senate primary race of
Morgan McGarvey, a Kentucky Democrat who faced off
against three other Democratic candidates this May.
With four liberal candidates competing for a liberal
district, McGarvey told ProPublica, he needed to
convince the small number of voters who would turn out
in the primary that they should vote for him.
His campaign worked with Precision Network to show
online McGarvey ads to local voters under 35, and to
female Democrats who had voted in at least three of the
past five primary elections. (Two of his challengers
were women.)
"When every dollar counts, when literally every vote
counts, you have to be more targeted," he said.
"I do think it helped us win."
McGarvey is now running unopposed in the November
election.