alt Hacker Newsso, since these companies have to comply with removing PII, is the worst thing that could happen to me, that I get ads that are more likely to be interesting to me?
i’m not being facetious, honest question, especially considering ads are the only thing paying these people these days
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IMO the tracking, advertising, and attention market might just be societies biggest problem.
Certainly it employs a lot of people, as do cartels.
The more data they have on you, the more valuable that data is to a third party. So they sell your data to someone else, who then phones you based on your known deep interest in <whatever it was that tracked you>. Or spams you. Or messages you. Or whatever method they think will most get your attention.
If you don't give them that information, they can't sell it, and the buyers won't annoy you.
It's not that the ads you get are more interesting, it's that you get more ads because they think they know more about you.
The worst thing that could happen is that you get caught in some government dragnet based on your historical viewing data and get disappeared because (as is the nature of dragnet searches) no matter how innocent you are you still look guilty.
Who has to comply with removing PII? Your profile, yours, mapped to a special snowflake ID, is packaged and sold across a network of 2500 - 4000 buyers, including in particular those that clean, tie (a surprisingly small footprint turns into its own "natural primary key"), qualify, and sell on to agencies. No step in this is illegal.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/23/24277679/atlas-privacy-b...