Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

Online ads can trail you across devices – creepy, smart business, or both?

Kate Knibbs
By

drawbridge devicesTargeted ads are always a little uncanny – it’s kind of disconcerting to see ads for those ski boots you were just looking at, since it’s pretty clear advertisers are keeping a watchful eye on your browsing habits. But things are getting even stranger. Now, if your daydreaming and looking up info about a potential trip to Hawaii on your work computer, you can see ads from places like Expedia on your iPad at home. Ads can follow you from one device to another. 

There are a few different ways advertisers are learning to trail you off your desktops and onto mobile devices (and vice versa.) 

Recommended Videos

“Triangulation:” Creepin’ by any other name, or simple innovation?

One of the methods used by targeted ad specialists like Drawbridge involves sending cookies to various devices in the same area. If the cookies reveal patterns of behavior on multiple devices, it “triangulates” the position of multiple devices with the same owner, and begins a targeted ad campaign. There’s no limit to the amount of devices that can be paired up, so even if you have a ton of different gadgets, you’ll have no reprieve from the targeted ads (unless you keep them very far apart from each other.)

CEO and Founder of Drawbridge Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan feels confident that the measures Drawbridge uses do not invade privacy. “Drawbridge’s technology does not access a single piece of Personally Identifiable Information about the user, be it an email handle, a social handle, full legal name, phone number, physical address, etc. Our technology is based on fully anonymous signals – also known as “features” – that are spatio-temporal and behavioral in nature. For example, features include the applications and sites that a user visits on their mobile and desktop devices, and the times of day and locations where their devices are are accessing the internet,” she says.

So even though they’re figuring out if that Galaxy S3 and MacBook Pro belong to the same person, they’re not cataloging personal stuff like your Twitter handle – just that you’ve gone on Twitter frequently on both devices. This makes it harder to be 100 percent accurate, but may assuage some privacy concerns. Right now, Drawbridge normally has around a 60-70 percent accuracy.

When asked if people who don’t like the idea of being followed by Drawbridge clients can opt out, Sivaramakrishnan explains that there is a simple way to avoid getting these ads: “It is very easy, if the users opts out of being targeted on any one of his or her devices and we have identified the user across their other devices, we will carry over their preference on every other device. Drawbridge has partnered with TRUSTe and offers the ad choices preference manager (an industry first) on all in-application banner inventory. The user can therefore not only opt out on their desktop or laptop device, but also can do the same on their mobile devices.” Sivaramakrishnan pointed out that more information about the TRUSTe partnership is available online – so that’s a good sign that even targeted ad servers are cognizant that their behavior might freak some people out.

Social media ads know you no matter what device you use 

Screen Shot 2013-05-02 at 2.19.49 PM When advertisers go through Facebook, the company says it doesn’t give them the data necessary to determine how to reach you across multiple devices, but they don’t have to – since you use the same Facebook account no matter what device you’re on, you’ll see ads targeted towards you whether you’re browsing from an iPad or looking at a friend’s pictures through the new Facebook Home. And Facebook now partners with four data brokerage companies, Acxiom, Datalogix, Epsilon, and BlueKai. When a company wants to launch a targeted ad campaign through Facebook, they use data from these brokers to hit your account, no matter what device you use. And even though Facebook made it marginally easier to opt out of some targeted ads, you still have to opt out of each partnered service, and even then your page won’t be ad-free, just rid of ads from specific companies.

And, of course, beyond Facebook, there are other powerful social networks that work with targeted ads – Google being potentially the most major ad player. And even though ads aren’t as garish on Twitter as they are on Facebook, promoted content based on user interest is still a thing – so even though promoted tweets blend in with your normal feed, they’re still there – and they’re still tailored to your interests.

So what should I do if I hate targeted ads?

You can opt out of as much as you can, and complain when services don’t give you an opportunity to opt out. Digital Trends talked to Aleecia M. McDonald, the Director of Privacy at the Center for Internet and Society. She wasn’t too optimistic about the situation. “There are very limited tools for users to control this sort of tracking and linking.”

“The most pervasive is the DAA opt-out, but it does not help much here. DAA opt-outs only change the types of ads people see, but not change data collection or other uses like linking devices together. Unfortunately, right now the best way to limit tracking is to block all advertising. Ad blocking is a very blunt approach when most people are OK with seeing ads, just not OK with giving up personal data that goes with ads. It is a shame to lose ad revenue for all ads, but that is the state of privacy today. Unless and until there is a meaningful solution to limit data collection through self-help tools like Do Not Track or from legislation, the best privacy protection is to use ad blockers.” 

So you might want to adjust your expectations, because this sort of targeted ad delivery is highly unlikely to go away, unless serious legislative changes prevent companies from using services like Facebook’s personalized ads or Drawbridge. If companies see an opportunity to get their ads in front of people who are more likely to buy their products, they will always take them.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kate Knibbs
Kate Knibbs
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kate Knibbs is a writer from Chicago. She is very happy that her borderline-unhealthy Internet habits are rewarded with a…
The 4 opt outs between you and stopping Facebook tracking
how to opt out

It’s already bad enough that surfing through your Facebook News Feed is becoming such a chore because of ads the social network thinks you’d be interested in - but then earlier this year, Facebook revealed its intentions to further stretch its ad targeting program by partnering with Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai. When you surf sites on the Internet or use rewards or loyalty cards when you go shopping in the mall, you unintentionally leave a trace of your consumer habits and information, and these four companies gather that information to help them come up with better targeted advertisements. The partnership with Facebook plans to bring that information to the social networking site so that companies would be able to reach out to the right users, and maybe even lessen the annoyance you feel when you see a product page on your stream you don’t remember liking.
Facebook ads are becoming more predominant these days, and we’ve tried our best to minimize (if not completely opt-out of) seeing them. With the emergence of this initiative shared by Facebook and consumer data brokers, it may become harder to deal with – now that data sourced from outside Facebook is on the table, limiting your personal information on the social network will no longer be enough to get you off the ad radar. So if you want to do everything in your power to stop the Facebook tracking, these are the four places you need to head and opt-out of.
The four Horsemen opt outs
1. BlueKai. BlueKai is the only one out of the four companies mentioned that doesn’t collect offline consumer data. It does, however, primarily employ tracking cookies to amass information from your online browsing and use this information to assume what products you’d be most interested in. You can very easily opt-out of BlueKai’s information hold on you by installing a browser extension that blocks online tracking. It is highly recommended to block all third-party trackers, not just BlueKai. We’ve covered a few add-ons that you can use, namely DoNotTrackMe, Disconnect, and Ghostery. Additionally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a simple how-to on online tracking prevention you can use.
2. Acxiom. Visit Acxiom’s opt-out form if you dislike the idea of your info being used to propagate marketing materials, promos, and additional information about Acxiom products. Services you can sign out of (let’s just ignore the fact that you never signed up to begin with) include mail sent through the postal service, telemarketing, emails, and online advertising. The last service relies on cookies, so bear in mind that when you clear yours, you will have to re-do your last opt-out. Choose “Myself” when asked to certify your identity.
Now here’s the sketchy-but-necessary part: You have to give Acxiom all your personal information to stop them from giving it away to Facebook. That includes nick names, former names, married names, common spellings and misspellings, phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, the whole shebang, all of it, everything. This may be a little bit terrifying to do, but think about how Acxiom got a hold of your data in the first place – they probably tapped into your supermarket membership card and watched your purchases, and the same goes for the sites you frequently shop through online.

If you’re still super wary, start off by providing the phone number and email you’ve associated with your Facebook account and clicking on the green plus sign (+) next to it – leave everything else blank. Everything on Facebook is almost certainly public – the fact that you’ve included these contact details in your About page means you don’t mind people (including Facebook) using them.
After clicking Submit, you can decide to install Acxiom’s opt-out cookie, but like the online advertising option mentioned above, if you clear your cookies, this disappears. You will receive an email with a link from Acxiom that you will have to click to finalize your opt-out.

Read more
Who’s tracking you online? This app can tell you – and stop them

If you hate targeted ads, the Internet can be a very frustrating place. Online juggernauts like Twitter, Facebook, and Google keep developing partnerships with third-party sites that track your every mouse hover, all while developing native tracking programs. The goal: targeting you for ads with scary accuracy, and even if the objective is peddling wares and not peeping at your personal life, it's at least invasive and at most a gross abuse of power. And the companies keep introducing new ways to bombard you, like how Facebook is testing targeted ads in its Graph Search and tightening its partnerships with third-party trackers. 
A browser app called Disconnect can minimize the amount of tracking that happens on your desktop. Developed by a team that includes a former Google programmer, Disconnect lets you see who follows you, and it allows you to sever the trail that Google, Facebook, Twitter and thousands of third-party tracking businesses use to follow you. Disconnect says it also makes loading Web pages 27 percent faster, and it also lets you encrypt your data to boost security. The Disconnect team explains how their program still allows for intentional sharing, but caps unintentional information disclosure: "We don't prevent Facebook or Google from tracking stuff you intentionally share on their websites. We do prevent third-party tracking – tracking of data you're unintentionally sharing with Facebook, Google, and thousands of other companies while you're not on those company's websites. For example, Facebook tracks the non-Facebook webpages you visit that contain Like buttons and other Facebook widgets, and Disconnect prevents that." 
The most recent version, Disconnect 2, launched this week, and it offers a more robust roster of ad-fighting measures. It's also pay-what-you-can, and lets you decide to split the amount of money between their organization and charities. 
We asked the Disconnect team why they chose the pay-what-you-can model, and they say that they want the technology to be available to everyone, not just people who can afford it. "We think pay-what-you-want has the potential to become a really disruptive business model. Still too early to draw conclusions on amount of contributions but we're pleasantly surprised so far!" 
Right now Disconnect is only available for desktop, so we asked when it's coming to mobile. No word yet, though the team says they do want to expand to more platforms. And the team is planning on debuting some premium features, though they are not sure what those will be yet - and they'd like to preserve the pay-what-you-can model as much as possible. 
And if you're wondering which major website has the most nefarious tracking techniques, Casey Oppenheim, one of the founders, told us which one he'd block first: "Personally, its a tough choice between Facebook and Google but I'd go with Google because they just have so much of my private data – through search, analytics, and apps – all tied to my real-name account." 
 Luckily, using Disconnect you don't have to choose just one source to block, and since the team continues to develop the service, hopefully their efforts will keep up with the tracking technologies introduced by major web companies. 

Read more
Elon Musk: Owning Twitter has been a ‘roller coaster’ and ‘quite painful’
Elon Musk.

UPDATE: After more than an hour of Musk taking questions and with around 3 million people listening live, the interview came to a close at 10:10 p.m. PT.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk agreed to an interview with the BBC on Tuesday night. It took place at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco with BBC journalist James Clayton and was streamed live on Twitter Spaces, the platform's audio chatroom feature.

Read more