Private medical data - Google targeted ads

[Maxmars]

My insurance company sort of forced me to switch doctors once... I went to the "new" doctors ranch... filled out a slew of paperwork.. and did my business with them.  Directly afterwards, in a matter of under an hour, my email inbox was flooded with dozens of new "advertisers" all very well focused on me and my needs.

Now the doctor didn't do this... but his "third parties" did.  Third parties like "Google."

So this little article didn't surprise me much...

From ArsTechnica: Google accused of secretly tracking drivers with disabilities

This is about a lawsuit.  So the language being used is somewhat inflammatory... but guess what... I still believe it.
 

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Google needs to pump the brakes when it comes to tracking sensitive information shared with DMV sites, a new lawsuit suggests.

Filing a proposed class-action suit in California, Katherine Wilson has accused Google of using Google Analytics and DoubleClick trackers on the California DMV site to unlawfully obtain information about her personal disability without her consent.

This, Wilson argued, violated the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), as well as the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), and impacted perhaps millions of drivers who had no way of knowing Google was collecting sensitive information shared only for DMV purposes.

"Google uses the personal information it obtains from motor vehicle records to create profiles, categorize individuals, and derive information about them to sell its customers the ability to create targeted marketing and advertising," Wilson alleged.

According to Wilson, California's DMV "encourages" drivers "to use its website rather than visiting one of the DMV’s physical locations" without telling drivers that Google has trackers all over its site.

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Imagine that... "targeted marketing" being related to to information vacuumed up from the DMV... 

Care to guess where else Google get's information to sell?

[l0st]

My insurance company sort of forced me to switch doctors once... I went to the "new" doctors ranch... filled out a slew of paperwork.. and did my business with them.  Directly afterwards, in a matter of under an hour, my email inbox was flooded with dozens of new "advertisers" all very well focused on me and my needs.

Now the doctor didn't do this... but his "third parties" did.  Third parties like "Google."

So this little article didn't surprise me much...

From ArsTechnica: Google accused of secretly tracking drivers with disabilities

This is about a lawsuit.  So the language being used is somewhat inflammatory... but guess what... I still believe it.
 

---

Google needs to pump the brakes when it comes to tracking sensitive information shared with DMV sites, a new lawsuit suggests.

Filing a proposed class-action suit in California, Katherine Wilson has accused Google of using Google Analytics and DoubleClick trackers on the California DMV site to unlawfully obtain information about her personal disability without her consent.

This, Wilson argued, violated the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), as well as the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), and impacted perhaps millions of drivers who had no way of knowing Google was collecting sensitive information shared only for DMV purposes.

"Google uses the personal information it obtains from motor vehicle records to create profiles, categorize individuals, and derive information about them to sell its customers the ability to create targeted marketing and advertising," Wilson alleged.

According to Wilson, California's DMV "encourages" drivers "to use its website rather than visiting one of the DMV’s physical locations" without telling drivers that Google has trackers all over its site.

---

Imagine that... "targeted marketing" being related to to information vacuumed up from the DMV... 

Care to guess where else Google get's information to sell?

It gets worse. I lived in a state that was directly caught selling the data to some firm in California. No trackers. They straight up sold the DMV database.

This conduct should be made illegal without explicit consent and by explicit I mean 50 point red blinking font saying "We're planning to sell your data, do you agree?"

[ArMaP]

According to Wilson, California's DMV "encourages" drivers "to use its website rather than visiting one of the DMV’s physical locations" without telling drivers that Google has trackers all over its site.

If the site asks the users to create an account and then log in with the account information then Google or any other search engine should not be able to access the private area, as they would need to know the passwords of all users to get their information.

[l0st]

If the site asks the users to create an account and then log in with the account information then Google or any other search engine should not be able to access the private area, as they would need to know the passwords of all users to get their information.

Not sure if it is still th case, but Google used to require that one provide an actual account for indexing or the site is de-ranked in the results. So it's kinda like wanting to be in the phone book, but only if you'll give the phone company access to all of your data to be published in it.

[ArMaP]

Not sure if it is still th case, but Google used to require that one provide an actual account for indexing or the site is de-ranked in the results.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean with "provide an actual account".

[l0st]

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean with "provide an actual account".

It used to be a requirement to be listed on Google that the site owner provide a registered account for indexing. You can refuse to provide one, but if the spider cannot access pages due to restricted access, it lowers the page rank for the remaining pages. Google wants you to exclude inaccessible content with robots.txt.

Even if Google is not publishing all the pages in the index, they've certainly slurped down copies of your entire site for their own internal DB. Google wants to be behind your paywall and will penalize you if you do not give them access.

[ArMaP]

It used to be a requirement to be listed on Google that the site owner provide a registered account for indexing. You can refuse to provide one, but if the spider cannot access pages due to restricted access, it lowers the page rank for the remaining pages. Google wants you to exclude inaccessible content with robots.txt.

Even if Google is not publishing all the pages in the index, they've certainly slurped down copies of your entire site for their own internal DB. Google wants to be behind your paywall and will penalize you if you do not give them access.

I understand it now, thanks.

But that would not have given Google access to the other accounts' data, and, if I'm not mistaken, that's what we're talking about.

[Raptured]

Also let's not forget that having location ON on your phone can alert Google to places you go which also gets indexed and can possibly lead to targeted ads

[l0st]

I understand it now, thanks.

But that would not have given Google access to the other accounts' data, and, if I'm not mistaken, that's what we're talking about.

We don't really know because they don't say how the data was collected other than that trackers were used. It stands to reason that if an employee with admin rights logged in to the site with the trackers on it that the data could have been gleaned from there. We don't know if the DMV gave Google an indexing account with access to customer data.

That's why I keep saying all this crap about these businesses "sharing" data with corps and feds needs to get slapped down by Congress. Now it's in Google's database, who else did they "share" it with? It's not "sharing" and "tracking" it's stalking, surveillance, and an invasion of privacy.

Plus, I balk at the actual value of this data for supposed marketing. We never had people's medical info to target ads before yet all these medical orgs rake in billions.

[ArMaP]

We don't really know because they don't say how the data was collected other than that trackers were used. It stands to reason that if an employee with admin rights logged in to the site with the trackers on it that the data could have been gleaned from there. We don't know if the DMV gave Google an indexing account with access to customer data.

If those trackers are what I'm thinking then they have to be inserted on the pages' HTML code, so that's not something they really control. If an idiot puts a tracker on a private page then they are really giving Google access to information that should be private.