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WIRED: Google Ad-Tech Users Can Target National Security ‘Decision Makers’ and People With Chronic Diseases
February 20, 2025
A complaint filed by Enforce and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) last month urges the FTC to launch an investigation into whether Google’s RTB tools have allowed sensitive data to be made available to foreign adversaries—information that Ryan, along with other experts, says includes vast troves of personal data tied to “active military, intelligence personnel, and key leaders.”
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“Even if Google were to change its practices and only initially broadcast RTB data to entities in the United States,” EPIC’s complaint says, the data would “inevitably” fall into foreign actors’ hands. “Google has no way to control what happens to the data that it broadcasts so freely,” it alleges. This was also the contention of the organization that develops technical standards for the advertising industry. Known as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the organization acknowledged in 2018 that there is “no technical way to limit the way data is used after the data is received by a vendor.”
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