Ah, GDPR. Like the guy (or girl) you matched with on Tinder six months ago who got less interesting the more you got to know them, it just won’t go away. It keeps sliding into your DMs with teasing headlines like, “Data Protection Authority of Baden-Württemberg Issues First German Fine Under the GDPR” or “Washington Post offers invalid cookie consent under EU rules“. And there you were thinking you were done with it back in May, when you sent all your users that “Please respond to this email to stay on our mailing list” email and threw that giant banner about cookies up on your website.
Privacy
The seven people you need on your data team
Congratulations! You just got the call – you’ve been asked to start a data team to extract valuable customer insights from your product usage, improve your company’s marketing effectiveness, or make your boss look all “data-savvy” (hopefully not just the last one of these). And even better, you’ve been given carte blanche to go hire … Read more
I love it when a mail-merge comes together…
Would you buy BI services from a company that can’t successfully execute a mail-merge? Not to mention ones that send unsolicited e-mails to drum up business…
Internet Explorer 8 RC1: Porn mode gets a face-lift
Now if that headline doesn’t get me some search ranking juice, nothing will – though my contextual ads (left) are likely to be less impressed. I was going to post this earlier in the week, but Eric Peterson’s swashbuckling defense of cookies (and my hand-wringing response) intervened. As it turns out, though, that debate is … Read more
Eric Peterson Rides Again
Eric Peterson has an impassioned post on his blog in which he defends the Obama Administration’s decision to use persistent cookies for tracking behavior on the Whitehouse.gov site. He directs particular ire at an article by Chris Soghoian at CNET from November which questioned whether it was a smart move for the (then) Obama Transition … Read more
‘Anonymous’ Netflix Prize data not so anonymous after all
Does entropic de-anonymization of sparse microdata set your pulse racing? If so, you’re gonna love this paper [PDF] by Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov of the University of Texas at Austin. Even if your stats math is as rusty as mine, however, the paper makes fascinating reading – and is surprisingly readable, if you skip … Read more
Phorm gets the all-clear from the UK Goverment (kinda)
[Update 10/1/08: BT has announced that it will commence a new trial with Phorm to start September 30 in the UK. The trial, in accordance with the conditions below, is opt-in] Beleaguered behavioral targeting outfit Phorm appears finally to have caught a bit of a lucky break – the UK Government has (belatedly) responded … Read more
Yahoo updates IndexTools terms & conditions
Yahoo is not letting the grass grow under its feet with its integration of IndexTools. Today IndexTools partners received an e-mail from Yahoo informing them of a change to the terms & conditions of the service, which need to be agreed to by October 15 in order to retain access to IndexTools. The e-mail calls … Read more
Internet Explorer 8 beta 2: Privacy vs Monetizability
Once upon a time, when I was a young turk, I would assiduously download every last doodad that my employer created as soon as it shipped – or often long before, happily reaching for the pile of floppy disks as I rebuilt my computer for the umpteenth time following the latest toxic combination of untested … Read more
Online advertising’s dirty secret: Malvertising
There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the “dark side” of online advertising, in particular, the activities of companies like NebuAd and Phorm using somewhat shady techniques to gather behavioral data about users and using this data to target ads. I’ve even blogged about it myself. And click fraud remains a significant challenge to … Read more