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From Engadget:
Throughout discussions about Cambridge Analytica, parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and how they came to obtain information on some 87 million Facebook users, you've probably also heard the name AggregateIQ. The Canada-based data firm has now been connected to Cambridge Analytica operations as well as US election campaigns and the Brexit referendum. Now, cybersecurity firm UpGuard has discovered a large code repository that AggregateIQ left exposed online, and through that we're getting a better look at the company, what it does and how it does it.
From the first of Upguard's multipart series:
On the night of March 20th, 2018, UpGuard Director of Cyber Risk Research Chris Vickery discovered a large data warehouse hosted on a subdomain of AIQ and using a custom version of popular code repository Gitlab, located at the web address gitlab.aggregateiq.com. Entering the URL, Gitlab prompts the user to register to see the contents - a free process which simply requires supplying an email address. Once registered, contents of the dozens of separate code repositories operated on the AggregateIQ Gitlab subdomain are entirely downloadable. Within these repositories appear to be nothing less than mechanisms capable of organizing vast quantities of data about individuals, measuring how they are being influenced or reached by advertising, and even tracking their internet browsing behavior.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 16 2018, @03:35AM
I will tell you all a dirty little secret: for two weeks I worked as Tier-1 tech support for a large financial firm.
Tech support scum get to see the details -- "Please give me a second while I bring up the information, sir," -- that they know about their customers. Along with the details were the customer's age, and if not known, the approximate age. Now, some of you would consider that highly unethical, but tech support scum need all information possible to deliver the optimal customer service experience. As it turns out, when you have a person of 80 years of age and with a lot of big accounts, then that sets the stage for you being a lot more patient with them even before they know it, even if they are shitting their pants on an hourly basis.
People like those are in congress and with even more technical naiveté. They are the people making national security decisions and rubber-stamping war decisions. It seems that some of our congresscritters have finally learned for some reason about "cookies" and maybe even a layman's description of Google and Facebook's tracking mechanisms. I guess that's a step in the right direction.