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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ dept.

Oracle's BlueKai tracks you across the web. That data spilled online

Tech giant Oracle is one of a few companies in Silicon Valley that has near-perfected the art of tracking people across the internet. The company has spent a decade and billions of dollars buying startups to build its very own panopticon of users' web browsing data.

One of those startups, BlueKai, which Oracle bought for a little over $400 million in 2014, is barely known outside marketing circles, but it amassed one of the largest banks of web tracking data outside of the federal government.

[...] But for a time, [the BlueKai] web tracking data was spilling out onto the open internet because a server was left unsecured and without a password, exposing billions of records for anyone to find.

Security researcher Anurag Sen found the database and reported his finding to Oracle through an intermediary — Roi Carthy, chief executive at cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock and former TechCrunch reporter.

TechCrunch reviewed the data shared by Sen and found names, home addresses, email addresses and other identifiable data in the database. The data also revealed sensitive users' web browsing activity — from purchases to newsletter unsubscribes.

[...] "Oracle is aware of the report made by Roi Carthy of Hudson Rock related to certain BlueKai records potentially exposed on the Internet," said Oracle spokesperson Deborah Hellinger. "While the initial information provided by the researcher did not contain enough information to identify an affected system, Oracle's investigation has subsequently determined that two companies did not properly configure their services. Oracle has taken additional measures to avoid a reoccurrence of this issue."

Oracle did not name the companies or say what those additional measures were, and declined to answer our questions or comment further.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:22AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:22AM (#1011862)

    Haha! I spend all my time browsing web sites nobody has ever heard of. Nobody puts trackers on sites nobody visits. I haven't seen an ad in so long, I don't even know what ads look like this decade.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:39AM (#1011864)

    .
    /haha

  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 24 2020, @09:30AM

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday June 24 2020, @09:30AM (#1011913)

    Don't worry I'm sure you are on the elusive unicorn list, soon you will get ads for beef jerky and other things to keep in your survivalist bunker.