Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Lotame unveils Cartographer, its new approach to tracking user identity – TechCrunch
Lotame, a company offering data management tools for publishers and marketers, today unveiled a new product called Cartographer — described by CMO Adam Solomon as “our new people-based ID solution.”
In other words, it’s Lotame’s offering to help businesses connect their visitor and customer data across platforms and devices.
We’ve written about plenty of other cross-device targeting technologies — and in fact, Lotame acquired one of them, AdMobius, in 2014. But Solomon said the landscape has become more challenging given privacy regulations and especially updated browsers that place new limits on the types of cookies that can be used to track users.
“There’s been an explosion of first-party cookies,” Solomon said, referring to cookies that are stored on the domain you’re actually visiting (as opposed to third-party cookies, which are increasingly blocked).
He argued that these “short-lived” cookies then create problems for publishers: “If you're in Safari visiting the same site every day, a new ID could be generated” each day. So Cartographer deals with this by using data science and machine learning to attempt to “cluster” different IDs together that likely belong to the same user.
“Every day when we see an ID, we'll capture it,” Solomon said. “We’re graphing those cookies together, these dozens or hundreds of cookies that we believe, based on our technology, that these cookies belong to the same individual.”
He also said that connecting IDs in this way is crucial to the whole “Russian nesting doll” of how a publisher or advertiser understands identity on the internet: “Cookies ladder up to devices, devices ladder up to people, people ladder up to households.” So by connecting cookies to people, Lotame can also offer better household-level data.
[...] Grant Whitmore, chief digital officer at Lotame customer Tribune Publications, made a similar point: “One of the things that I think all publishers are wrestling with right now is really the disconnect that is occurring in the adtech landscape and the legislative landscape and really managing the persistence of that consent.”
Whitmore continued, “One of the unintended consequences of that legislation and some of what is happening in the browser space is that we could be forced into a position where we are having to ask you every single time you visit a site whether it’s okay to sell your data, whether it’s okay to track.”
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Friday October 25 2019, @08:09PM (2 children)
Sometimes I think that this string of inane Runaway submissions is meant to tell us all something about he political bent of SoylentNews.
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Friday October 25 2019, @08:29PM (1 child)
Hm, so a fairly neutral reporting on this shows a political bent? I take it you mean SoylentNews should not have reported on it at all? Or did you mean that the reporting should have been skewed towards whatever opinion you have?
Sorry to ask, but it is not entirely clear from your post — albeit I have an idea what you meant.
Open Source Solutions and Digital Sovereignty is the new black
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday October 26 2019, @08:58AM
Mind numbingly neutral. But that is only the ones the bots let through. Runaway is attempting the never before tried, "reverse aristarchus", but unfortunately, his is very stupid in a right wing way, and apparently he can only submit on IRC. But my point still stands, I see the string of acceptance of his pablum as a direct insult to aristarchus submissions. Even though they were never going to be accepted anyway.
Interesting chatter in IRC, by the way, where janrinok expresses concern that by rejecting Runaway's crap, he might again be accused of censorship! Risible! Oh, dear, I have to stop to wipe away the tears! And after that coherent exposition that he gave on the necessity of closed hearings that only a retired spy could give! Cheerio, janrinok!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Friday October 25 2019, @08:25PM (2 children)
Well, duh, it is working as it is supposed to! You tracking firms are the worst of the worst and should be crushed to fine dust and then killed some more. I'm so happy that we have the GDPR, which is actually forcing some change. It is slow going, but we are getting more and more going to get you trackers killed. We will be forcing you and your customers to adhere to informed consent with the explicit demand that you ask each and every person, whether you are allowed to track them and sell their data. And no, it cannot be an opt-out or pre-clicked proposition (see recent EU court rulings).
Oh, and if you still want to track me, then I demand that you pay *me*. I want my share of the profits that *my* data represents and generates. My data is worth enough to have my pension organized and comfortably financed within a day or two.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday October 25 2019, @09:02PM
Kill the owners of the companies that make the trackers*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @10:58PM
you're an idiotic slave if you think the fucking government is going to make things better overall or long term or at-fucking-all. you can't choose which sites you want to interact with without some career parasite telling you what to do? do you wear diapers to work too? fucking invalid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:54PM
All the scare-mongering/surveillance was directed at the evil commies/commie sympathizers. Now it's straight up at everyone, not even a pretense of "for the greater good".
The West (or perhaps USians?) is overdue for another bloody upheaval.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday October 25 2019, @09:21PM
And the anti-theft laws have the “unintended” consequences of harming the otherwise profitable business of street robbery.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday October 25 2019, @09:49PM
And the answer remains the same.
"No."
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday October 26 2019, @06:21AM
1) It's not actually tracking *you*. Just AI that is predicting that the different signatures you give off *may* be you. That's different than something conclusive, or a fact. Which means its open to exploitation. Perfect candidate for Bayesian poisoning.
2) IDs = Passive fingerprinting. Even without client-side tracking methods, there are effective ways to fingerprint connections and extract many different bits of likely unique data. Doesn't even mention SSL based SuperCookeys, but those are additional points of passive data available for collection.
Blocking things client-side is an escalating race, but all we need is the development (or fork) of a browser that distributes fingerprints randomly across the entire user base. At that point their "ladders to household level data" will be fucking torched by Bayesian poisoning.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.