Audience and Market Analysis discussion

1. After the Readings and watching the videos “Social Media as a Revolutionary Tool” and “Jack Vale – Social Media Experiment”, as well as reflecting on the analytics/predictive analytics/big data topics we’ve covered, are you excited to be entering this new world of PR and Marketing Communications or fearful to be an innocent consumer? Why?

2.

After viewing the reading the articles and material, and then the video, post your thoughts about traditional audience definitions (demo/psycho) and the POV (point-of-view) discussed in the video presentation.   

Do you agree that social media, communication, and marketing are moving in the direction Johanna Blakley is espousing? Why? What personal experiences &/or observations have you had to support your opinions?

Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein
In a Wild Web
By PAUL MOZUR, MARK SCOTT and MIKE ISAAC SEPT. 17, 2017
Video https://nyti.ms/2y8o8WC How Facebook Is Changing Your Internet
Behind the scenes, Facebook is involved in high-stakes diplomatic battles across
the globe that have begun fragmenting the internet itself. By JONAH M. KESSEL
and PAUL MOZUR on Publish Date September 17, 2017.
Watch the
video
On a muggy, late spring evening, Tuan Pham awoke to the police storming his house in Hanoi, Vietnam.
They marched him to a police station and made their demand: Hand over your Facebook password. Mr.
Tuan, a computer engineer, had recently written a poem on the social network called “Mother’s
Lullaby,” which criticized how the communist country was run.
One line read, “One century has passed, we are still poor and hungry, do you ask why?”
Mr. Tuan’s arrest came just weeks after Facebook offered a major olive branch to Vietnam’s
government. Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, met with a top Vietnamese
official in April and pledged to remove information from the social network that violated the country’s
laws.
While Facebook said its policies in Vietnam have not
changed, and it has a consistent process for
governments to report illegal content, the Vietnamese
government was specific. The social network, they
have said, had agreed to help create a new
communications channel with the government to
prioritize Hanoi’s requests and remove what the regime
considered inaccurate posts about senior leaders.
 Vietnam’s government has said Facebook agreed to
help create a new communications channel with the
government. Credit Na Son Nguyen/Associated Press
Populous, developing countries like Vietnam are where the company is looking to add its next billion
customers — and to bolster its ad business. Facebook’s promise to Vietnam helped the social media
giant placate a government that had called on local companies not to advertise on foreign sites like
Facebook, and it remains a major marketing channel for businesses there.
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The diplomatic game that unfolded in Vietnam has become increasingly common for Facebook. The
internet is Balkanizing, and the world’s largest tech companies have had to dispatch envoys to, in effect,
contain the damage such divisions pose to their ambitions.
The internet has long had a reputation of being an anything-goes place that only a few nations have tried
to tame — China in particular. But in recent years, events as varied as the Arab Spring, elections in
France and confusion in Indonesia over the religion of the country’s president have awakened
governments to how they have lost some control over online speech, commerce and politics on their
home turf.
Even in the United States, tech giants are facing heightened scrutiny from the government. Facebook
recently cooperated with investigators for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating
Russian interference in the American presidential election. In recent weeks, politicians on the left and
the right have also spoken out about the excess power of America’s largest tech companies.
As nations try to grab back power online, a clash is brewing between governments and companies. Some
of the biggest companies in the world — Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba among them
— are finding they need to play by an entirely new set of rules on the once-anarchic internet.
And it’s not just one new set of rules. According to a review by The New York Times, more than 50
countries have passed laws over the last five years to gain greater control over how their people use the
web.
“Ultimately, it’s a grand power struggle,” said David Reed, an early pioneer of the internet and a former
professor at the M.I.T. Media Lab. “Governments started waking up as soon as a significant part of their
powers of communication of any sort started being invaded by companies.”
Facebook encapsulates the reasons for the internet’s fragmentation — and increasingly, its
consequences.
Global Reach
Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds around
the world to over 1.3 billion daily users
worldwide.
 Source: Company reports | 2017 as of the second
quarter By KARL RUSSELL/THE NEW YORK
TIMES
The company has become so far-reaching that
more than two billion people — about a quarter of
the world’s population — now use Facebook each
month. Internet users (excluding China) spend one
in five minutes online within the Facebook
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universe, according to comScore, a research firm. And Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive,
wants that dominance to grow.
But politicians have struck back. China, which blocked Facebook in 2009, has resisted Mr. Zuckerberg’s
efforts to get the social network back into the country. In Europe, officials have repudiated Facebook’s
attempts to gather data from its messaging apps and third-party websites.
The Silicon Valley giant’s tussle with the fracturing internet is poised to escalate. Facebook has now
reached almost everyone who already has some form of internet access, excluding China. Capturing
those last users — including in Asian nations like Vietnam and African countries like Kenya — may
involve more government roadblocks.
“We understand that and accept that our ideals are not everyone’s,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice
president of communications and public policy. “But when you look at the data and truly listen to the
people around the world who rely on our service, it’s clear that we do a much better job of bringing
people together than polarizing them.”
Friending China
By mid-2016, a yearlong campaign by Facebook to get into China — the world’s biggest internet market
— appeared to be sputtering.
 Facebook has tried various methods to get back
into China, where the social network has been blocked
since 2009. Credit Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
Mr. Zuckerberg had wined and dined Chinese
politicians, publicly showed off his newly acquired
Chinese-language skills — a moment that set the
internet abuzz — and talked with a potential Chinese
partner about pushing the social network into the
market, according to a person familiar with the talks
who declined to be named because the discussions
were confidential.
At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese president, Xi Jinping,
whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his soon-to-be-born first child — usually a privilege
reserved for older relatives, or sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a person briefed
on the matter.
But all those efforts flopped, foiling Facebook’s attempts to crack one of the most isolated pockets of the
internet.
China has blocked Facebook and Twitter since mid-2009, after an outbreak of ethnic rioting in the
western part of the country. In recent years, similar barriers have gone up for Google services and other
apps, like Line and Instagram.
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Even if Facebook found a way to enter China now, it would not guarantee financial success. Today, the
overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens use local online services like Qihoo 360 and Sina Weibo. No
American-made apps rank among China’s 50 most popular services, according to SAMPi, a market
research firm.
Chinese tech officials said that although many in the government are open to the idea of Facebook
releasing products in China, there is resistance among leaders in the standing committee of the country’s
Politburo, its top decision-making body.
In 2016, Facebook took tentative steps toward embracing China’s censorship policies. That summer,
Facebook developed a tool that could suppress posts in certain geographic areas, The Times reported last
year. The idea was that it would help the company get into China by enabling Facebook or a local
partner to censor content according to Beijing’s demands. The tool was not deployed.
In another push last year, Mr. Zuckerberg spent time at a conference in Beijing that is a standard on the
China government relations tour. Using his characteristic brand of diplomacy — the Facebook status
update — he posted a photo of himself running in Tiananmen Square on a dangerously smoggy day. The
photo drew derision on Twitter, and concerns from Chinese about Mr. Zuckerberg’s health.
 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, on
a run in Beijing in 2016. The outing set the internet
abuzz as “the smog jog.” Credit Facebook/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
For all the courtship, things never quite worked out.
“There’s an interest on both sides of the dance, so
some kind of product can be introduced,” said Kai-Fu
Lee, the former head of Google in China who now
runs a venture-capital firm in Beijing. “But what
Facebook wants is impossible, and what they can
have may not be very meaningful.”
This spring, Facebook tried a different tactic: testing the waters in China without telling anyone. The
company authorized the release of a photo-sharing app there that does not bear its name, and
experimented by linking it to a Chinese social network called WeChat.
One factor driving Mr. Zuckerberg may be the brisk ad business that Facebook does from its Hong Kong
offices, where the company helps Chinese companies — and the government’s own propaganda organs
— spread their messages. In fact, the scale of the Chinese government’s use of Facebook to
communicate abroad offers a notable sign of Beijing’s understanding of Facebook’s power to mold
public opinion.
Chinese state media outlets have used ad buys to spread propaganda around key diplomatic events. Its
stodgy state-run television station and the party mouthpiece newspaper each have far more Facebook
“likes” than popular Western news brands like CNN and Fox News, a likely indication of big ad buys.
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To attract more ad spending, Facebook set up one page to show China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, how
to promote on the platform, according to a person familiar with the matter. Dedicated to Mr. Xi’s
international trips, the page is still regularly updated by CCTV, and has 2.7 million likes. During the
2015 trip when Mr. Xi met Mr. Zuckerberg, CCTV used the channel to spread positive stories. One post
was titled “Xi’s UN address wins warm applause.”
 At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr.
Zuckerberg asked the Chinese president, Xi
Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese
name for his soon-to-be-born first child —
usually a privilege reserved for older relatives, or
sometimes a fortune teller. Credit Charles
Ommanney/Facebook, via Associated Press
Fittingly, Mr. Zuckerberg’s eagerness and
China’s reluctance can be tracked on Facebook.
During Mr. Xi’s 2015 trip to America, Mr.
Zuckerberg posted about how the visit offered
him his first chance to speak a foreign language with a world leader. The post got more than a half
million likes, including from Chinese state media (despite the national ban). But on Mr. Xi’s propaganda
page, Mr. Zuckerberg got only one mention — in a list of the many tech executives who met the
Chinese president.
Europe’s Privacy Pushback
Last summer, emails winged back and forth between members of Facebook’s global policy team. They
were finalizing plans, more than two years in the making, for WhatsApp, the messaging app Facebook
had bought in 2014, to start sharing data on its one billion users with its new parent company. The
company planned to use the data to tailor ads on Facebook’s other services and to stop spam on
WhatsApp.
A big issue: how to win over wary regulators around the world.
Despite all that planning, Facebook was hit by a major backlash. A month after the new data-sharing
deal started in August 2016, German privacy officials ordered WhatsApp to stop passing data on its 36
million local users to Facebook, claiming people did not have enough say over how it would be used.
The British privacy watchdog soon followed.
By late October, all 28 of Europe’s national data-protection authorities jointly called on Facebook to
stop the practice. Facebook quietly mothballed its plans in Europe. It has continued to collect people’s
information elsewhere, including the United States.
“There’s a growing awareness that people’s data is controlled by large American actors,” said Isabelle
Falque-Pierrotin, France’s privacy regulator. “These actors now know that times have changed.”
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Facebook’s retreat shows how Europe is effectively employing regulations — including tough privacy
rules — to control how parts of the internet are run.
 Facebook’s international headquarters in Dublin.
The company has faced regulatory pushback in
Europe. Credit Aidan Crawley/Bloomberg
The goal of European regulators, officials said, is to
give users greater control over the data from social
media posts, online searches and purchases that
Facebook and other tech giants rely on to monitor our
online habits.
As a tech company whose ad business requires
harvesting digital information, Facebook has often
underestimated the deep emotions that European
officials and citizens have tied into the collection of such details. That dates back to the time of the Cold
War, when many Europeans were routinely monitored by secret police.
Now, regulators from Colombia to Japan are often mimicking Europe’s stance on digital privacy. “It’s
only natural European regulators would be at the forefront,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and
chief legal officer. “It reflects the importance they’ve attached to the privacy agenda.”
In interviews, Facebook denied it has played fast and loose with users’ online information and said it
complies with national rules wherever it operates. It questioned whether Europe’s position has been
effective in protecting individuals’ privacy at a time when the region continues to fall behind the United
States and China in all things digital.
Still, the company said it respected Europe’s stance on data protection, particularly in Germany, where
many citizens have long memories of government surveillance.
“There’s no doubt the German government is a strong voice inside the European community,” said
Richard Allan, Facebook’s head of public policy in Europe. “We find their directness pretty helpful.”
Europe has the law on its side when dictating global privacy. Facebook’s non-North American users,
roughly 1.8 billion people, are primarily overseen by Ireland’s privacy regulator because the company’s
international headquarters is in Dublin, mostly for tax reasons. In 2012, Facebook was forced to alter its
global privacy settings — including those in the United States — after Ireland’s data protection
watchdog found problems while auditing the company’s operations there.
Three years later, Europe’s highest court also threw out a 15-year-old data-sharing agreement between
the region and the United States following a complaint that Facebook had not sufficiently protected
Europeans’ data when it was transferred across the Atlantic. The company denies any wrongdoing.
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 A Facebook event in Berlin last year. Europe,
where Cold War-era suspicions over monitoring still
linger, is exporting its views of privacy to other parts
of the world. Credit Tobias Schwarz/Agence FrancePresse — Getty Images
And on Sept. 12, Spain’s privacy agency fined the
company 1.2 million euros for not giving people
sufficient control over their data when Facebook
collected it from third-party websites. Watchdogs in
Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere are
conducting similar investigations. Facebook is
appealing the Spanish ruling.
“Facebook simply can’t stick to a one-size-fits-all product around the world,” said Max Schrems, an
Austrian lawyer who has been a Facebook critic after filing the case that eventually overturned the 15year-old data deal.
Potentially more worrying for Facebook is how Europe’s view of privacy is being exported. Countries
from Brazil to Malaysia, which are crucial to Facebook’s growth, have incorporated many of Europe’s
tough privacy rules into their legislation.
“We regard the European directives as best practice,” said Pansy Tlakula, chairwoman of South Africa’s
Information Regulator, the country’s data protection agency. South Africa has gone so far as to copy
whole sections, almost word-for-word, from Europe’s rule book.
The Play for Kenya
Blocked in China and troubled by regulators in Europe, Facebook is trying to become “the internet” in
Africa. Helping get people online, subsidizing access, and trying to launch satellites to beam the internet
down to the markets it covets, Facebook has become a dominant force on a continent rapidly getting
online.
But that has given it a power that has made some in Africa uncomfortable.
Some countries have blocked access, and outsiders have complained Facebook could squelch rival
online business initiatives. Its competition with other internet companies from the United States and
China has drawn comparisons to a bygone era of colonialism.
For Kenyans like Phyl Cherop, 33, an entrepreneur in Nairobi, online life is already dominated by the
social network. She abandoned her bricks-and-mortar store in a middle-class part of the city in 2015 to
sell on Facebook and WhatsApp.
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 Phyl Cherop, who lives in Kenya, closed her
bricks-and-mortar store to sell items through
Facebook. Credit Adriane Ohanesian for The New
York Times
“I gave it up because people just didn’t come
anymore,” said Ms. Cherop, who sells items like
designer dresses and school textbooks. She added that
a stand-alone website would not have the same reach.
“I prefer using Facebook because that’s where my
customers are. The first thing people want to do when
they buy a smartphone is to open a Facebook
account.”
As Facebook hunts for more users, the company’s aspirations have shifted to emerging economies
where people like Ms. Cherop live. Less than 50 percent of Africa’s population has internet
connectivity, and regulation is often rudimentary.
Since Facebook entered Africa about a decade ago, it has become the region’s dominant tech platform.
Some 170 million people — more than two thirds of all internet users from South Africa to Senegal —
use it, according Facebook’s statistics. That is up 40 percent since 2015.
The company has struck partnerships with local carriers to offer basic internet services — centered on
those offered by Facebook — for free. It has built a pared-down version of its social network to run on
the cheaper, less powerful phones that are prevalent there.
 Mr. Zuckerberg visited Lagos, Nigeria, last year.
Credit Andrew Esiebo for The New York Times
Facebook is also investing tens of millions of dollars
alongside telecom operators to build a 500-mile
fiber-optic internet connection in rural Uganda. In
total, it is working with about 30 regional
governments on digital projects.
“We want to bring connectivity to the world,” said
Jay Parikh, a Facebook vice president for
engineering who oversees the company’s plans to
use drones, satellites and other technology to connect the developing world.
Facebook is racing to gain the advantage in Africa over rivals like Google and Chinese players including
Tencent, in a 21st century version of the “Scramble for Africa.” Google has built fiber internet networks
in Uganda and Ghana. Tencent has released WeChat, its popular messaging and e-commerce app, in
South Africa.
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Facebook has already hit some bumps in its African push. Chad blocked access to Facebook and other
sites during elections or political protests. Uganda also took legal action in Irish courts to force the social
network to name an anonymous blogger who had been critical of the government. Those efforts failed.
In Kenya, one of Africa’s most connected countries, there has been less pushback.
Facebook expanded its efforts in the country of 48 million in 2014. It teamed up with Airtel Africa, a
mobile operator, to roll out Facebook’s Free Basics — a no-fee version of the social network, with
access to certain news, health, job and other services there and in more than 20 other countries
worldwide. In Kenya, the average person has a budget of just 30 cents a day to spend on internet access.
Free Basics now let’s Kenyans use Facebook and its Messenger service at no cost, as well as read news
from a Kenyan newspaper and view information about public health programs. Joe Mucheru, Kenya’s
tech minister, said it at least gives his countrymen a degree of internet access.
Still, Facebook’s plans have not always worked out. Many Kenyans with access to Free Basics rely on it
only as a backup when their existing smartphone credit runs out.
“Free Basics? I don’t really use it that often,” said Victor Odinga, 27, an accountant in downtown
Nairobi. “No one wants to be seen as someone who can’t afford to get online.”
 A cybercafe in Nairobi, Kenya, earlier this year.
Africa, where many people are only just beginning
to get online, is a greenfield for internet companies
like Facebook. Credit Adriane Ohanesian for The
New York Times
Correction: September 19, 2017 An article on Monday about the effect on Facebook and other technology
companies of government efforts around the world to regulate online activity misspelled the surname of
Facebook’s head of public policy in Europe. He is Richard Allan, not Allen.
Paul Mozur reported from Hong Kong, Mark Scott from Nairobi, and Mike Isaac from San Francisco.
Follow Paul Mozur, Mark Scott and Mike Isaac on Twitter @paulmozur @markscott82 @MikeIsaac.
A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the
headline: Facebook Is Navigating a Global Power Struggle. © 2017 The New York Times Company
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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html
Note: I urge you to go to the URL above to see the moving graphics in this article
Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night,
and They’re Not Keeping It Secret
Dozens of companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds. They say
it’s anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is.
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DeVRIES, NATASHA SINGER, MICHAEL H. KELLER and AARON
KROLIK Adam Satariano contributed reporting. DEC. 10, 2018
The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the
path of an anonymous cellphone user.
One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there
for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the
day and returns to Long Island at night.
Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away,
staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old
math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.
An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It
recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million
phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity
was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.
The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office for a
minor procedure. It followed her hiking with her dog and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home,
information she found disturbing.
“It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know,” said
Ms. Magrin, who allowed The Times to review her location data.
Like many consumers, Ms. Magrin knew that apps could track people’s movements. But as smartphones
have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits
has spread and grown more intrusive.
Lisa Magrin is the only person who travels regularly from her home to the school where she works. Her
location was recorded more than 800 times there, often in her classroom.
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A visit to a doctor’s office is also included. The data is so specific that The Times could determine how
long she was there.
Ms. Magrin’s location data shows other often-visited locations, including the gym and Weight Watchers.
In about four months’ of data reviewed by The Times, her location was recorded over 8,600 times — on
average, once every 21 minutes.
At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise
location data from apps whose users enable location
services to get local news and weather or other
information, The Times found. Several of those
businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile
devices in the United States — about half those in use
last year. The database reviewed by The Times — a
sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by
one company — reveals people’s travels in startling
detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some
cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.
[Learn how to stop apps from tracking your location.]
These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds
seeking insights into consumer behavior. It’s a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising
reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the
Weather Channel’s apps. The social network Foursquare remade itself as a location marketing company.
Prominent investors in location start-ups include Goldman Sachs and Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder.
Businesses say their interest is in the patterns, not the identities, that the data reveals about consumers.
They note that the information apps collect is tied not to someone’s name or phone number but to a
unique ID. But those with access to the raw data — including employees or clients — could still identify
a person without consent. They could follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a phone that regularly
spent time at that person’s home address. Or, working in reverse, they could attach a name to an
anonymous dot, by seeing where the device spent nights and using public records to figure out who lived
there.
Many location companies say that when phone users enable location services, their data is fair game.
But, The Times found, the explanations people see when prompted to give permission are often
incomplete or misleading. An app may tell users that granting access to their location will help them get
traffic information, but not mention that the data will be shared and sold. That disclosure is often buried
in a vague privacy policy.
“Location information can reveal some of the most intimate details of a person’s life — whether you’ve
visited a psychiatrist, whether you went to an A.A. meeting, who you might date,” said Senator Ron
Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who has proposed bills to limit the collection and sale of such data, which
are largely unregulated in the United States.
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“It’s not right to have consumers kept in the dark about how their data is sold and shared and then leave
them unable to do anything about it,” he added.
Mobile Surveillance Devices
After Elise Lee, a nurse in Manhattan, saw that her device had been tracked to the main operating room
at the hospital where she works, she expressed concern about her privacy and that of her patients.
“It’s very scary,” said Ms. Lee, who allowed The Times to examine her location history in the data set it
reviewed. “It feels like someone is following me, personally.”
The mobile location industry began as a way to customize apps and target ads for nearby businesses, but
it has morphed into a data collection and analysis machine.
Retailers look to tracking companies to tell them about their own customers and their competitors’. For a
web seminar last year, Elina Greenstein, an executive at the location company GroundTruth, mapped out
the path of a hypothetical consumer from home to work to show potential clients how tracking could
reveal a person’s preferences. For example, someone may search online for healthy recipes, but
GroundTruth can see that the person often eats at fast-food restaurants.
“We look to understand who a person is, based on where they’ve been and where they’re going, in order
to influence what they’re going to do next,” Ms. Greenstein said.
Financial firms can use the information to make investment decisions before a company reports earnings
— seeing, for example, if more people are working on a factory floor, or going to a retailer’s stores.
 A device arrives at approximately 12:45 p.m., entering
the clinic from the western entrance. It stays for two hours,
then returns to a home. By Michael H. Keller | Imagery by
Google Earth
Health care facilities are among the more enticing but
troubling areas for tracking, as Ms. Lee’s reaction
demonstrated. Tell All Digital, a Long Island
advertising firm that is a client of a location company,
says it runs ad campaigns for personal injury lawyers
targeting people anonymously in emergency rooms.
“The book ‘1984,’ we’re kind of living it in a lot of ways,” said Bill Kakis, a managing partner at Tell
All.
Jails, schools, a military base and a nuclear power plant — even crime scenes — appeared in the data set
The Times reviewed. One person, perhaps a detective, arrived at the site of a late-night homicide in
Manhattan, then spent time at a nearby hospital, returning repeatedly to the local police station.
Two location firms, Fysical and SafeGraph, mapped people attending the 2017 presidential
inauguration. On Fysical’s map, a bright red box near the Capitol steps indicated the general location of
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President Trump and those around him, cellphones pinging away. Fysical’s chief executive said in an
email that the data it used was anonymous. SafeGraph did not respond to requests for comment.
 A car pulls up at 7:30 a.m.
Data reviewed by The Times includes dozens of
schools. Here a device , most likely a child’s, is
tracked from a home to school. The device
spends time at the playground before entering the
school just before 8 a.m., where it remains until 3
p.m. More than 40 other devices appear in the
school during the day. Many are traceable to
nearby homes. By Michael H. Keller | Imagery
by Google Earth
More than 1,000 popular apps contain
location-sharing code from such companies,
according to 2018 data from MightySignal, a mobile analysis firm. Google’s Android system was found
to have about 1,200 apps with such code, compared with about 200 on Apple’s iOS.
The most prolific company was Reveal Mobile, based in North Carolina, which had location-gathering
code in more than 500 apps, including many that provide local news. A Reveal spokesman said that the
popularity of its code showed that it helped app developers make ad money and consumers get free
services.
To evaluate location-sharing practices, The Times tested 20 apps, most of which had been flagged by
researchers and industry insiders as potentially sharing the data. Together, 17 of the apps sent exact
latitude and longitude to about 70 businesses. Precise location data from one app, WeatherBug on iOS,
was received by 40 companies. When contacted by The Times, some of the companies that received that
data described it as “unsolicited” or “inappropriate.”
WeatherBug, owned by GroundTruth, asks users’ permission to collect their location and tells them the
information will be used to personalize ads. GroundTruth said that it typically sent the data to ad
companies it worked with, but that if they didn’t want the information they could ask to stop receiving it.
The spread of this information raises questions about how securely it is handled and whether it is
vulnerable to hacking, said Serge Egelman, a computer security and privacy researcher affiliated with
the University of California, Berkeley.
“There are really no consequences” for companies that don’t protect the data, he said, “other than bad
press that gets forgotten about.”
A Question of Awareness
Companies that use location data say that people agree to share their information in exchange for
customized services, rewards and discounts. Ms. Magrin, the teacher, noted that she liked that tracking
technology let her record her jogging routes.
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The Times also identified more
than 25 other companies that
have said in marketing
materials or interviews that
they sell location data or
services, including targeted
advertising.
[Read more about how The
Times analyzed location
tracking companies.]
Brian Wong, chief executive of
Kiip, a mobile ad firm that has
also sold anonymous data from
some of the apps it works with, says users give apps permission to use and share their data. “You are
receiving these services for free because advertisers are helping monetize and pay for it,” he said,
adding, “You would have to be pretty oblivious if you are not aware that this is going on.”
But Ms. Lee, the nurse, had a different view. “I guess that’s what they have to tell themselves,” she said
of the companies. “But come on.”
Ms. Lee had given apps on her iPhone access to her location only for certain purposes — helping her
find parking spaces, sending her weather alerts — and only if they did not indicate that the information
would be used for anything else, she said. Ms. Magrin had allowed about a dozen apps on her Android
phone access to her whereabouts for services like traffic notifications.
But it is easy to share information without realizing it. Of the 17 apps that The Times saw sending
precise location data, just three on iOS and one on Android told users in a prompt during the permission
process that the information could be used for advertising. Only one app, GasBuddy, which identifies
nearby gas stations, indicated that data could also be shared to “analyze industry trends.”
More typical was theScore, a sports app: When prompting users to grant access to their location, it said
the data would help “recommend local teams and players that are relevant to you.” The app passed
precise coordinates to 16 advertising and location companies.
A spokesman for theScore said that the language in the prompt was intended only as a “quick
introduction to certain key product features” and that the full uses of the data were described in the app’s
privacy policy.
 An app on Lisa Magrin’s cellphone collected her location information,
which was then shared with other companies. The data revealed her daily
habits, including hikes with her dog, Lulu. Nathaniel Brooks for The NYT
The Weather Channel app, owned by an IBM subsidiary, told users that
sharing their locations would let them get personalized local weather
reports. IBM said the subsidiary, the Weather Company, discussed
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other uses in its privacy policy and in a separate “privacy settings” section of the app. Information on
advertising was included there, but a part of the app called “location settings” made no mention of it.
 A notice that Android users saw when theScore, a sports app, asked for
access to their location data.
 The Weather Channel app showed iPhone
users this message when it first asked for their
location data.
The app did not explicitly disclose that the
company had also analyzed the data for
hedge funds — a pilot program that was
promoted on the company’s website. An
IBM spokesman said the pilot had ended.
(IBM updated the app’s privacy policy on
Dec. 5, after queries from The Times, to
say that it might share aggregated location
data for commercial purposes such as
analyzing foot traffic.)
Even industry insiders acknowledge that
many people either don’t read those
policies or may not fully understand their opaque language. Policies for apps that funnel location
information to help investment firms, for instance, have said the data is used for market analysis, or
simply shared for business purposes.
“Most people don’t know what’s going on,” said Emmett Kilduff, the chief executive of Eagle Alpha,
which sells data to financial firms and hedge funds. Mr. Kilduff said responsibility for complying with
data-gathering regulations fell to the companies that collected it from people.
Many location companies say they voluntarily take steps to protect users’ privacy, but policies vary
widely.
For example, Sense360, which focuses on the restaurant industry, says it scrambles data within a 1,000foot square around the device’s approximate home location. Another company, Factual, says that it
collects data from consumers at home, but that its database doesn’t contain their addresses.
Some companies say they delete the location data after using it to serve ads, some use it for ads and pass
it along to data aggregation companies, and others keep the information for years.
Several people in the location business said that it would be relatively simple to figure out individual
identities in this kind of data, but that they didn’t do it. Others suggested it would require so much effort
that hackers wouldn’t bother.
It “would take an enormous amount of resources,” said Bill Daddi, a spokesman for Cuebiq, which
analyzes anonymous location data to help retailers and others, and raised more than $27 million this year
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from investors including Goldman Sachs and Nasdaq Ventures. Nevertheless, Cuebiq encrypts its
information, logs employee queries and sells aggregated analysis, he said.
 In the data set reviewed by The Times, phone locations
are recorded in sensitive areas including the Indian Point
nuclear plant near New York City. By Michael H. Keller |
Satellite imagery by Mapbox and DigitalGlobe
The information from one Sunday included more than
800 data points from over 60 unique devices inside and
around a church in New Jersey. By Michael H. Keller |
Satellite imagery by Mapbox and DigitalGlobe →
There is no federal law limiting the collection or use of such data. Still, apps that ask for access to users’
locations, prompting them for permission while leaving out important details about how the data will be
used, may run afoul of federal rules on deceptive business practices, said Maneesha Mithal, a privacy
official at the Federal Trade Commission.
“You can’t cure a misleading just-in-time disclosure with information in a privacy policy,” Ms. Mithal
said.
Following the Money
Apps form the backbone of this new location data economy.
The app developers can make money by directly selling their data, or by sharing it for location-based
ads, which command a premium. Location data companies pay half a cent to two cents per user per
month, according to offer letters to app makers reviewed by The Times.
Targeted advertising is by far the most common use of the information.
Google and Facebook, which dominate the mobile ad market, also lead in location-based advertising.
Both companies collect the data from their own apps. They say they don’t sell it but keep it for
themselves to personalize their services, sell targeted ads across the internet and track whether the ads
lead to sales at brick-and-mortar stores. Google, which also receives precise location information from
apps that use its ad services, said it modified that data to make it less exact.
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Smaller companies compete for the rest of the market, including by selling data and analysis to financial
institutions. This segment of the industry is small but growing, expected to reach about $250 million a
year by 2020, according to the market research firm Opimas.
Apple and Google have a financial interest in keeping developers happy, but both have taken steps to
limit location data collection. In the most recent version of Android, apps that are not in use can collect
locations “a few times an hour,” instead of continuously.
Apple has been stricter, for example requiring apps to justify collecting location details in pop-up
messages. But Apple’s instructions for writing these pop-ups do not mention advertising or data sale,
only features like getting “estimated travel times.”
A spokesman said the company mandates that developers use the data only to provide a service directly
relevant to the app, or to serve advertising that met Apple’s guidelines.
Apple recently shelved plans that industry insiders say would have significantly curtailed location
collection. Last year, the company said an upcoming version of iOS would show a blue bar onscreen
whenever an app not in use was gaining access to location data.
The discussion served as a “warning shot” to people in the location industry, David Shim, chief
executive of the location company Placed, said at an industry event last year.
After examining maps showing the locations extracted by their apps, Ms. Lee, the nurse, and Ms.
Magrin, the teacher, immediately limited what data those apps could get. Ms. Lee said she told the other
operating-room nurses to do the same.
“I went through all their phones and just told them: ‘You have to turn this off. You have to delete this,’”
Ms. Lee said. “Nobody knew.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How The Times Analyzed Location Tracking Companies
By The New York Times Dec. 10, 2018
To examine the practices of the location tracking industry, The New York Times tested apps on the
Google Android and Apple iOS platforms, and evaluated data from a company that analyzed thousands
of mobile apps.
Testing Individual Apps
Reporters tested both the Android and iOS versions of 10 apps: nine that had been flagged by academics
researching Android devices or by people in the mobile location industry, as well as The Times’s own
app. Tests were done between July and November.
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Reporters downloaded and tested each app individually, deleting it before moving on to the next. A
technical analysis tool captured all the information sent and received by the phones. Computer security
research tools helped reveal many of the transmissions.
Reporters granted permission to collect location data to each app that requested it. The Times recorded
all interactions with the app over two five-minute sessions, including pop-up messages and other
prompts related to data use when the apps asked for location details.
The Times analyzed the location transmissions from each app by looking for the latitude and longitude
where testing was conducted, as well as known Wi-Fi IDs, which can be used to triangulate location.
Reporters tallied only the transmissions precise enough to place the device in the correct building.
A Times reporter identified each internet server address that received precise location data, using an
online forensics company, DomainTools.
Reporters examined the websites, marketing materials and privacy policies of the companies receiving
precise location data. Companies that deal only in services such as fraud prevention were separated out.
Reporters then counted the transmissions of precise location data to advertising, marketing and analysis
companies.
The Times app did not request precise location data and did not send it. It sent location data to several
companies based on an IP address that placed the device elsewhere within the city.
Evaluating App Code
To get a broader look at the use of location-collection technology in apps, The Times used data from
MightySignal, a firm that scans the code in thousands of Android and iOS apps.
Frequently, location data companies make packages of code that collect phones’ whereabouts.
Developers who add this code to their apps can get paid for location-targeted ads, or earn money for
providing the location data, or get free mapping or other services for their apps.
The Times asked MightySignal to look for packages of code made by the more than 25 locationcollection companies that the firm tracks. The Times excluded code packages that collect location
primarily for mapping, as opposed to the sale or use of the data.
The Times restricted results to apps that MightySignal had scanned within the previous six months.
Many little-used apps on Android include location-gathering code, so The Times filtered out apps with
fewer than 5,000 downloads. Because Apple does not provide download figures for its apps, the iOS
apps were not sorted by user base.
Tallying Location Companies
Times reporters examined each company identified in the testing. Those that said they didn’t handle
precise location data at all, despite having received it, were not counted as part of the location-tracking
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industry. In these cases, apps may have sent the data to multiple companies and relied on the recipients
to delete it if they didn’t want it.
The Times also did not count companies that were merely processing the data for the app — for
security, for example, or to tell the app maker about its own users.
Many location companies receive data from app makers rather than from the apps themselves, a means
of sharing that can’t be detected through testing. So reporters also relied on other sources to identify
location companies, including outside analysis of the marketplace, privacy disclosures required under a
new European law and interviews with dozens of people affiliated with the industry.
Apps Tested
The apps included in the test are listed below, along with comment from the companies. Many other
apps share data in similar ways; this list should not be used as a guide to problematic apps. With the
exception of one children’s app, each app below collected location data on both Android and iOS when
a user gave permission.
WeatherBug WeatherBug told users in the permissions process that data would be used for advertising.
GroundTruth, the company behind the app, said it provided multiple prompts to inform the user of
location data practices, gathered multiple consent authorizations and supplied a detailed privacy policy.
The Weather Channel IBM, which owns the Weather Channel apps, said, “The Weather Company has
always been transparent with use of location data, providing this information where users most expect to
see it — in Privacy Settings and our Privacy Policy.”
theScore The company said its notification to users about location sharing — that it would help
“recommend local teams and players that are relevant to you” — was intended to be only a “quick
introduction to certain key product features” and that the full uses of the data were described in its
privacy policy.
GasBuddy GasBuddy notified users of its iOS app early in the installation process that data could be
used to “analyze industry trends” and advertising. It later added the same language to its Android app.
DC Metro and Bus The iOS version mentioned that data could be used for advertising. The app’s
developer said that companies providing the location-gathering code had indicated that the data was
collected anonymously and used only for ads, and that he was reviewing the arrangements.
Tube Map – London Underground The company, Mapway, did not respond to requests for comment.
Perfect365 The company said it could not discuss any data practices because of nondisclosure
agreements.
SnipSnap Coupon App SnipSnap declined to comment.
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Masha and the Bear: Free Animal Games for Kids The company said that it was stopping the sharing
of location from its games. The game collected precise location data only on Android, not on iOS, where
it was named Masha and the Bear: Vet Games.
— Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Aaron Krolik, Adam Satariano and Natasha Singer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note: Use the above link to see the graphics and links.
How to Stop Apps From Tracking Your Location
Hundreds of apps can follow your movements and share the details with advertisers, retailers and even
hedge funds. Here’s how to limit the snooping.
By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Natasha Singer Dec. 10, 2018
At least 75 companies receive people’s precise location data from hundreds of apps whose users enable
location services for benefits such as weather alerts, The New York Times found. The companies use,
store or sell the information to help advertisers, investment firms and others.
[Read the full investigation: Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It
Secret]
You can head off much of the tracking on your own device by spending a few minutes changing
settings. The information below applies primarily to people in the United States.
How can I tell if apps are sharing my location?
It’s difficult to know for sure whether location data companies are tracking your phone. Any app that
collects location data may share your information with other companies, as long as it mentions that
somewhere in its privacy policy.
But the language in those policies can be dense, confusing or outright misleading. Apps that funnel
location details to help hedge funds, for instance, have told users their data would be used for market
analysis — or simply for “business purposes.”
Which apps gather and share location?
There isn’t a definitive list. Our tests identified instances of certain apps collecting precise location data
and passing it to other companies in the moment. But apps can also gather and save the data, and not sell
it until later — something tests wouldn’t catch. Your best bet is to check your device to see which apps
have permission to get your location in the first place.
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The apps most popular among data companies are those that offer services keyed to people’s
whereabouts — including weather, transit, travel, shopping deals and dating — because users are more
likely to enable location services on them.
How do I stop location tracking on iOS?
Some apps have internal settings where you can indicate that you don’t want your location used for
targeted advertising or other purposes. But the easiest method is to go through your device’s main
privacy menu.
1. First, open Settings and select Privacy, which has a blue icon with a white hand.
2. Then select Location Services, which is at the top and has a little arrow.
3. You’ll see a list of apps, along with the location setting for each. Tap on apps you want to adjust.
Selecting “Never” blocks tracking by that app.
4. The option “While Using the App” ensures that the app gets location only while in use. Choosing
“Always,” allows the app to get location data even when not in use.
In the device’s privacy settings, apps provide brief explanations of how they will use location data. Do
not rely on these descriptions to tell you whether the location data will be shared or sold. The Times
found that many of these descriptions are incomplete and often don’t mention that the data will be
shared.
If you want to disable location tracking entirely, toggle the “Location Services” setting to off. With
location services switched off entirely, you may not be able to use certain services, such as finding
yourself on a map.
If you have apps you no longer use, you may want to delete them from your device.
How do I stop it on Android?
These instructions are for recent Android phones; Google provides more instructions here.
1.
2.
3.
4.
First, open the Settings on your phone. On the main settings page, tap “Security & location.”
On the next screen, tap Location, which can be found in the Privacy section.
On the Location screen, tap “App-level permissions.”
You’ll see a list of apps. To turn off location for an app, slide the toggle to the left.
Unlike iPhones, Android phones don’t allow you to restrict an app’s access to your location to just the
moments when you’re using it. Any app on Android that has your permission to track your location can
receive the data even when you’re not using it. In newer versions of Android, the collection of this data
is limited to “a few times an hour,” Google says.
To disable location services altogether, switch off “Use location,” within the same Location settings
described above. Google’s instructions are here.
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If you don’t enable location services at all, you may not be able to use certain services, like finding
yourself on a map. If you want to be able to switch periodically between having location services on and
off, you can create a Quick Setting. To see your Quick Settings, swipe down from the top of your screen
and tap the little pencil to edit.
If you have apps you no longer use, you may want to delete them from your phone.
Can I delete my location data from these databases?
The location data industry benefits from lack of regulation and little transparency, making it extremely
difficult to get access to or delete this data. Your information can also be spread among many
companies. And most of them store location data attached not to a person’s name or phone number, but
to an ID number, so it may be cumbersome for them to identify your data if you want to delete it — and
they are under no obligation to do so.
In the European Union, people now have the legal right to request a copy of the data that companies
hold about them, and to ask that it be deleted. The British data commissioner provides an explanation,
here.
Google, a prominent collector of location data, lets users delete a segment of that information called
their Location History. To do that, go to this page, then hit the Delete Location History button. Click it
again when prompted. You can delete another segment of location data associated with your Google
account by logging in and going to My Activity. Then click on Activity Controls and turn off Web &
App Activity.
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries is an investigative reporter covering technology and public policy. @jenvalentino
Natasha Singer is a business reporter covering health technology, education technology and consumer privacy.
@natashanyt A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 10, 2018, on Page A21 of the New York edition
with the headline: How to Stop Your Smartphone Apps From Tracking Your Location.
© 2018 The New York Times Company
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Why Facebook Still Seems to Spy on You
The company says we’re in charge of our personal data, but it
remains difficult to control ad tracking
 Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook.
Photo: Christophe Morin/IP3/Getty Images
148 Comments
By Katherine Bindley Feb. 28, 2019 9:00 a.m. ET
Facebook Inc. FB 3.14% has spent the better part of a
year telling its users, Congress and the readers of this
paper that we’re in charge of our personal data and the
ads we see. The network has streamlined its privacy
settings, shared more details about how data is used and
highlighted how its ad controls work.
If we take advantage of all these privacy controls, it shouldn’t still feel as if Facebook is spying on us,
right? We shouldn’t see so many ads that seem so closely tied to our activity on our phones, on the
internet or in real life.
The reality? I took those steps months ago, from turning off location services to opting out of ads on
Facebook and its sibling Instagram tied to off-site behavior. I told my iPhone to “limit ad tracking.” Yet
I continue to see eerily relevant ads.
I tested my suspicion by downloading the What to Expect pregnancy app. I didn’t so much as share an
email address, yet in less than 12 hours, I got a maternity-wear ad in my Instagram feed. I’m not
pregnant, nor otherwise in a target market for maternity-wear. When I tried to retrace the pathway,
discussing the issue with the app’s publisher, its data partners, the advertiser and Facebook itself—
dozens of emails and phone calls—not one would draw a connection between the two events. Often,
they suggested I ask one of the other parties.
Everyday Health Group, which owns What to Expect, said it has no business relationship with Hatch,
the maternity brand whose ad I received. Facebook initially said there could be any number of reasons I
might have seen the ad—but that downloading the app couldn’t be one of them.
What I’ve learned is that our ability to control ad tracking is limited and that much of what Facebook
claims should come with lengthy footnotes. As my colleague Sam Schechner demonstrated, some app
developers aren’t doing us any favors. They share personal data with Facebook—down to when a
woman is ovulating—without adequately disclosing they’re doing so.
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Facebook and others call this “industry standard practice.” But does anyone outside of the industry know
that? And why does the standard have to mean someone telling Facebook every time I tap or click
anything? I never opted in, and in some cases, data is shared before you can even click Accept on a
privacy policy.
 Within 12 hours of downloading a pregnancy app, this maternity-brand
ad appeared on Instagram. Photo: Katherine Bindley/The WSJ
“We want people to understand how ads work and use our controls,
which we’re simplifying and making clearer. We also believe the
transparency and controls we offer lead in the ad industry,” said Joe
Osborne, a Facebook spokesman.
There are too many moving parts and players in the data-sharing
game for ordinary people to have much say in—or even an
understanding of—how we’re targeted. Here’s what you might not
know about Facebook’s targeting practices.
I. Turning off location services doesn’t stop Facebook from
targeting your location.
The day after I stepped into a San Francisco clothing boutique called
Reformation—and didn’t buy anything—Instagram showed me an ad
for that store. I confirmed in iPhone settings that location sharing for
Instagram was off.
A Facebook spokeswoman looked into why I saw the ad and said that
location wasn’t a factor. (The retailer told me it doesn’t use location
targeting at its stores.) I fell into a “look-alike” audience that the
advertiser was trying to reach, meaning I share similarities with its
existing customers. But the spokeswoman did confirm Facebook and Instagram still show locationbased ads to users who have location services turned off. And it isn’t something you can opt out of.
(Gizmodo and others have previously reported this.)
Turning off location services on your phone stops your device from sending Facebook your “precise”
location, says a support tutorial. Facebook says it “may still understand your location using things like
check-ins, events and information about your internet connection.”
Facebook says it doesn’t use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to target people with location services turned off, but it
will use their IP (aka internet protocol) addresses.
Anytime you’re connected to the internet, there’s an IP address associated with you, and it’s also loosely
tied to some geographic location. Sometimes it’s wrong: If I’m on my San Francisco office network,
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Facebook might guess that I’m in New Jersey, where the domain is registered. But if Facebook picks up
an IP address from your home network or local coffee shop, it could map you fairly accurately.
 The What to Expect app prompts a user to enter a due date before she
can agree to the app?s privacy policy and terms of use. Photo: Katherine
Bindley/The Wall Street Journal
After discussing these issues with Aleksandra Korolova, an
assistant professor of computer science at University of Southern
California, who researches location tracking on Facebook, I
confirmed with the company that data from other users can enhance
its understanding of an IP address location.
If someone connected to the same coffee-shop network as me has
location services turned on, for instance, Facebook could pinpoint
us both. A spokeswoman said that when users have location
services turned off, the company limits the location information it
infers about them to the ZIP Code level. There’s nothing in its
privacy policy saying it won’t use more specific IP-based location
data in the future, however.
II. ‘Why I’m Seeing an Ad’ doesn’t explain why you’re seeing
an ad.
Facebook has for years had a tool that’s supposed to tell you more
about why you’re seeing an ad. Unfortunately, clicking “More
information” often produces vague, unsatisfying results. An ad
from CB2 said the furniture and home décor retailer wants to reach
“people ages 25 to 54 who live or were recently in the United
States.”
Some companies do run campaigns targeting a broad swath of people. But when you’re regularly seeing
highly relevant ads, it’s clear that Facebook isn’t being specific enough about how the ad was actually
targeted. And on Instagram, no such feature exists—you can hide ads but there’s no information about
why you’re receiving them. Facebook says it is working on building ad-transparency features for
Instagram. It’s also planning to share more details about why someone is seeing an ad on Facebook.
III. You might see ads based on activity outside of Facebook, even if you opt out of seeing ads
based on activity outside of Facebook.
Facebook’s Pixel web tracker and SDK tool for apps allow independent developers to track visitors to
their sites and apps and retarget them with ads on Facebook and Instagram, among other things.
Ten months ago, the company announced its Clear History tool to “enable you to see the websites and
apps that send us information when you use them, delete this information from your account, and turn
off our ability to store it associated with your account going forward.” A Facebook spokeswoman said,
“The data a person clears will not be used to personalize their ads.” Facebook says the tool, which isn’t
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yet activated, will be tested in the coming months. You can tell Facebook you don’t want to be shown
ads influenced by your behavior off its platform. To enable it, go to ad settings. Where it says “Ads
based on data from partners,” set the toggle to “not allowed.”
 You might be told you’re seeing a
Facebook ad because you’re in a certain age
group and/or city, because you’re on an
advertiser’s customer list or because you
resemble an advertiser’s existing customers.
Photo: Katherine Bindley/The WSJ
It doesn’t just stop ads based on Pixel or
SDK data. If an advertiser is trying to
reach users who bought something from
one of its stores, for instance, and it tries
to target them using its uploaded sales
data, Facebook will prevent that ad from
appearing in the feeds of anyone with the
setting enabled. If an advertiser has its
own list of customers who recently
purchased something, however, it can still use that to target Facebook users who have opted out.
I asked Facebook why I was still seeing ads that seemed tied to my browsing history. A spokesman
confirmed that the setting only covers data that Facebook itself handles. Facebook can’t guarantee that
users won’t see ads influenced by browsing data that comes from a source other than Facebook. (To no
longer see ads from companies who have your information, go the Ad Preferences page.)
None of this really explains what happened when I downloaded the What to Expect app and ended up
almost immediately being pitched maternity-wear. I’m single, I long ago permanently hid the parenting
ad topic and none of my Facebook “interests” relates to children. I don’t get pregnancy ads on Facebook
or Instagram.
The What to Expect app was among those The Wall Street Journal found was sharing data with
Facebook as recently as November, but the company said it stopped using Facebook’s SDK prior to
January.
Two analytics firms that still do handle data for the app told me they didn’t have anything to do with my
seeing the ad. Everyday Health, the app’s maker, said it might have been my browsing history. The
clothing brand, Hatch, declined to share specifics about its targeting criteria. And Facebook, upon
looking into the ad, said I was targeted because I was part of a look-alike audience that resembles
customers, uploaded by the advertiser, who apparently are in need of maternity-wear. The company
reiterated I did not see that ad because I downloaded the pregnancy app. Must have been a coincidence.
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don’t forget to subscribe to our Instant Message podcast. • Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All
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