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Data company sold visitor location data for 600 abortion clinics to pro-life group, senator says (therecord.media)

submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Data company sold visitor location data for 600 abortion clinics to pro-life group, senator says::undefined

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[–] Copernican@lemmy.world 58 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You don't need cookies for this kind of targeting....

[–] PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How do they get the ads to appear on the social media pages of these very specific people? Logistically I’m not sure how that works.

[–] plz1@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You think the forced birthers are buying this data to show ads? Oh sweet child...

[–] PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean…it is mentioned several times in the article. Do I think that’s all they’re doing? No. But I am curious how they do this one specific thing that the article mentions repeatedly.

A pro-life political organization obtained mobile phone location data from a broker and used it to target people who had visited 600 abortion clinics across the country with advertisements, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) announced Tuesday.

The senator began investigating the company last year, in the wake of a Wall Street Journal report revealing that the pro-life Veritas Society had used cell phone location data Near shared with online advertisers to target people visiting Wisconsin Planned Parenthood clinics with misinformation about reproductive health.

On a webpage that has since been removed, Veritas Society revealed that in Wisconsin alone in 2020 it sent 14.3 million ads to people who visited abortion clinics across the state, Wyden said. The page said the organization “served ads to those devices across the women’s social pages, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat,” he said.

[–] ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Why are you using a bot account?

[–] PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

lol thanks for pointing that out, I don’t recall ever turning it on. Hopefully it’s fixed now?