Microsoft, Yahoo selling your info to political campaigns

It’s no surprise to see a personalized Internet ad for
Amazon show up in your browser after shopping the online
site. But have you ever wondered how politicians that
seem to have similar interests get their campaign ads to
show up?

A new report says some companies, including Microsoft and
Yahoo, are using your voting record and other personal
information to allow political campaigns to send targeted
advertising, without your knowledge. And it’s raising
serious questions about whether that’s crossing the line.

“What’s different is it’s not just based on your Internet
browsing. It’s literally creating a bridge between that
sort of online persona that you have that you may have
thought was anonymous and your official voting record,
your legal identity,” says Propublica writer Lois Beckett,
who exposed the practice in a recent investigation.

“This is something that they don’t disclose very clearly
in their privacy policies. Even if you read every single
word, you would have no idea that your personal
information
is being used for political targeting.”

According to Beckett, Microsoft takes the names and zip
codes provided by users of Hotmail and other services and
matches them against campaign voter lists through a third
party service. That enables Microsoft and Yahoo to target
online ads to particular users based on their
voting history.

Beckett reports Microsoft and Yahoo said they safeguard
the privacy of their users and do not share their users’
personal information directly with the campaigns. Both
companies also said they do not see the campaigns’
political data, because the match of voter names and
registration data is done by a third company. They say the
matching is done to target groups of similar voters, and
not named individuals.

“I think the difference here is it is not based on just
browser behavior like shoe shopping where it’s pretty
clear they are targeting you,” Beckett says.

She adds while there’s nothing illegal about the
practice, people deserve to know how their information is
being used, especially when it includes personal data.

You can prevent companies from targeting you by going to
their privacy policies and opting out. And the Network Advertising Initiative
offers a way to opt out of all targeted advertising by any
of its members.

While Microsoft has been a vocal critic of other
companies,
including Google, for their use of user data and lax
privacy protections (even touting a new “do not track”
default setting recently added to Internet Explorer),
Beckett says she finds it ironic the company refused to
comment for her report.

She says Google and Facebook told ProPublica they do
not offer political matching to advertisers with Google
considering users voting records and political beliefs
“sensitive personal information,” which should not be used
for online ad targeting.