Overprofiling

Tool for analyzing overprofiling in Facebook and Google

The online advertising ecosystem is one of the main funding sources of the internet, allowing users to get access to multiple types of services for free, from Facebook to their favorite newspaper. Most of the ads delivered are based on the user's online behavior (Online Behavioral Advertising). This new way to deliver ads brought the capacity to target individuals based on their behavior. The online advertising platforms transform the user's online behavior into "interests", defining users by interests. However, not all the interests may have a relation to their real online behavior and could be that some of them are artificially added to increase the potential audience of the ad campaigns. In this project, we aim to analyze the number of interests associated with your Facebook and Google accounts. Also, we want to measure the level of over profiling (i.e., how many of those interests they assign you but do not represent you ) as well as to measure how frequently Facebook and Google use those interests to deliver ads. To this end, we need your help. We have built a plugin that we ask you to install, which will collect the required data to measure this phenomenon. We collect the following information: related to a Facebook™ session:

 - We do not collect any Personally Identifiable Information (PII). To distinguish you between all the users, we generate an ID of 256 bits created once you install the extension. This ID remains stored on the browser until you remove the extension. - We collect interests associated with your Google and Facebook profiles. We collect the interestes using the Ad Preference Managers (APMs) of each platform every 20 minutes. This process is completely automated, but you need to be logged into your Facebook and Google account before install the extensions. - Ads delivered to you on Facebook and general websites. We collect the landing page of the ads and information related to them, like the explanation offered by Facebook and Google about why you have received those specific ads.This explanation is only available if Facebook or Google deliver the ads. - The domains that you visit. We only collect the Fully Qualify Domain Name, and not the full URL.