A man using Google ad data to help heroin users | Hacker News Reader

A man using Google ad data to help heroin users

onezero.medium.com

104 pointspslattery41 comments

> (Anyone who runs ads on Google — for any purpose — can see this kind of data about who clicks their ads.)

This is total bogus. You don't see that kind of data in google ads. If there are enough clicks on your ad you see a rough demographic like rough areas, gender, rough age. They dont't just handover your browsing history.

That and the fact that the article uses korean letters to avoid spam filters just looks fishy.

[1]: https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/1488660?hl=en

You can't in Google ads that's correct. There are plenty of 3rd party analytics services though that will get you that info once someone has clicked to your page. The integrity of that data though is up for debate and often times inaccurate. So basically, yes, but not really and Google ads isn't the one doing it.

It is misrepresented but his screenshot is accurate. Hes showing queries that matched to his ads, which are actual searches by users. It isn't any sort of browsing history/etc, just a comparison of the words users actually typed in compared to the keywords hes bidding on. Its used to find new keywords to bid on or improve performance.

"Misrepresented" is kind of an understatement. He is straight up lying. Seeing the search query compared to having ones adress, real name, kids and browsing history is quite the difference. One gives you enough data to see what results your adwords hit on, the other is enough for a psycholgical profile.

Adding to that he seems to copy paste this article with different subjects, as noted by another comment here, this post is just a scummy SEO post

He doesn't claim he gets it all from Google though.

>Ad click data is in aggregate. Google doesn’t provide marketers like me with your personal identifiers. This means that even with all of the data we get when you click, Google will never provide us with your name, email, or phone number.

>But there’s an easy way around this: through a call-tracking software that anyone buying Google Ads can use. It’s called Callrail and costs only $45 a month.

>By syncing Google Ads with Callrail, your name and address is tied to your click (and all your other data) when you conduct a certain action on a website that an ad directs to. (Clicking a phone number on the website, for example).

>Callrail provides marketers the data that Google would never dare to.

Ah that slipped my mind. Yeah that just looks like a ad now

Yeah, it's not explained at all in the article how they are getting that kind of data out of google and linking it to a phone number/address. I've certainly never seen anyones browsing history on the analytics I have set up on my blog.

He does explain it. He says he uses something called "Callrail":

> By syncing Google Ads with Callrail, your name and address is tied to your click (and all your other data) when you conduct a certain action on a website that an ad directs to. (Clicking a phone number on the website, for example).

And he says he uses Squarespace to add additional data:

> Callrail provides marketers the data that Google would never dare to. Yet Callrail still withholds your IP address (exact location) from us.

> But there’s also an easy way around this: through a website-building software called Squarespace, which costs $12 a month.

> By directing your click to a Squarespace website that uses a Callrail forwarding number, we can see your precise location, including your home address.

I have no idea if any of this works as advertised, but he does explain it.

This guy has written basically the same article multiple times (heroin, suicide, mass shooting). I can't seem to find the sites he is claiming to drive traffic to. There seems to be little to no evidence that these experiments actually took place.

It kind of seems like these pieces are elaborate adcopy/SEO for his company.

You're accusing someone with their own search ad agency of writing low quality content for SEO purposes? Why, I never!

I'm kind of surprised nyt published the piece, I do think it has some value, it just seems so focused on the value you can get using adtech and how much it costs and not much on the actual supposed subject

From the same author:

"Every day, Americans tell Google they’re going to shoot up their school or workplace. I know this because I serve ads on Google to prospective mass shooters."

https://onezero.medium.com/every-day-americans-tell-google-t...

>My ad encourages prospective shooters to speak with a mental health professional — not that they ever call. But when my ad is clicked, the prospective shooter’s data passes into my system. This includes the words they type. But it also comprises their age, gender, and income, their parental, marital, and homeownership status, where they live, their browsing history, where they work, the age of their children, the devices they use, the time of their search, and more.

>(Anyone who runs ads on Google — for any purpose — can see this kind of data about who clicks their ads.)

While the intent is noble, this seems very 1984-adjacent.

"I use ad data to try to save their lives" whether they ask for it or not. That's not noble, that's more like controlling behaviour.

Assuming this story is true, anyway.

The "noble intent" would be saving other people's lives

Edit: deleted due to crossed wires on my part.

What? I'm talking about the linked article about mass shooters…

My mistake. The OP had the story you refer to. I was referring to the main story, which did have the phrase "shooting up in every city in the United States" which is unfortunately close. Apologies.

Do you feel the same way about people interfering with your autonomy by offering to sell you clothes or food or a vacation?

It is also complete BS, in many (if not most) cases Google doesn't even have that information, and Google definitely doesn't give that information to advertisers lol.

What this is missing is what you might call, horrifically, the "conversion" rate of such people. Given that he claims to have location data, I wonder how well this correlates with actual mass shootings.

(and as someone else said, there is probably someone out there running the opposite ad campaign to increase the likelihood of school shootings ...)

This doesn't seem to fit Google's ad policy

From https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/176031.

[Quote] Google restricts advertising for recovery-oriented drug and alcohol addiction services.

Examples of recovery-oriented addiction services: Clinical addiction treatment providers, recovery support services like sober living environments and mutual help organizations, lead generators or referral agencies for addiction services, crisis hotlines for drug and alcohol addiction [/Quote]

[Quote] In order to advertise for recovery-oriented drug and alcohol addiction services, you must be certified as an addiction services provider by the LegitScript Certification program. [/Quote]

I know they police this because I got knocked back for trying to advertise for one of my projects - https://www.recoverypath.com/. Even after pushing my case it was a dead end. LegitScripts don't certify apps.

> LegitScripts don't certify apps.

I wonder how long this will continue... because apps could definitely compliment other therapy in many innovative ways.

Hilarious. Guys, this is just marketing for his search engine marketing business. Clearly he's good at the job because you guys are lapping it up. I think he probably didn't even do the things he's claiming, though he's aware it's plausible. Fake it till you make it, etc.

I reckon you could probably write some "Evil corporations are violating your privacy" blog post that is probably total bullshit and HN would start a cult around it.

Yeah the fact that almost no specifics are given nor the site he claims he made for the project makes me feel on the "complete fabrication" side of the fence

This article rises a lot of unanswered questions about how does Google exactly reveal user data to the advertiser. Are they referring to the filters the advertiser used to target the ad and the search keyword, or something more?

> By syncing Google Ads with Callrail, your name and address is tied to your click (and all your other data) when you conduct a certain action on a website that an ad directs to. (Clicking a phone number on the website, for example).

How does Callrail have people's name and address? None of the data relinking the article describes should be made possible by Google and Callrail. If true, this is obviously illegal.

Google Ads allow audience targeting based on user interests or affinity groups. This is inferred using past Google searches and pages visited. An advertiser can add as many of these groups as they want to a campaign and get visibility into their visitors' interests.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2497941?hl=en

I've used call rail before. They don't IIRC. I believe he's using the IP (from Google?) since he says "Yet Callrail still withholds your IP address (exact location) from us.". So it seems he's taking 1) Your IP, 2) Your Phone Number and 3) matching your phone number to your name (I don't think call rail does this natively, unless you have a CRM).

I'm not a Call Rail expert, but couldn't you do this with a pixel or alternative measure? Like really you're baiting them into calling you, then layering on the IP of their device to triangulate where they likely are.

There are data brokers who claim to turn a phone number into a billing address zip code probably relinking via some credit card company or bank selling "anonymized" data.

While his intent seems genuine, he is basically preying on a vunerable population, with the help of google and other ad-network spying tools. How many are also doing this for less noble purposes while google looks the other way?

I can say from experience, many. It's why this kind of visibility is good: it incentivizes better enforcement by Google.

"This data includes the words clickers type, but also their web browsing history, where they work, the size of the company they work for, whether they rent or own a home, whether they’re married or single, whether they have kids, how old their kids are, the apps they use, whether they’ve recently gone through a “major life event,” whether they drive a Chevy (or prefer Ford), any degrees they hold, whether or not they graduated high school, and more."

I would love to know what google knows about me. Is there a way to find out?

In Europe, you could theoretically ask Google for this information. But would this only be for EU-hosted data?

You could always buy an ad and then click on it with your own account, I suppose.

> But would this only be for EU-hosted data?

No, GDPR request are for your personal info no matter where they are physically stored. In the case of Google it's very likely that they replicate their databases across multiple datacenters, at least it's what the SRE book indicates.

You can find a lot of data google has about you here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity

You can turn targeted advertising on/off and see the keywords you're mapped to here: https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en

how in the hell does CallRail work? It seems that they can map my browser fingerprint to my phone number. Is it just a gigantic amount of cross referencing and a large db? Are they doing it just based on timing. Seems crazy to me. I know it is technologically possible, but they have to buying the browser fingerprint info from some other vendor, yes?

ninja edit: I get using a forwarding number so you can track how long the calls take, etc. But it seems like they can map the call to the forwarding number to the session on the website.

Not an expert but I've used it before. Think of it like gmail + VOIP put together. When you run an ad on google that incentizes a non-click action (i.e. call us!), to track that result, google randomly generates a phone number (I think) which then gets forwarded to your business.

So let's say your widget business is 123-123-1234. When Johnny searches widget, Google will show 123-532-4355 (to track your attribution) then forward that to your real line. What call rail does is insert itself in that path, and basically serve as an inbox and faciliate that. So you can have someone offshore listen to the phone calls (or some other technological method) and say..."hey did this person actually book an appointment?". And then you can track that conversion, and theoretical ROI.

I'm sort of misunderstanding the whole value prop of call rail, but this is no more nefarious than using a VOIP with call display and recording everything. If you can bait individuals (by paying Google Ads to place highly) to call you, then yeah, you can sort of figure out who they are right?

I think that's the jist of it, just really amped up to make it sound cool.

this makes so much more sense. Thank you!

Your description is correct. You can match keyword bids -> calls -> sales, so it makes it very clear what keywords to spend your marketing budget on. (caveats everywhere of course)

I was contracted out to a company involved in the addiction rehab sector, they had a very large pool of forwarding numbers and would assign one of those numbers to a GA UserId.

"your IP address (exact location)"

Unless things have significantly changed, since when does your IP expose your actual address? Do ISPs sell this data on to brokers, or what?

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