It’s an unpleasant reality of the Internet age. While advertising undoubtedly plays an important role in the financing of many independent websites, it also has a dark side – that of comprehensive data collection: the creation of profiles of all kinds. The spectrum ranges from comparatively harmless lists of site-specific interests to the targeted spying on users with the intention of selling the data collected in this way. Advertising Intelligence (ADINT) is the name of this sector, which independent researchers from Citizen Lab have now devoted themselves to in detail – and the results are not only worrying, they also have an Austrian connection.
