Notices by Wolfie Christl (wchr@mastodon.social), page 2

As such, the digital advertising industry systemically enables the worst possible kind of decontextualized misuse of everyone's personal information.

In Europe, GDPR enforcement has failed. Otherwise, uncontrolled personal data sharing via the RTB bidstream would have been shut down years ago. GDPR regulators must take action now, start a high-priority investigation, mandate processing bans.

Some more pointers.

In 2017, the president of NUVIAD joined the board of Ability Inc. (https://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652866/000121390017005243/f6k051517ex99i_abilityinc.htm), a spytech vendor that specialized in tapping phones via SS7 (https://forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/09/27/ability-inc-ss7-hackers-fail-to-sell-surveillance/), which then soon went down (employee arrests, NASDAQ delisting).

The CEO of Singapore-based Sovereign Systems, who sells Patternz according to its website, is quoted to have said that Sovereign Systems was a "front" for Israeli spytech firm PICSIX (https://haaretz.com/world-news/asia-and-australia/2021-02-02/ty-article/bangladesh-bought-israeli-spytech-despite-lack-of-ties-al-jazeera-reports/0000017f-e096-d568-ad7f-f3ffe6e90000, https://pic-six.com).

In 2020, Nuviad listed the following surveillance advertising companies as data sources:

Google, MobPub (back then owned by Twitter), AOL/Yahoo, Smaato, OpenX, Amobee, Pulsepoint, Rubicon, Inneractive/Fyber (Digital Turbine), Avocarrot/MobFox (Glipsa, Germany), Axonix, Altitude Digital, Opera Mediaworks.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200511011617/https://nuviad.com/

As of today, Google lists Nuviad as a vendor "eligible to receive bid requests compliant with US states privacy laws", i.e. sends data to them:
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10634320?hl=en

Ok, received a tip. It appears that 'Patternz' is closely affiliated or even identical to NUVIAD, an Israeli adtech firm, DSP and consumer data broker.

...not only because of the apparent similarity of their promotional materials:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200511011617/https://nuviad.com/

- You're an investigative journalist, have access to corporate/ownership records or 'osint' research capacity? Would be great to get more solid evidence about which company actually operates Patternz, links to other spytech firms, links to Nuviad or other adtech firms, resellers, product aliases, customers.

- You have insights into Nuviad, other adtech firms or 'adint' vendors? Reach out to trustworthy journalists, e.g. @josephcox

A week ago, we revealed 'Patternz', a global mass surveillance system that harvests digital advertising data on behalf of national security agencies, claiming to collect personal data on 5 billion users.

It seemed that Patternz was likely affiliated with Nuviad, an adtech company and 'DSP'.

Now another public source confirms that Nuviad and Patternz are identical.

In this video, Rafi Ton, the CEO of the adtech firm Nuviad, introduces himself as the 'CEO of Patternz':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6EZF0vdzYw

I've seen internal Patternz docs which describe the IAB's OpenRTB protocol in digital advertising in detail.

These docs, which I cannot publish, also explain that mobile phones are 'always with the users', who 'grant apps access voluntarily', which is why the smartphone becomes a 'de-facto tracking bracelet'.

The publicly available docs emphasize that the Patternz system can also be used for offensive purposes by sending "targeted messages, ads or trojans directly through the AdTech stack".

Most digital advertising today is based on real-time bidding (RTB), which involves uncontrolled data flows to many entities who bid on user profiles.

Patternz claims to operate a "fully commercial and operational AdTech arm that actually trades in media" to obtain the data. It claims to have "extensive knowhow of operating a Realtime bidding platform for the last 5 years".

An earlier version of its website named Google, Yahoo and adtech firms like MoPub, AdColony, OpenX as data sources (!).

Here's how Patternz can be used to monitor and profile individuals based on data from digital advertising.

The 'dashboard' shows detailed information about a person based on 5,273 activity records.

The profile includes the person's location history, home address, work location, information about 'people nearby', 'co-workers' and even 'family members', device details, demographic information, 'profile keywords' and 'hobbies and interests' (the latter of which may refer to RTB segment info).

Some time ago, I came across this website, which describes Patternz as an 'advertising-based intelligence platform' offered by ISA Security, an Israeli firm:
http://isasecurity.org/patternz
https://web.archive.org/web/20210622100652/http:/isasecurity.org/patternz

Here's another publicly available doc from Sovereign Systems, a Singapore-based firm with offices in UAE, New Zealand and Ireland, which also describes Patternz:
https://sovsys.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PATTERNZ-NATIONAL-SECURITY-PATTERN-DETECTION.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20231003181009/https:/sovsys.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PATTERNZ-NATIONAL-SECURITY-PATTERN-DETECTION.pdf

In addition, I received internal docs from the company.

As part of a new report on digital advertising as a security threat published today by @johnnyryan and me (https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Europes-hidden-security-crisis.pdf), and previously unreported:

We reveal 'Patternz', a global mass surveillance system that harvests digital advertising data on behalf of 'national security agencies'.

Patternz is operated by a company based in Israel and/or Singapore. It claims to collect data about 5 billion users from 87 ad exchanges and SSPs via 6 data centers around the world.

Thread:

The company's general counsel and chief privacy officer in an email to the CEO:

The US govt "gets our illegal EU data twice per day", a "massive illegal data dump".

"We sell geolocation data for which we do not have consent to do so … we sell/share device ID data for which we do not have consent to do so [and] we sell data outside the EU for which we do not have consent to do so"

If this isn't reason for EU data protection authorities to take urgent action than I don't know what is.

New WSJ report found that 'Near Intelligence', a consumer data broker based in India, Singapore and the US with an office in France, obtained massive amounts of smartphone geolocation data via digital advertising firms like OpenX, Smaato and AdColony and sold it to US defense and intelligence agencies.

Near claims to have access to data about 1 billion mobile devices.
https://wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/how-ads-on-your-phone-can-aid-government-surveillance-943bde04

"A new report from Cracked Labs called Monitoring, Streamlining and Reorganizing Work with Digital Technology shows how privacy at work is even more at risk today"

@glynmoody on my new report about software for 'process mining', the 'next stage in workplace surveillance':
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/process-mining-workplace-surveillance/

This is what 'AI in the workplace' is about, not ChatGPT.

I think, the data practices examined and documented in this single case study provide a solid basis to discuss many of the most pressing issues regarding the datafication of work.

Politico has a piece about my case study:

"Before artificial intelligence takes your job, it might become your boss"
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2023/09/20/when-ai-optimizes-your-workplace-00117187

Out now! New 70p case study about enterprise data analytics and algorithmic management in the workplace.

I examined software from the German vendor Celonis, which employers use to monitor workers, streamline work and automate task direction based on rich behavioral data about workers:
https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/processmining-algomanage/