Google has a secret web page that provides user personal data to advertisers

According to reports, the Data Protection Commission, which oversees Google’s European operations, submitted new evidence from a survey that showed that the search giant is secretly sending user data to advertisers. The company is said to use the hidden web pages to forward user browsing information to advertisers, thereby circumventing EU privacy regulations.

A report by the Financial Times on Wednesday said the evidence was submitted to the Irish Data Protection Commission by Johnny Ryan, chief policy officer of privacy-focused browser maker Brave, who is based in the European Union. Ryan said he had monitored how his data was traded on Google’s ad exchange and found that Google used a tracker that included web browsing information, location, and other data, and sent it to the advertising company via a hidden web page. The hidden page has no content but has a unique address that associates it with Ryan’s browsing activity. Google creates a page that the user has never seen, it is blank, no content, but allow third parties to snoop on users through this website.

Ryan found that after using Google Chrome for an hour, he found six separate pages showing his ID, which contained the word “google_push” and shared it with at least eight advertising agencies. More than that, Zach Edwards, head of Victory Media, a technology consultancy, recruited hundreds of people to test and find the same situation, sharing user IDs with multiple advertising companies to improve their targeting.

Source: Irish times