Gambling firms are secretly sharing your data with Facebook


While you might think you’re hitting the jackpot, whether you’ve consented to it or not, online gambling sites are playing with your data. Users’ data, including details of webpages they visited and buttons they clicked, are being shared with Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

The Observer reports that over 150 UK gambling websites have been extracting visitor data through a hidden embedded tracking tool, and then sending that data to Meta in order to profile people as gamblers and flood them with Facebook ads for casinos and betting sites. The gambling websites used and shared data for marketing purposes—without obtaining explicit permission from the users—in an apparent breach of data protection laws.

Read more…
Source: Malwarebytes Labs


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Passwords, Private Posts Exposed in Hack of Gab Social Network

    March 1, 2021

    Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a self-proclaimed “transparency collective,” claim they have received more than 70 gigabytes of data exfiltrated from social media network Gab. Gab, which touts itself as “a social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online” has drawn in various alt-right and far-right users. A hacker ...

  • Npower withdraws mobile app after hackers steal personal details

    February 27, 2021

    Npower has permanently withdrawn its mobile app after hackers used it to access its customers’ personal details, including the sort codes and the last four digits of their bank accounts. The hack, which cybersecurity experts said left the firm’s customers “wide open to fraud”, is understood to have taken place around the start of February. The company ...

  • Health Website Leaks 8 Million COVID-19 Test Results

    February 25, 2021

    Yet another human-related error — this time a flaw in a health department website in the state of Bengal, India — has exposed the confidential results of COVID-19 tests as well as personally identifying information (PII) for an entire geographic region’s population. Test results related to more than 8 million people potentially were exposed before the ...

  • Security Risks for Audio-centric Social Media Apps

    February 24, 2021

    The use of audio-only social media apps such as ClubHouse, Riffr, Listen, Audlist, and HearMeOut has been steadily capturing the interest of more and more users over the recent years. But just like any other technology, apps like these are not immune from security risks. Furthermore, most of these risks can be automated, helping attackers ...

  • Experian challenged over massive data leak in Brazil

    February 20, 2021

    After receiving feedback from Experian over a massive data leak in Brazil, São Paulo state consumer rights foundation Procon described the company’s explanations as “insufficient” and said it is likely that the incident was initiated in a corporate environment. Procon notified the credit information multinational following the emergence of a leak that exposed the personal data ...

  • Singtel breach compromises data of customers, former employees

    February 17, 2021

    Singtel has confirmed that personal details of 129,000 customers, as well as financial information of its former employees, have been compromised in a security breach that involved a third-party file-sharing system. Credit card details belonging to the staff of a corporate client and information tied to 23 enterprises, including suppliers and partners, also have been ...