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:

  • Planned Parenthood confirms cyber-attack as RansomHub threatens to leak data

    September 4, 2024

    Planned Parenthood of Montana’s chief exec says the org is responding to a cyber-attack on its systems, and has drafted in federal law enforcement and infosec professionals to help investigate and rebuild its IT environment. This comes as ransomware crew RansomHub boasted it had broken into the nonprofit, and stolen its data, which it is threatening ...

  • City of Columbus sues researcher for sharing leaked ransomware data

    September 3, 2024

    The City of Columbus, Ohio, has taken legal action against a security researcher who shared leaked data from a ransomware attack against the city with members of the news media. A lawsuit filed last week alleges that the actions of software development consultant David Leroy Ross Jr., who also goes by Connor Goodwolf, risks “irreparable harm” ...

  • Northern Ireland: Police Ombudsman sorry for ‘distressing’ data leak as investigation is launched

    September 1, 2024

    An investigation has been launched after a data breach led to the details of current and former Police Ombudsman staff members being accidently released. The Police Ombudsman (PONI) has apologised for the data leak incident involving 160 current and former staff. A document containing some of their personal details was “inadvertently released” to 22 people who ...

  • A million airport parking customers affected in huge data breach

    August 31, 2024

    A million Park’N Fly customers have had their sensitive data stolen after the company suffered a cyberattack. The news was confirmed in a data breach notification letter sent out by the company, which noted the threat actors accessed the company’s IT infrastructure in July 2024 using stolen VPN credentials. The crooks stole people’s full names, email ...

  • UK: Watchdog reprimands Labour following data breach

    August 29, 2024

    The information watchdog has formally reprimanded the Labour Party for failing in its data protection duties following a cyber attack. More than 150 complaints were made to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about the handling of inquiries about personal data, known as Subject Access Requests (SARs). An investigation revealed the problem developed in part because an ...

  • UK: Staff details stolen in poultry factory cyber attack

    August 28, 2024

    Staff at a poultry factory in Norfolk have had their personal details stolen in a cyber attack. Banham Poultry, based in Attleborough, said criminals had remotely accessed its system in the early hours of 18 August. In an email sent to staff, seen by the BBC, the company said information such as National Insurance numbers, copies ...