Facebook advertising can be targeted at a specific person

(Image: Pixabay CC0) A piece of research undertaken by scientists at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Graz University of Technology (Austria) shows that an advertising campaign on Facebook can target a specific person, with the campaign being based only on four unique interests assigned to the user by the social network. Personalisation of online advertising based on our search history and preferences is not a new phenomenon, as it has been developing over many years. However, this new study, presented at an international scientific conference (ACM Internet Measurement Conference), highlights the fact that ads can be personalised and sent to a specific person via the Facebook ad platform using just the user's interests. This reveals a potential privacy issue, according to the team of researchers, made up of José González-Cabañas, Ángel Cuevas, Rubén Cuevas, Juan López-Fernández, and David García. "It allows hyper-personalised ads to be created that may have a greater effect on the user who receives them," explains Ángel Cuevas, from the UC3M's Telematic Engineering Department. This issue exposes users to new risks that arise from the combination of interests. There are two types of data within this framework: firstly, data that directly reveals an individual's identity (such as their ID No., phone number, or email address), which require the individual's consent in order for companies to use them, and secondly, data that cannot be attributed to a particular user, such as their interests, gender, or age.