Security News > 2020 > September > Adtech's bogeymen are tracking everything - even your web visits to mental health charities, claim campaigners

British charities are sharing information about people visiting their websites with adtech data brokers, according to a report.

The alleged badness boils down to charity websites having tracking beacons embedded within them, little snippets of code that tell an advertiser who opened a particular website or webpage.

Nothing is illegal or rare about the practice, though it may surprise some to find that these beacons are on charity websites as well as those of for-profit businesses.

Why are charities doing this? According to the campaigners, it's all about filthy lucre: "At a basic level, charities want to capture certain data about their users so that they can later be retargeted for advertising. For example,"Charity A" might want to target female visitors in their 60s with an income of £40,000+ that have clicked on the 'donate' button in the past 6 months.

Third Sector, a magazine for charity professionals, recently reported that "Charity fundraising campaigns would need to demonstrate that they were sympathetic to the financial concerns many donors might have." Meanwhile, London business freesheet City AM cited a study claiming charities nationwide could suffer up to 60,000 coronavirus-induced job losses.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/09/11/charity_websites_ad_trackers/