Advertising

The Internet, and arguably much of society, has been quite damaged by advertising. Of relevance here is that it is also a very significant digital security threat ¹.

Advertising is propaganda designed to influence people into consumerism. It may also be used for political persuasion.

What you are reading is advertising. In an epistemological taxonomy this writing clearly goes further that the purely informational, having intent to influence. Come and buy our stuff…

Three classic texts to study it are [Manufacturing Consent] by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, [Public Opinion] by Walter Lippmann, and [Propaganda] by Edward Bernays.

Acceptable advertising is not:

• deceptive
• forced on you
• targeted using spying

From an infosec perspective bad advertising involves inserting (injecting) content into another content stream or the invasive control of hardware or application programs for the purpose of influence. Additionally, modern advertising relies on surveillance, exfiltration and deception. This insecurity industry is sometimes called "surveillance capitalism" and the practice of spreading malicious content as "malvertising".

The scourge of modern digital advertising that is; intrusive, distracting, forced, psychologically undermining, dishonest and based on surveillance or trading of your personal data - is to be considered a fundamental security threat.

Steps should be taken to eliminate it in a secure environment. However, it's a very persistent nuisance. Culture from the USA has tried to make invasive psychological manipulation acceptable and even protected by law. Advertising technology is even built into the hardware of some devices like "Smart TVs".

The idea that it's okay to use "free" services like Google where trading your company or personal data in tacit consideration of services is - to put it bluntly - personally; clinically insane and professionally; criminally reckless - at least if you have any sense about security.

Invasive advertising should be treated as first class threat.

In order of most effective countermeasures;

• Don't use products or services that facilitate or rely on advertising. It may seem harmless enough that "free" products like Google mail are "funded" through selling your data, but the world has changed and this is catastrophic from a security standpoint. You should not buy devices like "Smart TVs" and never connect them to your network. Open Source Free Software is usually a much better choice.
• Avoid web tools such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers that are designed to help advertisers track you and extract your data. Look for much more secure "forks" of Free browsers that disable snooping features.
• Block all advertising sources at the firewall level using tools like ad-blockers or a [PiHole] network appliance.