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Commercialization

Boeing Uses Deceptive Social Media To Grab Your Browsing Data

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 12, 2019
Filed under
https://media2.spaceref.com/news/2019/boeing.iss.jpg

Keith’s note: Boeing is continuing its creepy and deceptive social media campaign – one that lures you with an innocent social media ad on Facebook to a website where they grab a lot of information about you for uses that they will not describe. Boeing uses social media ads that do not mention Boeing. In this case, they ask you to sign a petition to support the ISS. Sounds innocent enough. You click on the link and this is what it is actually sending you to:

https://watchusfly.com/campaigns/space-iss-3-0-petition-acquisition/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link-post&utm_campaign=acquisition_petition_space-iss-3-a&utm_term=space&utm_content=enthusiast

You have now been caught on a Facebook ad. You arrive at the petition page at watchusfly.com which claims that “Watch U.S. Fly is a community of Americans that believes that America should lead the world in technological advancements. We realize that in order to maintain our edge, American aerospace must have the support of policymakers so they can continue to chart the future.” In the lower corner in a small, faint font, it says “Copyright © 2019 Boeing”
The disclaimer says “Site intended for use by U.S. residents 14 years of age or older. Boeing may use the information you provide to send you future communications about Boeing and issues that may be of interest to you. For further information, please review Boeing’s Privacy Policy.” But they do not tell you this when they entice you to visit from Facebook. Too late. If you sign in to their page using Facebook then they really have you. Their cookies are in your browser and all of your Facebook, Internet, and geolocation information is now theirs to use and/or sell as they see fit – unless you take convoluted steps to try (I repeat try) and extricate yourself from their info cache on you. Here’s what they tell you that they can do with the information they tricked you into giving them. According to Boeing’s Privacy Policy page.
“Boeing Services often contain cookies or similar technologies from third-party providers that help us compile statistics about the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, perform analytics, enable social networking features, and other operations. These technologies enable the third-party providers to set or read their own cookies or other identifiers on your device, through which they can collect information about your online activities across the Services and other, unaffiliated devices, applications, websites, or services… Boeing also enables cookies and third-party tracking mechanisms to collect your information for use in interest-based advertising. For example, third parties use the fact that you visited our Services to target online ads for Boeing services to you on non-Boeing websites. In addition, our third-party advertising networks use information about your use of our Services to help target non-Boeing advertisements based on your online behavior in general… Data collected from a particular browser, app, or device can be used with a linked computer or device. For example, we or our third-party service providers display ads to you on your laptop based on the fact that you visited Boeing Services on your smartphone.”
Remember, if you visit, its too late unless you have disabled cookies, use a VPN, etc. Most people do not. But if you sign the petition, they got you. Boeing never tells you who they will share and/or sell your data to. Nor do they tell you what these third parties will do with the tracking that they can now do based on your visit to the watchusfly.com site. Political campaigns can buy this information, Boeing can now make pro-Boeing, anti-someone else ads appear on your browser – as you probably know by now. We’ve taken notice of this creep behavior before (see links below). Boeing is doing a lot of lobbying and targeted media buys these days.
This is how big aerospace is using the same shady tactics that skewed the 2016 election for their own, undisclosed purposes. Congratulations, if you visited this stealth Boeing site you have now become part of this ongoing sneaky Boeing effort.
Boeing’s Misleading Anti-SpaceX Pro-SLS Facebook Ad Campaign, previous post
Join Boeing’s SLS Fan Club So They Can Track Your Activity, previous post
Boeing’s Creepy Petition Wants To Track Your Online Activity, previous post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

8 responses to “Boeing Uses Deceptive Social Media To Grab Your Browsing Data”

  1. Jeff2Space says:
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    I saw that very thing on my Facebook feed but my memory said that “watchusfly.com” article was about SLS.

    I replied to their Facebook post with “Nice try Boeing, but…” so others would hopefully catch on to their deceptive practices.

  2. Michael Spencer says:
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    Responses I predict to this post:

    1. What do you expect? Everybody does it!
    2. Oh, so what? Just direct any junk email to your spam folder. No big deal.
    3. This is simply an example of what an American corporation does serving shareholders- which is, after all, the sole function of any corporation.
    4. Privacy? Is THAT what has you in an uproar? If you think you have any sort of internet privacy, you haven’t been paying attention. Give it up!
    5. Is there a problem with making money these days?

  3. Jack says:
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    Don’t use Facebook.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      I only use it for the family and never follow any businesses on it. If Mr. Zuckerberg wants to collect pictures of pets and relatives eating he is welcome to them ?

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        No.

        It is important to push back on privacy issues, a psh back that is based on personal rights and nothing to do with the sort of data being collected.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          They do it because it is worth money. If what they collect is worthless they will stop doing it. It’s the best individual strategy, flood their system with garbage like the Stainless Steel Rat would ?

          It’s also why I put nothing in the cloud, as it too easy for them to access. I still share files by email, my personal email on my private domain which I give out only to those I work with, different than my public email I use for things like Disqus, which also collects and sells information.

          But what is also needed is a two way push of federal regulation to protect personal data and class action lawsuits to recover the profits being made from harvesting personal data and the costs of such data being misused. But this requires collective action by users.

          • fcrary says:
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            I don’t think a class action suit to recover profits would work. Many of these companies provide services for free, and make their profits off advertising and data harvesting. It wouldn’t be hard for them to argue that customers are already recovering the profits from data harvesting, in the form of free social media services.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Perhaps, but it really would depend on having the right lawyer and venue for the jury trial. It could be argued that the services are not actually free, but are actually being provided in exchange for personal information and so they are decieving the users by claiming its free. But again, it having a lawyer who is very good and motivated.