However, it’s important not to confuse the concept of being scammed (social engineering) with being hacked (technical breaches).

Consider uninstalling the malicious Stylish extension. In 2016, with no input from the userbase, through some guy, pretending to be an independent developer, it basically was sold to a shady web analytics company, Similarweb. Since then, it is actively sharing your entire non-anonymized browsing history demo with them, assuming you ever clicked on one of the flashy "Agree" buttons. It initially did this without even asking for consent, and was banned from extension stores afterwards. Currently, it still breaks store policies, yet is not banned for unknown to me reasons. This website only works with the Stylus extension, which is an open-source privacy-friendly fork of the now-malicious Stylish extension.

Here is a simplified example of a malicious .gitlab-ci.yml

Advertisements are often injected with malware.

self-regulation is a core part of why adtech is in the abject mess it’s in.

The deceitful obfuscation of commercial intention certainly runs all the way through the data brokering and ad tech industries that sit behind much of the ‘free’ consumer Internet. Here consumers have plainly been kept in the dark so they cannot see and object to how their personal information is being handed around, sliced and diced, and used to try to manipulate them.

From an ad tech perspective, the concern is that manipulation doesn’t work when it’s obvious. And the goal of targeted advertising is to manipulate people’s decisions based on intelligence about them gleaned via clandestine surveillance of their online activity (so inferring who they are via their data). This might be a purchase decision. Equally it might be a vote.