A new LinkedIn breach is reported to have exposed the data of 700M users, more than 92% of LinkedIn’s total users. A sample of 1M that looks to be valid was posted on the dark web. Information obtained includes names, phone numbers, email and geolocation records.
Connected TVs are another escape path from the walled gardens and (some) privacy constraints. TV maker VIZIO has just certified several vendors for meeting the Open Addressable Ready (OAR) specifications for TV ad targeting. VIZIO can serve ads on more than 11 million addressable TVs in the U.S. OAR members include AMC Networks, Comcast NBCUniversal, Discovery Networks, Disney, EW Scripps, Fox, Hearst Television, Univision, ViacomCBS, VIZIO and WarnerMedia.
Consumers in the Netherlands are joining the Data Privacy Foundation and a consumer protection group there, who will sue Facebook over privacy-hostile practices. To date, 185,000 people have registered. The suit is viewed as a potentially important route to work around a perceived bottleneck in GDPR enforcement.
CDP mParticle is being acquired by ecommerce platform Rokt for a price of $300 million. It’s the third acquisition of a leading independent CDP in a little over one month, following Uniphore’s purchase of ActionIQ and Contentstack’s purchase of Lytics. All three buyers offer some type of customer-facing technology; apparently they’ve decided that adding real-time profiles from CDP will give them a competitive edge. (See this blog post for more analysis.)