English

The Accuracy of the Demographic Inferences Shown on Google's Ad Settings

Cryptography and Security 2018-08-24 v1

Abstract

Google's Ad Settings shows the gender and age that Google has inferred about a web user. We compare the inferred values to the self-reported values of 501 survey participants. We find that Google often does not show an inference, but when it does, it is typically correct. We explore which usage characteristics, such as using privacy enhancing technologies, are associated with Google's accuracy, but found no significant results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.07549,
  title  = {The Accuracy of the Demographic Inferences Shown on Google's Ad Settings},
  author = {Michael Carl Tschantz and Serge Egelman and Jaeyoung Choi and Nicholas Weaver and Gerald Friedland},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.07549},
  year   = {2018}
}