At least 18 public-sector websites in the UK and US send visitor data in some form to various web advertising brokers – including an ad-tech biz in China involved in past privacy controversies, a security firm claims.
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In the US, .gov websites are not supposed to run ads. In the UK, ads are allowed on .gov.uk websites, subject to some limitations. The .gov and .gov.uk sites flagged by Silent Push each publish an ads.txt file that spells out the businesses allowed to automatically sell that site’s ad space to advertisers as a visitor arrives.
[…] Silent Push found a bunch of UK and US government websites with [the ads.txt] file listing various advertising exchanges and resellers ranging from Google (like what El Reg uses) to one in China.
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One of the ad-tech vendors used by the .gov.uk sites, and highlighted by Silent Push, is Yeahmobi. This Chinese entity reportedly had its mobile ad SDK removed from the Google Play Store in 2018 for alleged ad fraud. Yeahmobi did not respond to requests for comment.
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Silent Push’s report identifies four .gov sites that, in our experience, do not display adverts though do ping web ad platforms, do list various exchanges in their ads.txt files, and may break US government CISA rules. In the UK, it’s a different story, as 18 sites identified by Silent Push use Yeahmobi among others to display ads somewhere on pages.
Military and intelligence services are bothered by China. The government not so much. The conservatives are happy to sell our nuclear and communication infrastructure to China. It was the backlash in the media that made them change course.
The British government agreed to allow China to work on nuclear power stations in the UK, it was the intelligence service that made them reduce Chinas access to its design and operation.
This is the same government that stopped the EU from restricting cheap Chinese steel into the EU (prior to Brexit). Recently the UK closed one of its major steel manufacturers. We can only recycle steel in the UK now.
Steels needed for boats and tanks. Especially if a land war in Europe broke out, or a naval war in the Pacific.
The conservatives are weak on all advertising. The shear amount of gambling adverts in the UK are abysmal. As well as direct marketing to children for high strength vapes. We nearly got rid of nicotine addiction in young people, it’s was falling significantly prior to vapes being allowed to advertise to children. They don’t care, they’ll sell anything to the highest bidder.