If Britain is so bothered by China, why do these .gov.uk sites use Chinese ad brokers?
Exclusive 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.
Silent Push, which identified the websites, will today argue in a report provided to The Register that this raises concerns about compliance with rules limiting ads on government websites as well as concerns about online privacy.
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.
For those who don't know, websites can sell ad space to advertisers in real-time via exchanges or brokers just as visitors land on pages; this typically involves trading pseudonymous information about those visitors so that, for instance, an advertiser can bid higher for an ad slot if the netizen is deemed valuable. Ads.txt lists the outfits allowed to sell this ad space inventory on behalf of a site, and Silent Push found a bunch of UK and US government websites with that file listing various advertising exchanges and resellers ranging from Google (like what El Reg uses) to one in China.
