Connect to the wifi at Milan MXP airport, and it sends your data to smartadserver.com, who then track you all over the web. All before clicking anything, and exactly what their privacy policy promises they *don't* do. What's going on here
@MiAirports? How is this ok?
Just in case leaking your data and tracking you for a year (minimum) wasn't enough, MXP is also sharing your MAC address here, in the referrer header. That's not just identifying you to the ad network, but giving them the hardcoded unique id of your laptop's wifi hardware.
This tells them some interesting things about your laptop, but also notably means they can recognize your computer anywhere, forever. You could manually change it, in theory, but it takes a little technical knowledge, and effectively nobody does (and you shouldn't have to).
Who are SmartAdServer.com then? Surprise: they're a tracker & ad middleman. They do deals with sites across the web to get everywhere (like this 'free' wifi hotspot), track you as you browse, and sell ad space targeted directly to you to "demand partners" (advertisers)
According to their website they're integrated into 50,000 sites & apps, showing ads to 1.5 billion unique users (20% of all people!), via a range of "advanced targeting" & profiling technologies. Yikes. As a bonus, MXP sends the same to doubleclick.net too:
So hey, from my POV this looks like: - Personally identifiable data - Send to ad firms, which definitely needs consent - No consent (I haven't clicked *anything*) - A fictional privacy policy => One bad big GDPR violation Any comments
@MiAirports? Will you fix this?
Replying to @pimterry and @joachim_d
Hi Tim, thank you for your feedback, we have just forwarded it to our Information Technology staff.
Dear Tim, last week we have released the new "one click" wi-fi connection interface in Malpensa airport. Your tweet has been very useful, we have discovered and fixed the errors you have mentioned in your thread. Today we are providing all the fixing needed
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