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wired.comGoogle Ad-Tech Users Can Target National Security ‘Decision Makers’ and People With Chronic DiseasesGoogle enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies—as well as the makers of classified defense technology, a WIRED investigation has found.

Display & Video 360 (DV360), one of the dominant marketing platforms offered by Google, is offering companies globally the option of targeting devices in the United States based on lists of internet users believed to suffer from chronic illnesses and financial distress.

wired.comGoogle Ad-Tech Users Can Target National Security ‘Decision Makers’ and People With Chronic DiseasesGoogle enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies—as well as the makers of classified defense technology, a WIRED investigation has found.

First reviewed by WIRED, an internal spreadsheet obtained from a US-based data broker shows the DV360 platform currently hosting hundreds if not thousands of restricted or otherwise sensitive “audience segments.”

The data—first obtained by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), reveals segments targeting hundreds of millions of device users based exclusively on health conditions, from chronic pain and menopause to, among others, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, arthritis, high cholesterol, and hypertension.

“As with other demand-side platforms, advertisers are able to upload audience lists to Display & Video 360, based either on their own first-party data or from segment providers,” says Erica Walsh, a Google spokesperson.

Despite this, many data segments targeted households and businesses facing financial hardship, helping advertisers identify people who are in the process of bankruptcy or burdened by long-term debt.

wired.comGoogle Ad-Tech Users Can Target National Security ‘Decision Makers’ and People With Chronic DiseasesGoogle enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies—as well as the makers of classified defense technology, a WIRED investigation has found.

Segments accessible through DV360 that target Americans with asthma contain at least hundreds of millions of mobile IDs—among them, a list simply titled, “People who have asthma.”

A vast number of devices and user profiles are spread out across lists that target users determined likely to need specific medications, including some controlled substances, such as Ambien.

Sources with firsthand knowledge of Google’s platform, granted condition of anonymity to protect against retaliation on the job, confirmed the segments were actually accessible to Google’s ad buyers.

wired.comGoogle Ad-Tech Users Can Target National Security ‘Decision Makers’ and People With Chronic DiseasesGoogle enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies—as well as the makers of classified defense technology, a WIRED investigation has found.

“It’s not necessarily held in every dataset, but it speaks to a medical condition, it speaks to use of a powerful drug, and it speaks to something that could potentially be exploited in an intelligence context.” - Justin Sherman, CEO of Global Cyber Strategies.