Proof of 4chan Allowing Datamining of Users v2.3

What would you say if right now, as you believe that you are accessing and posting on an anonymous image board, that your personal information was being taken without your knowing consent to profile you and sell your future purchases to corporations and to government organizations who know everything about your interests that you wanted nobody to know of? That your basic use of 4chan, the threads you lurk and post in, are being used to extort you for other's personal gain?

What I'm about to tell you is how I came about this realization and all the evidence I've compiled that proves the above statement.

This pastebin contains information regarding 4chan's current advertising policies (from November 2014-current) and a vast amount of reliable evidence that 4chan is allowing a NYSE traded ad exchange company to datamine users for their personal information and profiles them in order to sell advertising spots for multinational companies around the world.

Now before I go on, note that this information has nothing to do with a current scandal revolving around 4chan's current owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, and the accusations regarding 2ch data leaks when he was admin there. This pastebin has nothing to do with any of his companies or scandals people on 2ch and 8ch have talked about, however Hiroyuki is definitely involved in this situation and is definitely knowledgeable about the current ad system. So with that please understand that this information and the 2ch scandal are unrelated and please continue to read on at your own discretion, especially if you have accessed 4chan at any point from November 14th, 2014 and onward to today.

I first came around this realization when visiting the 4chan Advertising page because I wanted to learn more about how the site advertises and was comparing ad prices to other sites out of curiosity. I had my ad block on by accident at the time and saw the page give a message. If you access the 4chan Advertising Campaign link from "4chan.org/advertise?selfserve&yourcampaigns" while using Ad Block Plus or a similar ad block plugin on your internet browser the message is displayed on the webpage:

"You must disable ad blocking/allow ads from *.4chan.org/*, *.4chan-ads.org/*, and *.rubiconproject.com/* in order to view this page."

I had never heard of "RubiconProject" before and was curious as to who they were, since I assumed 4chan had run its own ads independently like other websites at this point, and why this 3rd party link was showing up on the ads page. I then researched into Rubicon Project and found the following links outlining company details and controversy surrounding them out of a major US news publication. The following information is all the evidence I have uncovered as of late which led me to believe that Rubicon Project are an Advertising Exchange Company who datamine internet users worldwide for their personal information in order to sell users and their interests to companies looking to sell their own products. This is also a collection of evidence relating to the possibility of Rubicon Project datamining 4chan users for the purpose of selling us, tracking and archiving our information, killing our anonymity and selling our interests and post profiles to other companies looking to buy advertising spots.

What is Rubicon Project?
http://rubiconproject.com/whoweare/
"Rubicon Project is a leading technology company automating the buying and selling of advertising. Relentless in its efforts for innovation, Rubicon Project has engineered one of the largest real-time cloud and Big Data computing systems, processing trillions of transactions within milliseconds each month."
"The company’s pioneering technology created a new model for the advertising industry – similar to what NASDAQ did for stock trading. Rubicon Project’s automated advertising platform is used by the world’s leading publishers and applications to transact with top brands around the globe."
"Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Los Angeles, Rubicon Project has fourteen offices including New York, San Francisco, Paris, Hamburg, Sydney, London and Tokyo."

https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Media-Metrix-Ranks-Top-50-US-Desktop-Web-Properties-for-May-2014
Rubicon Project while before being #2, is now the US's #1 advertising exchange entity.

http://quotes.wsj.com/RUBI
The company trades on the NYSE under "RUBI" and its market cap is over $600 million dollars.

After some digging I came upon the shocking revelation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/technology/your-online-attention-bought-in-an-instant-by-advertisers.html?_r=0
"Rubicon is among a handful of technology companies that have quietly developed automated ad sales systems for Web site operators. The bidders are marketers seeking to identify their best prospects and pitch them before they move to the next Web page. It is a form of high-frequency trading that souped-up business of algorithm-loving Wall Streeters. But in this case, the prize is the attention of ordinary people. And it all depends on data-mining to instantly evaluate the audiences available to see those online display ads, the ones that appear on Web sites next to or around content."
"Yet for most of us, real-time bidding is invisible. About 97 percent of American Internet users interact with Rubicon’s system every month, Mr. Addante says, and most of them aren’t aware of it."

This article describes Rubicon Project as a known data miner. However I'd need to find more concrete evidence to prove that Rubicon in its own writing data mines which led me to explore their website where I found out about the array of technology Rubicon Project use in order to carry out its tasks.

http://rubiconproject.com/buyer-cloud/
"Buyer Cloud delivers a powerful platform for brands to reach their desired audiences, driving unparalleled brand engagement, customer acquisition, and results."
"Intelligent-Combining rich intent and "audience data" for smarter buying"
"Build Brand Awareness and Find New Customers: Efficiently find your target audience, Full-funnel marketing 3solutions: Build brand awareness. Acquire new customers, and re-engage existing customers. Leverages the Rubicon Project Intent Marketing data & platform"
"Acquisition: Target individuals using rich intent data that's updated in milliseconds. Our intent and look-alike algorithms find consumers likely to be your next customer. Our acquisition program grows the customer base, driving greater top-line revenue and new-to-file customers.
"Site Retargeting: Leverage the Rubicon Project intent data platform to retarget site visitors with precision. Target visitors using Rubicon Project premium inventory and beyond."

Rubicon Project also owns some very specific companies whose technology is key to their Cloud technology and their ability to data mine users at such accuracy.

http://buyercloud.rubiconproject.com/
"Chango is a programmatic advertising company, purpose-built for the marketer. Chango uses intent data and technology to create relevant and timely advertising campaigns that produce rich customer insights."
"Can access billions of real time searches through Google, Yahoo and Bing through our proprietary network"
"Chango has all the behavioural, contextual and browsing data you might expect."

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/others-online
http://techcrunch.com/2006/08/02/onlineothers-matches-people-by-online-interests/
Others Online, an audience profiling technology company was acquired by Rubicon Project in 2009.
"OthersOnline will show you users related to yourself via their web surfing habits mixed with user profiles."
This tech seems to be related to Rubicon's audience profiling software and this technology also allows you to "
see when related people are available online and connect with them" which parallels with Rubicon's "re-targeting" strategy.

From the technology from both of these companies it is possible for Rubicon Project to more accurately and precisely identify users instantly when they visit the affiliated website. One way they make it easier to do this with on 4chan ads specifically is through the ReCaptcha system.

ReCaptcha is Googles anti-bot system, as well as their user dialogue system, which websites contract in order to prevent spam and bots from affecting the site. Since Rubicon Project is partnered with Google and has access to their data from a collaboration they recently started with Yahoo to pool assets and create better online ad quality control (http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/21/ca-rubicon-project-idUSnBw216123a+100+BSW20150721). One of Google's subsidiary services lso both runs Ad Servers, under Google DFM, for RP and does sales management, under Google DSM, for them as well.
https://selfserve.rubiconproject.com/partners/adservers/
https://selfserve.rubiconproject.com/partners/sales-management/

This means that Rubicon Project is potentially accessing user post histories and through the use of post behaviour algorithms can help identify posters and re-target them for advertising while storing data and selling you, literally, to potential advertisers. However ReCaptcha is not necessarily needed to profile and collect personal information from all users, as the next bits of information will explain more in detail as to the scope of Rubicon Project's abilities to collect 4chan user data.

Previously 4chan used to have a Toronto based ad partner called Shiny Ads, they usually ran ads for 4chan back during the old J-List days. In November 2014 they were purchased by Rubicon Project in order to start up their automated ad buys initiative.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/11/17/rubicon-project-buys-isocket-and-shiny-ads-to-automate-ad-buys/
http://www.yongestreetmedia.ca/inthenews/shinyads.aspx
This acquisition gave Rubicon the ability to generate "up front" purchases while still using their cloud system to monitor and mine user data from any visitor and poster on 4chan, with the ReCaptcha system making it faster to get your data and even if you don't post they can still collect your data from IP logs of the threads and boards you have visited. This is further validated under the Rubicon Self-Serve ads (the ad service run on 4chan) Service Agreement, which shows that the Self Serve service is run with their cloud technologies and therefore the buyer cloud is linked to Self-Serve.

https://selfserve.rubiconproject.com/tos/tos_buyers/
Rubicon Project's Proprietary Rights also allow it to give data that is transferred through the service to government agencies (section 7 subsection v) and to keep it for itself for internal business operations (sec. 7, subsection vi).
It is also shown in section 8 that the advertisement buyer may not
"(1) place or facilitate the placement of behaviorally targeted Ads on any Seller’s Media that: (i) is directed to users under 13 years of age; or (ii) collects information from users actually known to be under 13 year of age (in each case, a “Kid’s Site”); (2) create profiles of users or visitors of Kid’s Sites; or (3) collect personal information (as defined by COPPA) about users or visitors of Kid’s Sites."
This shows that Rubicon are in fact creating data profiles of users above the age of 13 and collecting personal information of users outside of "kids sites" and sites intended for ages 13 and under.

After emailing a former Shiny Ads employee regarding the allegations, he redirected my attention to the founder of Shiny Ads, who is now a VP at Rubicon Project, assured me that there were no wrong doings or datamining going on with Self-Serve's operation. I then directed him to the New York Times article to which he said that he could not comment on Rubicon Project's other technologies and could only comment about Self-Serve itself, despite the fact that his service runs in collaboration to the Rubicon Cloud which in fact does datamine users and collects their personal information.

Finally this information has been getting flak for no straight to the point evidence that Rubicon Project is doing this on 4chan, that is not the case anymore.
http://rubiconproject.com/rubicon-project-yield-optimization-privacy-policy/
"When you visit a website or application that uses our technology, we collect certain information about you and your device (“User Information”). Some of this User Information, including for example your IP addresses and certain unique device identifiers, may identify a particular computer or device, and may be considered “personal data” in some jurisdictions in the European Union and elsewhere."
"User Information that we may collect includes: IP address, domain, browser type and language, referring website addresses, date/time of visits, page view data, search keywords, visitor activities and actions on publisher’s sites, browser history, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, geolocation (including city, country, zip code, and potentially geographic coordinates if you have enabled location services on your device), click data, types of advertisements viewed, and information about a visitor’s device including device make, device model, device operating system, device operating system version, and data connection type.

"We use cookies and similar technologies to collect User Information. In particular, we use the following standard web technologies:
        • “Tags and Pixels” are blocks of code that we and our customers may use to track your navigation of websites or apps using our technology, and your browsing behavior. We use pixels to coordinate User Information with our customers and other third parties.
        • “Cookies” are data files that often include a unique identifier, and are placed on a visitor’s device or computer. We use cookies on our customers’ websites in order to operate our technology and collect User Information. For more information about cookies, and how to disable cookies,  visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org
        • “SDKs” or “Software Development Kits” are blocks of code similar to tags and pixels that are embedded into an app that allow us to track certain information relating to your use of apps using our technology.
        • Additionally, we use other technologies, including locally stored objects, to collect User Information in order to assist with the delivery of ads and to provide reporting to our customers.
        • Finally, we use standard device identifiers, for example the “IDFA” advertising identifier used on Apple’s iOS devices, to track your use of mobile apps."
"We share User Information with our customers to help them identify and buy advertising on publishers’ websites and mobile applications. Customers may use User Information in conjunction with other information they have independently collected in order to provide you targeted advertising and to help them evaluate whether a particular ad campaign may be of interest to you."
"We may share User Information for legal, protection, security, and safety purposes, including:
• to comply with laws or regulatory requirements and to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
• to protect the rights and property of Rubicon Project, our agents, customers, and others, including enforcing our agreements, policies, and terms of use and protecting our network and physical assets; and/or
• in an emergency, including protecting the safety of our employees and agents, our customers, or any person.
• We may share information with parties who may use that information to provide us with services or do work for us.

"There are many ways to opt-out of receiving targeted advertising that our customers may conduct using our technology. If you opt-out of targeted advertising, we will continue to collect the same User Information described above. However, this information won’t be used to target you with interest based ads."

So as you can see even from the information collected firsthand from Rubicon Project's website, there is completely unbiased and factual proof that 4chan has in fact been allowing an advertising exchange company to datamine its users, collect users personal information and profile all users and visitors of 4chan for the purpose of "selling these anonymous users" to multinational companies in order for them, and the ownership of 4chan, to profit off of 4chan's userbase without their knowing consent. This also proves that the datamining by Rubicon Project has been going on since the company acquired Shiny Ads in November 2014 and that then site owner Christopher Poole/moot allowed Rubicon to continue to exchange advertising on 4chan and the current owner Hiroyuki has continued this relationship with Rubicon along. It may also be a cause as to why popular tech boards such as /v/ and /g/ have experienced more "shill" threads than ever that have gone unbanned which culminated with the infamous AC: Syndicate locked sticky on /v/ before this past E3 and well after Rubicon started servicing 4chan advertisements. There might be a possibility that 4chan is not selling advertising solely below their banners, but also on board catalogs themselves via threads. Rubicon likes to be unnoticed while running ads so it would make sense that they would service ads through threads themselves, but these claims however are not solid so more research into the subject is going to be my next objective.

Also keep in mind that the new deal came into effect the same day the Assassin's Creed Syndicate locked sticky came up on /v/, on May 12th, 2015.

http://rubiconproject.com/2014-press-releases/rubicon-project-launches-self-serve-platform-automate-50-billion-local-small-business-advertising-market/
http://4chandata.org/v/Assassin039s-Creed-sticky-that-reads-like-an-advertisementLocked-unlike-every-other-major-announcement-sticky-made-in-the-last-yea-a793755


This is an initial research informational which will be later updated so please keep a lookout for the latest update of my findings.