A recent study, led by security-focused researchers from the University of Washington, shows how regular people can exploit the online advertising ecosystem to extract personal details on an individual’s habits, location and demographic information, Wired reports. “Using Ad Targeting for Surveillance on a Budget” re-imagines the motivation for buying an ad on the internet, shifting away from what it describes as a traditional marketing motivation, bound by potential litigation and driven by profit, to a space motivated by highly targeted spying. Tadayoshi Kohno, a computer science professor who worked on the study, said, "This is so easy and it's industrywide," adding, "We want to enable a broader conversation about the risks of online advertising when anyone can become the adversary." The study will be presented later this month at the Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society. 
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