Privacy and personalized advertising

Personalized advertising is the most widespread type of digital advertising today. Since its inception, it has never ceased to grow in complexity and volume, and it is the main source of income for large technology companies such as Google or Facebook. With this form of advertising, advertisers can send ads with certain personal traits to users of websites or apps. The basis of this system is the identification of users, the collection of their personal data and the inference from those data of personal traits of interest to advertisers. This use of personal data poses problems from the standpoint of privacy, and more and more voices are calling for its prohibition or at least a stricter regulation. This article presents a highly simplified but sufficient description of personalized advertising that can contribute to the knowledge, reflection and individual and collective action of
people who wish to ensure respect for the right to privacy.