2026 is going to be the year bad ideas accelerate. Maybe this was due. Most of us in the tech industry knew full well how ad-tech was supposed to make it easier to market products to people. As online advertising developed, some of us had concerns that the data collection of this magnitude could be used by bad actors to make it easier to track people. Well, that day looks like it has finally arrived. ICE appears to be seeking industry input on how to put the data collected by these technologies to use in investigations. Now, if ICE were a lawful organization under a sane administration, I would have less pause, but given what we have seen so far, I expect it to be used to target migrants, then political dissents.
The technology news site I frequent, HackerNews, one commentor referred to the weaponization of ad tracking:
I love this. All these years I’ve been a privacy enthusiast lunatic, because ofc no-one has anything to hide. Now ad trackers are being potentially weaponised by the govt, and ofc no-one could have foreseen that. This is absolute gold. Will be patiently waiting for recall install’s to start sending screenshots to ice of your private documents and comm’s.
This abuse is why it’s important to block ads in your browser at all times, and why I aim to install a privacy-conscious browser like LibreWolf that uses Ublock Origin to block ads for all my customers. It’s now a matter of survival because, at some point, this tracking will be used by bad actors (People aligned with authoritarian goals) to profile people in ways we never imagined.
In 2024, Google Chrome changed its plug-in ecosystem. You cannot use ad blockers the way they were intended with their new plug-in system, which essentially removes your ability to protect yourself from ad networks that can weaponize your data against you.
More and more technology is being weaponized against people to create systems that make it easier to track and silence dissent. As this problem gets worse, it’s going to be more important than ever to have a strategy to avoid data collection across all kinds of services and products.