Habitual gamblers have been targeted by online advertising database

An online advertising database used to target specific groups of consumers includes Australian categories for “heavy TAB gamblers” and people who have gambled “in the last seven days”.

While advertising gambling products to adults is legal in Australia, experts said the targeting of habitual gamblers was concerning.

A dataset containing 650,000 international "audience segments" was found on Microsoft's Xandr platform by Wolfie Christl, a privacy researcher at Cracked Labs.

The online advertising database was used to target specific groups of consumers that included Australian categories for “heavy TAB gamblers” and people who have gambled “in the last seven days”.

The database had over 40 categories related to Australian gamblers, focusing on gambling and sport interests, as well as specific venues.

This discovery comes at a time when gambling advertising is facing increased scrutiny in Australia, with a parliamentary inquiry recommending a ban on online gambling ads on social media and broadcasts within three years.

Christl said it still reveals the troubling ways personal data may be traded. “Much of the data is probably inaccurate and flawed, which doesn’t make it better, because it is still used to profile and target people,” he said. “Nobody knows exactly where the data flows to and how it is used. I believe not even the data brokers themselves always know.”

Microsoft said in a statement to Guardian Australia that the document was inadvertently published on its website and was outdated.

- CyberBeat