in accuracy when it comes to creating a precise profile of people based on information available on the Internet. This allows advertisers to carry out their campaigns more accurately, i.e. to personalize them with greater precision. Drawing the line between justifiable and ethically questionable advertising is not necessarily easy. Yet there is now a term, one not lacking in acuity, for ads like those used by ITT: “predatory advertising.”
What is not new is the unfavorable relationship between what people must pay for the product and the benefit they derive from it. The novelty is the targeted, algorithmically scaled search for customers: The computer programs parse countless profiles for people who are particularly susceptible due to a personal emergency or weakness, or who are inexperienced, because they recently arrived in the country. Such people often take out a loan to pay for tuition fees – and find themselves saddled with considerable debt for an exam that is virtually worthless.
The enormous “successes” of such marketing strategies have prompted authorities in the US to take action. ITT has now closed its doors after oversight agencies and public prosecutors spent years investigating its recruitment practices, among other activities.14
Moreover, providers of short-term loans can no longer operate unimpeded: In 2016, Google stopped allowing advertising for these types of loans. Too many people had fallen for the usurious offers, and Google was forced to act.15 Anyone in the US who entered “need money fast” or “can’t pay rent” into the search engine before the ban was sure to see, shortly afterwards, advertising for a loan with a scandalously high interest rate, one that was repayable within a few weeks. Yet even the new, stricter directive will not thwart providers of short-term credit. They simply hide behind a second company, which does not offer loans itself and which can therefore run advertisements and resell contact addresses of people in need of money. These companies even reach users in US states where short-term loans are prohibited by law.16
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