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How to See What the Internet Knows About You

310 points by alexkavon 9y ago

j_s 9y ago
Michael Bazzell is an expert on (both sides of) Open Source Intelligence (OSINT: data collected from publicly available sources). https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/ https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/ He maintains a virtual machine "pre-configured for online investigators" and a podcast. https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/index.html https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/index.html
- inovica 9y ago
  Thank you. Never seen this before - just ordered one of his books.
dublinben 9y ago
This site also goes into a lot of detail about the digital tracks you leave online, and how to minimize them: https://myshadow.org/ https://myshadow.org/
komali2 9y ago
>start with this neat and medium-scary site, which our friends at Gizmodo flagged, that shows you everything your browser knows about you the second you open it. (clickclickclick.click) "Subject has entered the website. Subject has 4 cores..." followed by a bunch of notes about my mouse moving around, or me making the window inactive. Hardly terrifying.
- hmhrex 9y ago
  Although very fun. It also grabs way more data as time goes on. And it's a pretty interesting little art project.
- i2shar 9y ago
  > Here’s another one. The second link that follows that one (http://webkay.robinlinus.com/ http://webkay.robinlinus.com/) really terrified me. I had no idea my private network hosts (192.168.X.X) or my private IP address could be scanned by a random webpage. Or the fact that the webpage could find out my laptop was charging with x% percent charge in real time, or the make and model of my machine and GPU. The geo location accuracy of my ip was also scarily accurate. All this when running in incognito with ad blockers. That is very close to being PII.
  - drewmol 9y ago
    Thanks for this link, reminded me to install noscript on my Android/Firefox install!
    - propogandist 9y ago
      no script's not very useful anymore for desktop, you need something like uMatrix for the modern web
      - i2shar 9y ago
        I researched and installed uMatrix immediately, but (due respect to the creator) the application is so hard to use and broke several web pages. I also installed WebRTC Leak Prevent Tool that helped a little.
        omnifischer 9y ago
        Disable all these preferences from firefox! https://github.com/TheCreeper/PrivacyFox https://github.com/TheCreeper/PrivacyFox Add: https://github.com/straytachyon/dnsmasq_ad_block_script https://github.com/straytachyon/dnsmasq_ad_block_script Add2: You can even block select corp: https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists Add3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052
      - yborg 9y ago
losteric 9y ago
Is the issue ad targeting, or data collection? For me it's the latter. This is what Google thinks I like: http://imgur.com/a/g8Q7l http://imgur.com/a/g8Q7l - reasonably accurate, and I don't care if it's public or used for targeting non-intrusive ads. I like those topics, I buy things, go ahead and show me your products. My objection is over the data used to learn those interests. I don't want Google tracking my search and page views across the internet, I don't want my credit card company tracking my purchase history, and I certainly don't want my ISP/phone provider tracking my "metadata". I feel like this article glossed over that aspect. Google's "Ad Personalization" page controls what Google uses, not what it knows. In this age of state, corporate, and foreign surveillance/hacking, I'm far more concerned about the latter.
owlninja 9y ago
These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hours each way? The ads I always see just never seem that smart given the terabytes of data that everyone supposedly has on me. They really just seem to reflect my search history.
- Swizec 9y ago
  Hint: they don't care. It works well enough. I use remarketing and it definitely annoys some people and they complain that I'm following them around. But you know what? They buy. Without remarketing they forget. I would love to turn it off after they do buy, but it's too hard to configure and hey, it reminds them to actually use the thing they bought. Customers are great, but only users tell their friends,
  - bdamm 9y ago
    The better ad would market the product your friend just bought to you. The privacy concerns are enormous, but regardless, the data is there today and I'd be surprised if it isn't already at work.
    - Swizec 9y ago
      Facebook has a "People who liked your page and their friends" audience option for ads. Another great one is "lookalike audience based on LTV". So you only advertise to people who are like your biggest customers.
  - iamnothere 9y ago
    Your comment explains something crucial about targeted advertising that other people often fail to understand. The ad tech companies provide a platform for advertising, but it is up to the user (the advertiser) to configure and use the platform correctly. Often, advertisers may configure their targeting in ways that are suboptimal. Or, their e-commerce platform may not be properly set up to record conversions and associate them with targets. (Depending on the platform, they may not even have that option.) Poorly configured ad targeting happens just as often as poorly configured firewalls, servers, Wordpress installs, cloud deployments, etc... probably more often since the consequences aren't as dire. (Not a fan of targeted ads either, but I often see people complaining about post-purchase targeted ads as if this is a universal problem. So much depends on the specific platforms involved, the skill levels and intentions of the many different ad buyers on each platform, and so on. Results will vary.)
jcoffland 9y ago
Most of what the article complains about can be solved with an ad blocker. The rest by staying off of Facebook.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Staying off Facebook means committing social semi-suicide for a lot of people. It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, family members in distant places, and several sociopolitical communities of which I'm a part. For many people it's a necessity, and other channels like email etc. are far less efficient precisely because they don't leverage the networking effects. This advise is like telling someone who's worried about toxins in their food to eat less of it.
  - OJFord 9y ago
    > It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, Which should be recognised as madness in itself. Hopefully you're mistaken, and it's merely one such channel.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      'Primary' implies at least a secondary, not a unity. My local councilmember tends to respond within minutes or hours to community concerns raised through Facebook, vsa day or longer via email. Given the democratic nature of the position, being speedily accessible/accountable via social media seems entirely appropriate, not to mention efficient. I don't like that the dominant social media platform is a privately owned commercial operation, but absent an accessible federated open source social media tool with significant network effects, that's what we've got.
      - OJFord 9y ago
        Yes, I think Facebook being the primary channel - however many others there are - is mad.
  - 9y ago
Jimmie_Rustle 9y ago
Why is this on HN lol
- sctb 9y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post civilly and substantively in the future.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  HN people might want to share some of these test sites to their non-technical friends.
jasonrhaas 9y ago
I recently got tired of all the creepy targeted advertising, so I hit the nuclear option. Turned off all targeted ads on all social networks, cleared all cookies, all search histories, and installed the Disconnect Chrome extension. Also disabled all images in my email to stop those email trackers. I've always used an ad-blocker but I don't think that stops the data collection aspects of it. I've always known this is happening and previously I didn't care because you figure if you are going to get advertised to, why not make it relevant, right? Well, it's more complex than that, here are the problems I have with this kind of data tracking: 1. Data can we used against you in ways you might not understand or have considered. 2. It's a waste of money and resources. Think of all the extra bandwidth, server space, human time, that is spent on just trying to sell people more shit. 3. I don't like the idea of people making money off my data without my knowledge. 4. Targeted ads might distract me and cause me to waste extra time online. Bottom line -- I have a moral objection to the whole idea of it, and will do everything I can do stop it.
- andmarios 9y ago
  I tried it a couple years ago with Google and once targeted ads were off, I would get many ads about gay dating sites. Once I turned targeted ads on again, these ads disappeared.
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    I had a similar experience, but it was single women, and there was no way to ask Google to stop showing me those types of ads. At the very least allow me to block adult advertisements. Maybe it's on purpose...
    - johansch 9y ago
      Maybe no-one ever made that call, and it's all just based on the results of continously running automated and fuzzed A/B experiments.
    - keithpeter 9y ago
      With me it is retirement planning... I am in that age range. I've just taken to either switching javascript off or using one of those hosts files that blocks most stuff.
mirimir 9y ago
Adversaries only know what you let them. But this article does little more than rehash well-known clickbait. And it offers little useful coaching.
esnard 9y ago
Have I been pwned[0] is missing from this list, and is an awesome tool to check whether some of your information have leaked in the past. Passwords are, in my opinion, way more valuable than browser history. [0]: https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/
- mikehain 9y ago
  Thanks for this site. I think the Snapchat breach finally explains why I've been getting so many scam phone calls in the past few years.
commenter98456 9y ago
Why is targeted advertising acceptable? it is not ok for a seller to stalk potential buyers. I get that everyone has accepted this as a "fact of life" but consider how TV advertising was done. The advertisement is tailored to the show you are watching and the time of day. In other words, if I'm on a tech blog, advertise to me tech products, if I'm reading a cooking recipe, advertise kitchenware,grocery delivery and the like. As a consumer, I am more likely to remember an advertised product if the AD is within the context of the web page I'm visiting. Target pages not users! not even as precise as I mentioned above but statistical approximations can be made, much like with TV ads (for example, "ycombinator visitors are likely to buy artisnal cookware compared to people visiting nytimes" ) The problem at the end of the day is that users in general don't like to be tracked. some may sacrfice the privacy for the convenince but most will prefer if the sacrifice wasn't neccesary. I think better advertising solutions are what is needed. It is unfortunate how much money is instead spent on technology to stalk users, as if using a complex computer system makes it more accpetable or ethical.
- criddell 9y ago
  I'm fine with certain kinds of targeted advertising. For example, if I search for "subaru" on Google, it makes sense for the ads on the page to be for cars and local car dealers. Other than that, I think the online ad industry is almost entirely built on lies and half-truths. Ads support a lot of sites I visit, but I think what it costs me (in computer resources and loss of privacy) is no longer reasonable. I run with an ad blocker all the time now. Mostly I object to the tracking, not the ads.
- woobar 9y ago
  TV advertising was targeted too. They used Nielsen data to identify potential audience (white males, 40-50 y.o., middle class income) and show ads targeting this demo.
  - commenter98456 9y ago
    TV ads targetted demographics not individuals. I'm fine with that,that's actually what I'm promoting. targetting of demographics based on the content being viewed (as oppose to tracking information on the individual viewing it)
whatsmyhandle 9y ago
I generally consider targeted ads to be relatively harmless, with one major recent exception: I'm starting to shop for an engagement ring, but since I live with my GF I have to do online research in Incognito mode so ads don't ruin what I hope to be a surprise someday. File this under "things peeps didn't have to worry about 10-15 years ago"
- OJFord 9y ago
  Careful, 'incognito' mode doesn't store cookies, but it's not a VPN, or otherwise masking your IP address or location. (Obviously, it also doesn't stop tracking based on being logged into a Google account either for example, but I assume you thought of that!)
mungoid 9y ago
It seems so strange to me that there is such an ever increasing push to get people to click ads when I can't tell you a single person I know that ever actually clicks one on purpose. If I see an ad for something I just search it instead because I don't trust ads.. Except for one time years ago when I saw an ad on my own site for a drawing tablet and getting my account suspended for cheating even though I actually bought the tablet. Decided then I'm never gonna do ads on any of my sites. I think the advertisers care more about about manipulating companies to buy ads than actually increasing that companies sales.
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  I have clicked ads. A lot of people do- if they're relevant and right there we click them.
  - mungoid 9y ago
    Oh yeah, I definitely know people do. There wouldn't be so much advertising out there if visitors didn't click them. I'm just generally a little overly suspicious about ads because they can be 'phishy'. That and, like others have commented already, the ads i see are for things I recently bought so I have no need to buy them again soon.
- _rpd 9y ago
  It sounds tautological, but ads are designed for the type of people that click ads. This is a far larger portion of the population than you might think. For example, consider that the first 3 links on a search page receive over 50% of all clicks. The first 5 links receive 67% of all clicks. Only 9% of all users view the second page of search results.
telesilla 9y ago
Anecdote: I'm having dinner last night with a couple at their house and I'm advising one of them about getting an appliance for her partner - so we browse some options on her cellphone together and find something suitable. Perhaps 30 minutes later, her partner was on his cellphone and gets an ad for the same appliance, he let us know because it was something he had been wanting. They were both on the same IP address via the router. While they initially had a good laugh, it was supposed to be a surprise. It really did annoy me and when I explained what was happening they found it equally amusing and frightening. I am pretty sure both of them went to bed that night worried that the other was going to be getting ads for things they might be looking at on the internet.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
squarefoot 9y ago
" The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. " Advertising isn't just about what you really need, but also about what you will need more, or again, or earlier, because the commercial impressed the product need in your head. Neuromarketing is a science nowadays, and is pretty scary to me. Some interesting content on the topic here. http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/home http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/home
callesgg 9y ago
I find it interesting that the internet is talked about as a monolithic entity. Rather than as a bunch of different services and communities.
pavement 9y ago
Please sign in to see what the internet knows about you. Uh, actually, that's what I tell the internet about myself, for the most part. It doesn't really impress me when I approach the internet and introduce myself by name. Of course the internet is going to remember me, if I permit my cookies and request parameters and IP address linger. Much more interesting is when the internet makes my identity without my having volunteered anything. Oh well.
jszymborski 9y ago
Here's my "completely not ergonomic but entirely satisfying if silent protest is your thing" solution: - NoScript [0], First defence. Breaks 30% of sites, but you can selectively enable local scripts to ameliorate that. - Self-Destructing Cookies [1], We all need cookies for logging in to things and etc..., but once we've closed the tab, we shouldn't have to keep those cookies with us. This means you have to log-in more often, but I prefer that. Prevents people from seeing your email/facebook/etc... when you're still logged in. - uBlock Origin [2], You'll occasionally need to allow scripts you don't like because they're required for the proper presentation of the website. In those cases, you can depend on uBlock to get rid of awful trackers. - HTTPSEverywhere [3], Because snoopers aren't always outside your network. - DuckDuckGo as default search engine [4] and not-Google Chrome as your default browser, At the very least, you're not supporting the worst privacy offender on the net. - Non-ad-supported/privacy-oriented service. In the paid category (recommended), I suggest mailbox.org, due to their track record and founding principles. In the free(-ish) category, ProtonMail.ch and tutanota.com. - Clear Cookies/History on Browser Exit - Forbid Third-Party Cookies - And because I believe in magical faeries, DoNotTrack set to True [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src... [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywhere/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywh... [4] https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com

310 points by alexkavon 9y ago

j_s 9y ago

Michael Bazzell is an expert on (both sides of) Open Source Intelligence (OSINT: data collected from publicly available sources). https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/ https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/ He maintains a virtual machine "pre-configured for online investigators" and a podcast. https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/index.html https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/index.html

inovica 9y ago
Thank you. Never seen this before - just ordered one of his books.

dublinben 9y ago

This site also goes into a lot of detail about the digital tracks you leave online, and how to minimize them: https://myshadow.org/ https://myshadow.org/

komali2 9y ago

>start with this neat and medium-scary site, which our friends at Gizmodo flagged, that shows you everything your browser knows about you the second you open it. (clickclickclick.click) "Subject has entered the website. Subject has 4 cores..." followed by a bunch of notes about my mouse moving around, or me making the window inactive. Hardly terrifying.

hmhrex 9y ago
Although very fun. It also grabs way more data as time goes on. And it's a pretty interesting little art project.
i2shar 9y ago
> Here’s another one. The second link that follows that one (http://webkay.robinlinus.com/ http://webkay.robinlinus.com/) really terrified me. I had no idea my private network hosts (192.168.X.X) or my private IP address could be scanned by a random webpage. Or the fact that the webpage could find out my laptop was charging with x% percent charge in real time, or the make and model of my machine and GPU. The geo location accuracy of my ip was also scarily accurate. All this when running in incognito with ad blockers. That is very close to being PII.
- drewmol 9y ago
  Thanks for this link, reminded me to install noscript on my Android/Firefox install!
  - propogandist 9y ago
    no script's not very useful anymore for desktop, you need something like uMatrix for the modern web
    - i2shar 9y ago
      I researched and installed uMatrix immediately, but (due respect to the creator) the application is so hard to use and broke several web pages. I also installed WebRTC Leak Prevent Tool that helped a little.
      - omnifischer 9y ago
        Disable all these preferences from firefox! https://github.com/TheCreeper/PrivacyFox https://github.com/TheCreeper/PrivacyFox Add: https://github.com/straytachyon/dnsmasq_ad_block_script https://github.com/straytachyon/dnsmasq_ad_block_script Add2: You can even block select corp: https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists Add3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052
    - yborg 9y ago

losteric 9y ago

Is the issue ad targeting, or data collection? For me it's the latter. This is what Google thinks I like: http://imgur.com/a/g8Q7l http://imgur.com/a/g8Q7l - reasonably accurate, and I don't care if it's public or used for targeting non-intrusive ads. I like those topics, I buy things, go ahead and show me your products. My objection is over the data used to learn those interests. I don't want Google tracking my search and page views across the internet, I don't want my credit card company tracking my purchase history, and I certainly don't want my ISP/phone provider tracking my "metadata". I feel like this article glossed over that aspect. Google's "Ad Personalization" page controls what Google uses, not what it knows. In this age of state, corporate, and foreign surveillance/hacking, I'm far more concerned about the latter.

owlninja 9y ago

These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hours each way? The ads I always see just never seem that smart given the terabytes of data that everyone supposedly has on me. They really just seem to reflect my search history.

Swizec 9y ago
Hint: they don't care. It works well enough. I use remarketing and it definitely annoys some people and they complain that I'm following them around. But you know what? They buy. Without remarketing they forget. I would love to turn it off after they do buy, but it's too hard to configure and hey, it reminds them to actually use the thing they bought. Customers are great, but only users tell their friends,
- bdamm 9y ago
  The better ad would market the product your friend just bought to you. The privacy concerns are enormous, but regardless, the data is there today and I'd be surprised if it isn't already at work.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    Facebook has a "People who liked your page and their friends" audience option for ads. Another great one is "lookalike audience based on LTV". So you only advertise to people who are like your biggest customers.
- iamnothere 9y ago
  Your comment explains something crucial about targeted advertising that other people often fail to understand. The ad tech companies provide a platform for advertising, but it is up to the user (the advertiser) to configure and use the platform correctly. Often, advertisers may configure their targeting in ways that are suboptimal. Or, their e-commerce platform may not be properly set up to record conversions and associate them with targets. (Depending on the platform, they may not even have that option.) Poorly configured ad targeting happens just as often as poorly configured firewalls, servers, Wordpress installs, cloud deployments, etc... probably more often since the consequences aren't as dire. (Not a fan of targeted ads either, but I often see people complaining about post-purchase targeted ads as if this is a universal problem. So much depends on the specific platforms involved, the skill levels and intentions of the many different ad buyers on each platform, and so on. Results will vary.)

jcoffland 9y ago

Most of what the article complains about can be solved with an ad blocker. The rest by staying off of Facebook.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Staying off Facebook means committing social semi-suicide for a lot of people. It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, family members in distant places, and several sociopolitical communities of which I'm a part. For many people it's a necessity, and other channels like email etc. are far less efficient precisely because they don't leverage the networking effects. This advise is like telling someone who's worried about toxins in their food to eat less of it.
- OJFord 9y ago
  > It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, Which should be recognised as madness in itself. Hopefully you're mistaken, and it's merely one such channel.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    'Primary' implies at least a secondary, not a unity. My local councilmember tends to respond within minutes or hours to community concerns raised through Facebook, vsa day or longer via email. Given the democratic nature of the position, being speedily accessible/accountable via social media seems entirely appropriate, not to mention efficient. I don't like that the dominant social media platform is a privately owned commercial operation, but absent an accessible federated open source social media tool with significant network effects, that's what we've got.
    - OJFord 9y ago
      Yes, I think Facebook being the primary channel - however many others there are - is mad.
- 9y ago

Jimmie_Rustle 9y ago

Why is this on HN lol

sctb 9y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post civilly and substantively in the future.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
HN people might want to share some of these test sites to their non-technical friends.

jasonrhaas 9y ago

I recently got tired of all the creepy targeted advertising, so I hit the nuclear option. Turned off all targeted ads on all social networks, cleared all cookies, all search histories, and installed the Disconnect Chrome extension. Also disabled all images in my email to stop those email trackers. I've always used an ad-blocker but I don't think that stops the data collection aspects of it. I've always known this is happening and previously I didn't care because you figure if you are going to get advertised to, why not make it relevant, right? Well, it's more complex than that, here are the problems I have with this kind of data tracking: 1. Data can we used against you in ways you might not understand or have considered. 2. It's a waste of money and resources. Think of all the extra bandwidth, server space, human time, that is spent on just trying to sell people more shit. 3. I don't like the idea of people making money off my data without my knowledge. 4. Targeted ads might distract me and cause me to waste extra time online. Bottom line -- I have a moral objection to the whole idea of it, and will do everything I can do stop it.

andmarios 9y ago
I tried it a couple years ago with Google and once targeted ads were off, I would get many ads about gay dating sites. Once I turned targeted ads on again, these ads disappeared.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  I had a similar experience, but it was single women, and there was no way to ask Google to stop showing me those types of ads. At the very least allow me to block adult advertisements. Maybe it's on purpose...
  - johansch 9y ago
    Maybe no-one ever made that call, and it's all just based on the results of continously running automated and fuzzed A/B experiments.
  - keithpeter 9y ago
    With me it is retirement planning... I am in that age range. I've just taken to either switching javascript off or using one of those hosts files that blocks most stuff.

mirimir 9y ago

Adversaries only know what you let them. But this article does little more than rehash well-known clickbait. And it offers little useful coaching.

esnard 9y ago

Have I been pwned[0] is missing from this list, and is an awesome tool to check whether some of your information have leaked in the past. Passwords are, in my opinion, way more valuable than browser history. [0]: https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/

mikehain 9y ago
Thanks for this site. I think the Snapchat breach finally explains why I've been getting so many scam phone calls in the past few years.

commenter98456 9y ago

Why is targeted advertising acceptable? it is not ok for a seller to stalk potential buyers. I get that everyone has accepted this as a "fact of life" but consider how TV advertising was done. The advertisement is tailored to the show you are watching and the time of day. In other words, if I'm on a tech blog, advertise to me tech products, if I'm reading a cooking recipe, advertise kitchenware,grocery delivery and the like. As a consumer, I am more likely to remember an advertised product if the AD is within the context of the web page I'm visiting. Target pages not users! not even as precise as I mentioned above but statistical approximations can be made, much like with TV ads (for example, "ycombinator visitors are likely to buy artisnal cookware compared to people visiting nytimes" ) The problem at the end of the day is that users in general don't like to be tracked. some may sacrfice the privacy for the convenince but most will prefer if the sacrifice wasn't neccesary. I think better advertising solutions are what is needed. It is unfortunate how much money is instead spent on technology to stalk users, as if using a complex computer system makes it more accpetable or ethical.

criddell 9y ago
I'm fine with certain kinds of targeted advertising. For example, if I search for "subaru" on Google, it makes sense for the ads on the page to be for cars and local car dealers. Other than that, I think the online ad industry is almost entirely built on lies and half-truths. Ads support a lot of sites I visit, but I think what it costs me (in computer resources and loss of privacy) is no longer reasonable. I run with an ad blocker all the time now. Mostly I object to the tracking, not the ads.
woobar 9y ago
TV advertising was targeted too. They used Nielsen data to identify potential audience (white males, 40-50 y.o., middle class income) and show ads targeting this demo.
- commenter98456 9y ago
  TV ads targetted demographics not individuals. I'm fine with that,that's actually what I'm promoting. targetting of demographics based on the content being viewed (as oppose to tracking information on the individual viewing it)

whatsmyhandle 9y ago

I generally consider targeted ads to be relatively harmless, with one major recent exception: I'm starting to shop for an engagement ring, but since I live with my GF I have to do online research in Incognito mode so ads don't ruin what I hope to be a surprise someday. File this under "things peeps didn't have to worry about 10-15 years ago"

OJFord 9y ago
Careful, 'incognito' mode doesn't store cookies, but it's not a VPN, or otherwise masking your IP address or location. (Obviously, it also doesn't stop tracking based on being logged into a Google account either for example, but I assume you thought of that!)

mungoid 9y ago

It seems so strange to me that there is such an ever increasing push to get people to click ads when I can't tell you a single person I know that ever actually clicks one on purpose. If I see an ad for something I just search it instead because I don't trust ads.. Except for one time years ago when I saw an ad on my own site for a drawing tablet and getting my account suspended for cheating even though I actually bought the tablet. Decided then I'm never gonna do ads on any of my sites. I think the advertisers care more about about manipulating companies to buy ads than actually increasing that companies sales.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
I have clicked ads. A lot of people do- if they're relevant and right there we click them.
- mungoid 9y ago
  Oh yeah, I definitely know people do. There wouldn't be so much advertising out there if visitors didn't click them. I'm just generally a little overly suspicious about ads because they can be 'phishy'. That and, like others have commented already, the ads i see are for things I recently bought so I have no need to buy them again soon.
_rpd 9y ago
It sounds tautological, but ads are designed for the type of people that click ads. This is a far larger portion of the population than you might think. For example, consider that the first 3 links on a search page receive over 50% of all clicks. The first 5 links receive 67% of all clicks. Only 9% of all users view the second page of search results.

telesilla 9y ago

Anecdote: I'm having dinner last night with a couple at their house and I'm advising one of them about getting an appliance for her partner - so we browse some options on her cellphone together and find something suitable. Perhaps 30 minutes later, her partner was on his cellphone and gets an ad for the same appliance, he let us know because it was something he had been wanting. They were both on the same IP address via the router. While they initially had a good laugh, it was supposed to be a surprise. It really did annoy me and when I explained what was happening they found it equally amusing and frightening. I am pretty sure both of them went to bed that night worried that the other was going to be getting ads for things they might be looking at on the internet.

deleted 9y ago

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squarefoot 9y ago

" The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. " Advertising isn't just about what you really need, but also about what you will need more, or again, or earlier, because the commercial impressed the product need in your head. Neuromarketing is a science nowadays, and is pretty scary to me. Some interesting content on the topic here. http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/home http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/home

callesgg 9y ago

I find it interesting that the internet is talked about as a monolithic entity. Rather than as a bunch of different services and communities.

pavement 9y ago

Please sign in to see what the internet knows about you. Uh, actually, that's what I tell the internet about myself, for the most part. It doesn't really impress me when I approach the internet and introduce myself by name. Of course the internet is going to remember me, if I permit my cookies and request parameters and IP address linger. Much more interesting is when the internet makes my identity without my having volunteered anything. Oh well.

jszymborski 9y ago

Here's my "completely not ergonomic but entirely satisfying if silent protest is your thing" solution: - NoScript [0], First defence. Breaks 30% of sites, but you can selectively enable local scripts to ameliorate that. - Self-Destructing Cookies [1], We all need cookies for logging in to things and etc..., but once we've closed the tab, we shouldn't have to keep those cookies with us. This means you have to log-in more often, but I prefer that. Prevents people from seeing your email/facebook/etc... when you're still logged in. - uBlock Origin [2], You'll occasionally need to allow scripts you don't like because they're required for the proper presentation of the website. In those cases, you can depend on uBlock to get rid of awful trackers. - HTTPSEverywhere [3], Because snoopers aren't always outside your network. - DuckDuckGo as default search engine [4] and not-Google Chrome as your default browser, At the very least, you're not supporting the worst privacy offender on the net. - Non-ad-supported/privacy-oriented service. In the paid category (recommended), I suggest mailbox.org, due to their track record and founding principles. In the free(-ish) category, ProtonMail.ch and tutanota.com. - Clear Cookies/History on Browser Exit - Forbid Third-Party Cookies - And because I believe in magical faeries, DoNotTrack set to True [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src... [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywhere/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywh... [4] https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com