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Which in turn is a good thing, right? Because people seem to get pooled together and the ads aren't clever enough to distinguish.
by shoto_io 5y ago
Which in turn is a good thing, right? Because people seem to get pooled together and the ads aren't clever enough to distinguish.
- politelemon 5y agoQuite interesting, I hadn't even thought of it this way. In a way, VPNs could be pretty useful in this regard, as you share the same IP as several other people. So you'd be subject to irrelevant ads about the same topic that most of them are searching for.
- SyzygistSix 5y agoI assume that even though I use a vpn and have ads blocked almost completely, my browser is fingerprinted and my phone tracked so that I'm giving valuable data almost all the time anyway.
- bpodgursky 5y agoLot of advertising targeting doesn't bother going below the household level anyway, which IP sorta-kinda corresponds to.
- amelius 5y agoWhy is this a good thing? If I follow someone to a number of different locations with Wifi, then I can learn a lot about them by using a simple intersection of the ads I'm now getting. For instance, if I get ads about diapers in all locations, then I have a strong reason to conclude that the person I'm following is pregnant or has a baby.
- shoto_io 5y agoIf you follow someone that closely from location to location you won't need to cross check your ads to learn stuff about them, I guess.
- erhk 5y agoWell it sounds like one router will tell me about toothpaste so why not diapers
- amelius 5y agoWell, there is this classic example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
- modeless 5y agoI don't really consider it a good thing. I think VPNs should be the default for everyone. But yes, it means that ad networks aren't surreptitiously listening to your spoken conversations. They are just doing the most brain-dead obvious correlations.
- afterburner 5y agoIt's bad that they're trying to track you in any way.