10 ms·

How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

124 points by marioestrada 13y ago

HunterV 13y ago
One thing this shows is just how powerful Facebook could become/already is. When they connect the dots online and offline of billion user's buying information and habits they essentially can electronically understand who you are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better. Just food for thought.
- krapp 13y ago
  Oh I'm sure governments around the world have been thinking quite hard about that.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    Which is why online privacy protection laws are so important for legislatures to pass.
    - sdoering 13y ago
      And which is by the way exactly the negative incentive for governments to pass this sort of legislation, as they love to get their hands on this kind of data via legal (or pseudo-legal) means.
- sillysaurus 13y ago
  When Facebook connects the dots online and offline of billion users' buying information and habits, they essentially can electronically understand who you are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better. Why are people disturbed by this?
  - _seininn 13y ago
    If a person is well understood and their actions can be predicted, they can be manipulated. The real question is: why aren't you?
    - sillysaurus 13y ago
      If I'm manipulated into buying something that I genuinely want, then I'd be happier for it. It's not as if seeing an ad for a $100 256GB SSD would make me skip looking up the reviews for it and evaluating its performance before I buy it. It's mystifying to me why people are bothered by targeted ads. If ads become relevant to me, that'd be a wonderful thing. I'm not saying I'm right -- I'm saying I wish someone would explain why targeted advertising is evil.
      - krapp 13y ago
        People aren't bothered by the targeted ads. They're bothered by what else can be done with that vast, accumulated store of information and the network that's designed for surveillance, tracking and predicting behavior. For a lot of people, facebook is their identity. It's the way others see them and communicate with them, and their account holds a great deal of personal information which could be used to impersonate, blackmail or profile them.
      - SoftwareMaven 13y ago
        It is evil because: 1. I get no say in what information they store and use. If somebody else used my computer, that information is associated with me. 2. The more information companies have about me, the easier it is for the government to gather information without due process. 3. What is gathered about me can be stolen by somebody else. I agree that, in theory, well targeted ads are far superior to the dating ads I get on Facebook, but with zero control, transparency or accountability, I'm very uncomfortable with the amount if info they are trying to gather from me.
      - _seininn 13y ago
        > If I'm manipulated into buying something that I genuinely want, then I'd be happier for it. But do you genuinely want it? or were you _influinced_ into wanting it? It's the same principle that makes fast food advertisements so profitable for the food industry. The ads are already targeted (most people like to eat tasty food). Furthermore, if you're truly indifferent with being influenced like this, to what extent will the "influencing" remain acceptable to you? where would you draw the line?
w1ntermute 13y ago
I highly recommend Ghostery. I've been using it for quite a while now and have no complaints.
- jmspring 13y ago
  Agree, ghostery is the first thing I install (Safari/Chrome -- don't use Firefox). Only issue, a couple of banking sites I use don't play well with it. On those occasions, pause, reload, do action, reenable ghostery. I only wish Pause was on a per-tab basis.
  - nwh 13y ago
    You can whitelist websites in the main preferences, it's a tab in the "trackers" section.
  - thelibrarian 13y ago
    You can disable specific trackers on specific sites - e.g. unblock Google Analytics on your banking site, or Disqus on a favourite blog, rather than having to temporarily disable the whole extension browser-wide.
    - AgentConundrum 13y ago
      > You can disable specific trackers on specific sites Either you are incorrect, or this functionality is non-obvious. Based on recent experience, I'm leaning toward the former. When I go to edit my blocking options when a site doesn't play nice with Ghostery, I'm given options either to disable certain tracker-blocking or to disable Ghostery entirely on a given domain. There doesn't seem to be an option to stop blocking a given tracker only when its loaded from a certain site. There is one tracker I've unblocked because it breaks functionality on one site, and I'm fairly certain I've seen its effects on a different site recently as well. It doesn't seem to have unblocked that tracker only for the one site I need it disabled to use.
      - rcxdude 13y ago
clarkm 13y ago
Even though I use ghostery and provide unique email addresses to websites I don't trust, I still feel a bit uneasy about voluntarily providing my personal information to these companies just so I can "opt out". I know these sites are legitimate, and I trust the EFF; however, it still feels unnecessary. Maybe I've just been conditioned by the fake unsubscribe links found in email spam, but I don't want to accidentally give these advertisers more information than they already have. Even if they already have complete information on me (which they undoubtedly do), I don't want to provide them with unnecessary confirmation that the information they have is correct.
- dsl 13y ago
  I never understood the "fake unsubscribe" thing. In a previous life I did infrastructure consulting for people with ROSKO listings and they collected and processed every single unsubscribe. They even traded unsubscribe lists. Back then everyone was using pinks (contracts with an allowed quota of complaints per day baked in) for mailing. If you scrubbed your lists against unsubs and bounces, you got less complaints and could negotiate better rates in the future.
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    I agree, I've seen a few but not many, and when they Email me again I just mark it as spam and never see another one. Email is commanded by algorithms right now, which take a heap of hints from their users, it's seriously stupid not to unsubscribe people kind enough to unsubscribe instead of marking you as spam.
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      Last year I read an article about someone doing an experiment with unsubscribe links on a very old email address. It got loads of spam, and he clicked all the unsub links (or maybe wrote a script to do it). The amount of spam that address received decreased significantly. So whether or not the "fake unsubscribe" thing was real (my intuition says yes it was), it appears that times have changed!
troymc 13y ago
Another line of defense it to install an ad-blocker, so even if they somehow know the perfect ad to show you, you probably won't see it.
- sillysaurus 13y ago
  Another line of defense it to install an ad-blocker, so even if Facebook somehow knows the perfect ad to show you, you probably won't see it. Why wouldn't you want to see it? A perfect ad is a win for the consumer.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Depends on your definition of "perfect", there are certainly a lot of highly effective ads that persuade people to buy borderline scammy products.
  - troymc 13y ago
    A perfect ad is one I asked for, when I asked for it, like in Google or Amazon search results. I go to Facebook to check on friends. I don't want a fried-chicken billboard to appear beside the photo of my friend's new baby. It's the wrong context (even if I'm craving fried chicken).
    - chii 13y ago
      what if it was a baby shower gift? What if they managed to connect enough dots to know that this is what you want, and thus, make the sale via this channel?
      - Evbn 13y ago
        Then I can ask Facebook to show me gifts and stores my friends like, and some general listings.
      - gordaco 13y ago
        I still may not want to make the purchase via that channel. In fact, I find most important to be able to enter any web to read its content without those distractions. If I want to buy something, I'll go to any online store, thanks.
D9u 13y ago
There's always the option to delete your FB account. I went nearly 10 months without logging into FB last year, and doing so made it quite easy to delete my FB account at the beginning of this year. Regular removal of cookies, and LSO cookies, as well as clearing the browser cache, is also recommended. Then there's the ubiquitous "Connect" buttons which are spammed all across the web. Prudence dictates that we avoid connecting our logins across the net in an indiscriminate manner. Finally, there are "burner" email addresses which I use only to register with certain websites. Nearly all of the spam that makes it past my filters is from so-called "legitimate" websites. Caveat emptor.
- ordinary 13y ago
  Deleting your account does not stop Facebook from tracking you, unfortunately.
  - dmoy 13y ago
    Does Facebook actually delete stuff yet? For a long time they wouldn't delete accounts, photos, etc.
    - rfugger 13y ago
      There is no delete in the cloud.
    - lifeguard 13y ago
      No, your data is never deleted, only your account is "de-activated".
      - fnayr 13y ago
        Incorrect (currently). They allow you to delete after you deactivate, but they make you wait 14 days while deactivated in the hope you realize you need facebook.
        13y ago
sdqali 13y ago
The method I have found to stop tracking is to use /etc/hosts to block all traffic to sites that I don't want anything to do with including Facebook and their CDNs. I based it around https://github.com/leto/Util/blob/master/config/etc/hosts.block https://github.com/leto/Util/blob/master/config/etc/hosts.bl... and have added more tracker/advertisement domains as I have encountered them.
- ladzoppelin 13y ago
  Large host files really slow down browsing in Windows. Is their a solution for this besides clearing the DNS cache every hour?
  - emillon 13y ago
    You can block it on your router.
darkchasma 13y ago
Or, just don't use facebook. I'm not trying to be facetious, if you don't trust the company with your most personal information then you probably shouldn't be using their service. Because that is what they trade in.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- RexRollman 13y ago
  From what I understand, Facebook builds profiles of non-members as well, so they are still a threat.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
vidyesh 13y ago
Using Ghostery over AdBlock is good but I won't recommend using any of such tracker blocking extensions to anyone until I know they understand what it does. At times these extensions do break websites as they block some vital scripts on the site. You have to manually unblock that to make sure the site runs fine on your browser. I used Disconnect long time ago, but that time it literally broke all the tech blogs, as its blocking was very crude. The site now looks totally different and so do the screenshots, would give it a shot. Oh and by the way I use Ghostery now.
- byoogle 13y ago
  Breaking literally every tech blog would be way hard to do. :-) We've gotten literally two bug reports about broken blogs of any sort in the last year (I just checked; and both are now fixed, btw), so I assume there aren't issues anymore. But if you experience any, let me know!
  - vidyesh 13y ago
    When the Firefox extension was released ( I remember it was released as a Chrome only solution at first ), I tried and all the famous tech blogs used all possible social buttons and TC had just started with Facebook comments, so for most sites, half the page loaded and other half was stuck. The new UI looks great, defintely would give it a try. I actually have no problem with Ghostery but I like how Disconnect categories all the tracking.
    - byoogle 13y ago
      Oh yeah, our original Firefox add-on was outsourced ... and I think kind of sucked. I learned not to do that (even though the devs were and are great). Thanks a lot for the feedback on the new UI.
adityar 13y ago
if they're using hashed emails for tracking, we're pretty much clucked. There is an option in gmail that can prevent this. if your email is abcd@gmail.com, use abcd+sitename@gmail.com (gmail will ignore the stuff after the + ). You can also use . separators. Now, to keep track of that...
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Since Gmail's account name semantics are well known, the top data collecting agencies have no doubt adapted by now. Also, frustratingly, a lot of sites will break, often silently, if you give them an e-mail address with a plus symbol (e.g. it might end up in a GET request to an internal API without proper escaping, and be interpreted as a space).
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Yes, the only way to go is your own domain. Use an add-on like Virtual Identity for Thunderbird to keep track of which From address goes with which recipient. https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id (their cert seems to have expired over the weekend)
    - Evbn 13y ago
      I do wonder when/if trackers collapse all addresses on a small domain into a glob. They totally could.
- chrishepner 13y ago
  Whether this works depends on the site's email validation script: many don't allow the '+' character. Gmail filters out '.' within usernames (e.g., john.smith@gmail.com and johnsmith@gmail.com are sent to the same account), but this gives you a more limited number of options, and is even harder to keep track of!
arindone 13y ago
I've said this before and I'll say it again -- why the complaints now, when Google has been doing this for years? Essentially, they can collect your information from emails, purchasing habits & financial information from Google Wallet, income, and combine that with Google+ social data, files you put into Google drive, and you have a complete profile that's ripe for advertising.
- Evbn 13y ago
  Everything you listed is from data you inserted into Google's system, not bought from a third party. But keep digging deeper :-)
- onedev 13y ago
  I don't quite understand this either. Google have been doing this for ages and no one has said anything, but now all of a sudden its a thing? I just want people to acknowledge that what Google has been doing and what everyone else is doing is essentially the SAME THING. No reason one company should get a pass over others. Now as for whether privacy is a legitimate concern or not is another matter entirely and I think comes down to a bit of personal preference too. I for one, don't care about my privacy -- to an extent. There I said it. I don't care if Google knows that I eat somewhere or do something because it's trivial to me as long as my data is SECURE and I have fine grained privacy CONTROLS. If you give me security and control, then I'll gladly hand over my data for a useful service such as mail, or chat, or photos or whatever it may be. Privacy in 2013 is different, and we must acknowledge that. This is a new generation, a new era. If you want to stay disconnected, then you don't get to experience this new world and if that's your preference, that's perfectly fine. (note: there will always be a subset of vocal technically inclined people like many of us on the forum that will try to resist, but in the long run, we won't prevail; I have ghostery installed for the hell of it, but a large amount of people don't even know what it is). I think moving forward, every individual is going to have some type of public web presence that will be as much a part of who they are as anything else. Some parts of this presence will be private and tucked away behind anonymous usernames and private content. Other parts will be open for the world to see. To an extent, all of this is already true, but think about all the kids born from 2005 onward. They're only 8 years old now and are going to be part of the new, always connected generation (meaning, they've never known a world otherwise). Therefore I think security of data is more important than EVER. Every company should make security of user data a TOP priority. In addition, every company should provide FINE GRAINED privacy CONTROL to allow the user to decide what he/she wants to show and to whom. On the other hand, a user should expect that a web company pays its bills through targeting via user data, and should reflect upon his/her expectation of privacy on the web. The web is the new TV, but different, and more powerful, much more powerful.
jpswade 13y ago
Am I the only person who would actually prefer targeted ads based on things I might actually be interested in, rather than the crap I've been exposed to before. If you're going to use a walled garden like facebook, you expect to see walls now and again.
- Evbn 13y ago
  Since they have proven that they are awful at targeting, I don't want it. The fact is, 90% of advertising exists because the product is not worth buying in its merits. Word of mouth recommendations and independent research studies are where good jnformarion comes from. Targeting doesn't help that.
  - jpswade 13y ago
    I think every effort they make to better target is only a good thing. Attempting to block their efforts will skew their results which could lead to worse ads.
Evbn 13y ago
> product warranty cards Why hasn't the FTC shut this scam down yet?
Evbn 13y ago
> phone number Holy cow FB uses my private security tokens as a source of ads?
Eliezer 13y ago
I actively prefer ads for things I might actually be interested in purchasing. If there were an option to tell advertisers "Please show me more ads about..." I would take that option. whenever I was waffling on some purchase. Most ads suck even so - they don't actually tell me about a new feature or fact that could potentially change or spark a buying decision - but at least it's not a total waste of time. The only economically productive use-case of marketing is to lead trades to take place that would not have taken place otherwise, or higher-quality trades to take place; which can have its roots in consumer gullibility, but ideally reflects some new company telling me about a relevant product that I didn't know existed. This happens rarely. Having it happen more often sounds like a good idea to me.

124 points by marioestrada 13y ago

One thing this shows is just how powerful Facebook could become/already is. When they connect the dots online and offline of billion user's buying information and habits they essentially can electronically understand who you are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better. Just food for thought.

krapp 13y ago
Oh I'm sure governments around the world have been thinking quite hard about that.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Which is why online privacy protection laws are so important for legislatures to pass.
  - sdoering 13y ago
    And which is by the way exactly the negative incentive for governments to pass this sort of legislation, as they love to get their hands on this kind of data via legal (or pseudo-legal) means.
sillysaurus 13y ago
When Facebook connects the dots online and offline of billion users' buying information and habits, they essentially can electronically understand who you are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better. Why are people disturbed by this?
- _seininn 13y ago
  If a person is well understood and their actions can be predicted, they can be manipulated. The real question is: why aren't you?
  - sillysaurus 13y ago
    If I'm manipulated into buying something that I genuinely want, then I'd be happier for it. It's not as if seeing an ad for a $100 256GB SSD would make me skip looking up the reviews for it and evaluating its performance before I buy it. It's mystifying to me why people are bothered by targeted ads. If ads become relevant to me, that'd be a wonderful thing. I'm not saying I'm right -- I'm saying I wish someone would explain why targeted advertising is evil.
    - krapp 13y ago
      People aren't bothered by the targeted ads. They're bothered by what else can be done with that vast, accumulated store of information and the network that's designed for surveillance, tracking and predicting behavior. For a lot of people, facebook is their identity. It's the way others see them and communicate with them, and their account holds a great deal of personal information which could be used to impersonate, blackmail or profile them.
    - SoftwareMaven 13y ago
      It is evil because: 1. I get no say in what information they store and use. If somebody else used my computer, that information is associated with me. 2. The more information companies have about me, the easier it is for the government to gather information without due process. 3. What is gathered about me can be stolen by somebody else. I agree that, in theory, well targeted ads are far superior to the dating ads I get on Facebook, but with zero control, transparency or accountability, I'm very uncomfortable with the amount if info they are trying to gather from me.
    - _seininn 13y ago
      > If I'm manipulated into buying something that I genuinely want, then I'd be happier for it. But do you genuinely want it? or were you _influinced_ into wanting it? It's the same principle that makes fast food advertisements so profitable for the food industry. The ads are already targeted (most people like to eat tasty food). Furthermore, if you're truly indifferent with being influenced like this, to what extent will the "influencing" remain acceptable to you? where would you draw the line?

w1ntermute 13y ago

I highly recommend Ghostery. I've been using it for quite a while now and have no complaints.

jmspring 13y ago
Agree, ghostery is the first thing I install (Safari/Chrome -- don't use Firefox). Only issue, a couple of banking sites I use don't play well with it. On those occasions, pause, reload, do action, reenable ghostery. I only wish Pause was on a per-tab basis.
- nwh 13y ago
  You can whitelist websites in the main preferences, it's a tab in the "trackers" section.
- thelibrarian 13y ago
  You can disable specific trackers on specific sites - e.g. unblock Google Analytics on your banking site, or Disqus on a favourite blog, rather than having to temporarily disable the whole extension browser-wide.
  - AgentConundrum 13y ago
    > You can disable specific trackers on specific sites Either you are incorrect, or this functionality is non-obvious. Based on recent experience, I'm leaning toward the former. When I go to edit my blocking options when a site doesn't play nice with Ghostery, I'm given options either to disable certain tracker-blocking or to disable Ghostery entirely on a given domain. There doesn't seem to be an option to stop blocking a given tracker only when its loaded from a certain site. There is one tracker I've unblocked because it breaks functionality on one site, and I'm fairly certain I've seen its effects on a different site recently as well. It doesn't seem to have unblocked that tracker only for the one site I need it disabled to use.
    - rcxdude 13y ago

clarkm 13y ago

Even though I use ghostery and provide unique email addresses to websites I don't trust, I still feel a bit uneasy about voluntarily providing my personal information to these companies just so I can "opt out". I know these sites are legitimate, and I trust the EFF; however, it still feels unnecessary. Maybe I've just been conditioned by the fake unsubscribe links found in email spam, but I don't want to accidentally give these advertisers more information than they already have. Even if they already have complete information on me (which they undoubtedly do), I don't want to provide them with unnecessary confirmation that the information they have is correct.

dsl 13y ago
I never understood the "fake unsubscribe" thing. In a previous life I did infrastructure consulting for people with ROSKO listings and they collected and processed every single unsubscribe. They even traded unsubscribe lists. Back then everyone was using pinks (contracts with an allowed quota of complaints per day baked in) for mailing. If you scrubbed your lists against unsubs and bounces, you got less complaints and could negotiate better rates in the future.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  I agree, I've seen a few but not many, and when they Email me again I just mark it as spam and never see another one. Email is commanded by algorithms right now, which take a heap of hints from their users, it's seriously stupid not to unsubscribe people kind enough to unsubscribe instead of marking you as spam.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    Last year I read an article about someone doing an experiment with unsubscribe links on a very old email address. It got loads of spam, and he clicked all the unsub links (or maybe wrote a script to do it). The amount of spam that address received decreased significantly. So whether or not the "fake unsubscribe" thing was real (my intuition says yes it was), it appears that times have changed!

troymc 13y ago

Another line of defense it to install an ad-blocker, so even if they somehow know the perfect ad to show you, you probably won't see it.

sillysaurus 13y ago
Another line of defense it to install an ad-blocker, so even if Facebook somehow knows the perfect ad to show you, you probably won't see it. Why wouldn't you want to see it? A perfect ad is a win for the consumer.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Depends on your definition of "perfect", there are certainly a lot of highly effective ads that persuade people to buy borderline scammy products.
- troymc 13y ago
  A perfect ad is one I asked for, when I asked for it, like in Google or Amazon search results. I go to Facebook to check on friends. I don't want a fried-chicken billboard to appear beside the photo of my friend's new baby. It's the wrong context (even if I'm craving fried chicken).
  - chii 13y ago
    what if it was a baby shower gift? What if they managed to connect enough dots to know that this is what you want, and thus, make the sale via this channel?
    - Evbn 13y ago
      Then I can ask Facebook to show me gifts and stores my friends like, and some general listings.
    - gordaco 13y ago
      I still may not want to make the purchase via that channel. In fact, I find most important to be able to enter any web to read its content without those distractions. If I want to buy something, I'll go to any online store, thanks.

D9u 13y ago

There's always the option to delete your FB account. I went nearly 10 months without logging into FB last year, and doing so made it quite easy to delete my FB account at the beginning of this year. Regular removal of cookies, and LSO cookies, as well as clearing the browser cache, is also recommended. Then there's the ubiquitous "Connect" buttons which are spammed all across the web. Prudence dictates that we avoid connecting our logins across the net in an indiscriminate manner. Finally, there are "burner" email addresses which I use only to register with certain websites. Nearly all of the spam that makes it past my filters is from so-called "legitimate" websites. Caveat emptor.

ordinary 13y ago
Deleting your account does not stop Facebook from tracking you, unfortunately.
- dmoy 13y ago
  Does Facebook actually delete stuff yet? For a long time they wouldn't delete accounts, photos, etc.
  - rfugger 13y ago
    There is no delete in the cloud.
  - lifeguard 13y ago
    No, your data is never deleted, only your account is "de-activated".
    - fnayr 13y ago
      Incorrect (currently). They allow you to delete after you deactivate, but they make you wait 14 days while deactivated in the hope you realize you need facebook.
      - 13y ago

sdqali 13y ago

The method I have found to stop tracking is to use /etc/hosts to block all traffic to sites that I don't want anything to do with including Facebook and their CDNs. I based it around https://github.com/leto/Util/blob/master/config/etc/hosts.block https://github.com/leto/Util/blob/master/config/etc/hosts.bl... and have added more tracker/advertisement domains as I have encountered them.

ladzoppelin 13y ago
Large host files really slow down browsing in Windows. Is their a solution for this besides clearing the DNS cache every hour?
- emillon 13y ago
  You can block it on your router.

darkchasma 13y ago

Or, just don't use facebook. I'm not trying to be facetious, if you don't trust the company with your most personal information then you probably shouldn't be using their service. Because that is what they trade in.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
RexRollman 13y ago
From what I understand, Facebook builds profiles of non-members as well, so they are still a threat.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

vidyesh 13y ago

Using Ghostery over AdBlock is good but I won't recommend using any of such tracker blocking extensions to anyone until I know they understand what it does. At times these extensions do break websites as they block some vital scripts on the site. You have to manually unblock that to make sure the site runs fine on your browser. I used Disconnect long time ago, but that time it literally broke all the tech blogs, as its blocking was very crude. The site now looks totally different and so do the screenshots, would give it a shot. Oh and by the way I use Ghostery now.

byoogle 13y ago
Breaking literally every tech blog would be way hard to do. :-) We've gotten literally two bug reports about broken blogs of any sort in the last year (I just checked; and both are now fixed, btw), so I assume there aren't issues anymore. But if you experience any, let me know!
- vidyesh 13y ago
  When the Firefox extension was released ( I remember it was released as a Chrome only solution at first ), I tried and all the famous tech blogs used all possible social buttons and TC had just started with Facebook comments, so for most sites, half the page loaded and other half was stuck. The new UI looks great, defintely would give it a try. I actually have no problem with Ghostery but I like how Disconnect categories all the tracking.
  - byoogle 13y ago
    Oh yeah, our original Firefox add-on was outsourced ... and I think kind of sucked. I learned not to do that (even though the devs were and are great). Thanks a lot for the feedback on the new UI.

adityar 13y ago

if they're using hashed emails for tracking, we're pretty much clucked. There is an option in gmail that can prevent this. if your email is abcd@gmail.com, use abcd+sitename@gmail.com (gmail will ignore the stuff after the + ). You can also use . separators. Now, to keep track of that...

nitrogen 13y ago
Since Gmail's account name semantics are well known, the top data collecting agencies have no doubt adapted by now. Also, frustratingly, a lot of sites will break, often silently, if you give them an e-mail address with a plus symbol (e.g. it might end up in a GET request to an internal API without proper escaping, and be interpreted as a space).
- Amadou 13y ago
  Yes, the only way to go is your own domain. Use an add-on like Virtual Identity for Thunderbird to keep track of which From address goes with which recipient. https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id (their cert seems to have expired over the weekend)
  - Evbn 13y ago
    I do wonder when/if trackers collapse all addresses on a small domain into a glob. They totally could.
chrishepner 13y ago
Whether this works depends on the site's email validation script: many don't allow the '+' character. Gmail filters out '.' within usernames (e.g., john.smith@gmail.com and johnsmith@gmail.com are sent to the same account), but this gives you a more limited number of options, and is even harder to keep track of!

arindone 13y ago

I've said this before and I'll say it again -- why the complaints now, when Google has been doing this for years? Essentially, they can collect your information from emails, purchasing habits & financial information from Google Wallet, income, and combine that with Google+ social data, files you put into Google drive, and you have a complete profile that's ripe for advertising.

Evbn 13y ago
Everything you listed is from data you inserted into Google's system, not bought from a third party. But keep digging deeper :-)
onedev 13y ago
I don't quite understand this either. Google have been doing this for ages and no one has said anything, but now all of a sudden its a thing? I just want people to acknowledge that what Google has been doing and what everyone else is doing is essentially the SAME THING. No reason one company should get a pass over others. Now as for whether privacy is a legitimate concern or not is another matter entirely and I think comes down to a bit of personal preference too. I for one, don't care about my privacy -- to an extent. There I said it. I don't care if Google knows that I eat somewhere or do something because it's trivial to me as long as my data is SECURE and I have fine grained privacy CONTROLS. If you give me security and control, then I'll gladly hand over my data for a useful service such as mail, or chat, or photos or whatever it may be. Privacy in 2013 is different, and we must acknowledge that. This is a new generation, a new era. If you want to stay disconnected, then you don't get to experience this new world and if that's your preference, that's perfectly fine. (note: there will always be a subset of vocal technically inclined people like many of us on the forum that will try to resist, but in the long run, we won't prevail; I have ghostery installed for the hell of it, but a large amount of people don't even know what it is). I think moving forward, every individual is going to have some type of public web presence that will be as much a part of who they are as anything else. Some parts of this presence will be private and tucked away behind anonymous usernames and private content. Other parts will be open for the world to see. To an extent, all of this is already true, but think about all the kids born from 2005 onward. They're only 8 years old now and are going to be part of the new, always connected generation (meaning, they've never known a world otherwise). Therefore I think security of data is more important than EVER. Every company should make security of user data a TOP priority. In addition, every company should provide FINE GRAINED privacy CONTROL to allow the user to decide what he/she wants to show and to whom. On the other hand, a user should expect that a web company pays its bills through targeting via user data, and should reflect upon his/her expectation of privacy on the web. The web is the new TV, but different, and more powerful, much more powerful.

jpswade 13y ago

Am I the only person who would actually prefer targeted ads based on things I might actually be interested in, rather than the crap I've been exposed to before. If you're going to use a walled garden like facebook, you expect to see walls now and again.

Evbn 13y ago
Since they have proven that they are awful at targeting, I don't want it. The fact is, 90% of advertising exists because the product is not worth buying in its merits. Word of mouth recommendations and independent research studies are where good jnformarion comes from. Targeting doesn't help that.
- jpswade 13y ago
  I think every effort they make to better target is only a good thing. Attempting to block their efforts will skew their results which could lead to worse ads.

Evbn 13y ago

> product warranty cards Why hasn't the FTC shut this scam down yet?

Evbn 13y ago

> phone number Holy cow FB uses my private security tokens as a source of ads?

Eliezer 13y ago

I actively prefer ads for things I might actually be interested in purchasing. If there were an option to tell advertisers "Please show me more ads about..." I would take that option. whenever I was waffling on some purchase. Most ads suck even so - they don't actually tell me about a new feature or fact that could potentially change or spark a buying decision - but at least it's not a total waste of time. The only economically productive use-case of marketing is to lead trades to take place that would not have taken place otherwise, or higher-quality trades to take place; which can have its roots in consumer gullibility, but ideally reflects some new company telling me about a relevant product that I didn't know existed. This happens rarely. Having it happen more often sounds like a good idea to me.