Subverting Targetted Advertising

[Tengu]

Well, the Ads I get are all Illegal, Immoral and Fattening.

Not to mention at times Incomprehensible.

And if they are targetted...Its a crying shame they miss alltogether.

What can I do? I dislike ads, but would not mind too much if they were for something I might actualy be interested in.

 

[Broch]

I'll be honest, I prefer adds that I'm not interested in - so not tempted by. They are an absolute pain but the price we pay for this whole interweb thingy.

Where are you getting them? on this site?

 

[Janne]

Illegal, immoral, fattening.

I like to see those!

I get a bunch of ads on cars I would never buy, boring stuff like that.

 

[Bishop]

I chuckle when I get adverts for Netflix on pirate movie sites

 

[Keith_Beef]

Well, the Ads I get are all Illegal, Immoral and Fattening.

They must be good, then. Jasper says so, so it must be true.

 

[Paul_B]

Currently this site gives me Alpkit ads. They're nice, small and not distracting. +1000!

 

[Tengu]

More baffling...and suspicious

Got a perfectly targetted ad...Evidently in response to my online activity.

However this is a matter that I only mentioned in a private email....

 

[mousey]

I'm amazed how quickly it changes. My mortgage is coming up to the end of a fixed rate period, did a quick search for better mortgage rates, even hours later all the ad's I see are on refinancing and debt control!

Illegal / immoral / fattening adverts - what have you been looking at recently online! …

 

[Alan De Enfield]

More baffling...and suspicious

Got a perfectly targetted ad...Evidently in response to my online activity.

However this is a matter that I only mentioned in a private email....

Did you really think that you have "PRIVATE" email ?

I use Gmail and noticed some oddities ; a quick search revealed this :

Google has clarified its email scanning practices in a terms of service update, informing users that incoming and outgoing emails are analysed by automated software.

The revisions explicitly state that Google’s system scans the content of emails stored on Google’s servers as well as those being sent and received by any Google email account, a practice that has seen the search company face criticism from privacy action groups and lawsuits from the education sector.

“We want our policies to be simple and easy for users to understand. These changes will give people even greater clarity and are based on feedback we've received over the last few months,” said a Google spokeswoman

 

[Tengu]

No, but I want something a bit less blatant than that.

 

[demographic]

Don't use Gmail for anything apart from getting setup with a smartphone. Especially for anything you want private.

Use another email provider thats not owned by Google/facebook.

I never sign into Google its self. Why should I?


Use a different search engine, duck duck go is ok I guess. Although Google started out by saying they didn't prioritize the companies who paid them they sure changed their tune more recently.

Can't say I'll ever use Tapatalk either, its promoted so much that I just don't trust it.

 

[Billy-o]

A combination of a paid VPN, Adblocker and setting Firefox to clear caches on shutdown seems to help. I certainly notice a lot of very me-shaped ads when I've been running Firefox with out closing it for a while and the VPN off. Even you tube sends me a lot of anti-Trump (and other, similarly themed) links after a day or so with things turned off ... but they might do that for everybody, I guess

 

[Billy-o]

Don't use Gmail for anything apart from getting setup with a smartphone. Especially for anything you want private.
Use another email provider thats not owned by Google/facebook.
I never sign into Google its self. Why should I?
Use a different search engine, duck duck go is ok I guess.

In the end, just about everything based in the US is subject to the Patriot Act. We have huge problems with our students. We give them secure email addresses and they immediately forward these to their gmail accounts.

 

[demographic]

Ive just recently started using Duck Duck Gos browser as well.
Seems alright, does what I want it to and its claimed to be far better for privacy.
Its not that I feel I'm doing anything dodgy, its just that I think having someone looking over my shoulder all the time is bleedin creepy so why would I want the online equivalent?

If it was someone on a train reading my book over my shoulder they would get told very quickly.

 

[Nice65]

Another Duck Duck Go user. I love it, and it seems to search out the less obvious too, especially when looking for video reviews. Google for IOS, apart from the privacy issues, is bloated with ridiculous features that get in the way when tapping a phone screen, like Google Lens or voice search.