Slashdot Mirror
Behavioral Search & Advertising On Its Way?
cyberianpan writes "Imagine a world where advertisers would be able to predict your detailed behavior online. They would know when you are about to buy a song, a car, a present for your spouse — they would know virtually everything you are thinking.
With the acquisition of DoubleClick, Google now has access to the cookies and subsequently browsing history of vast numbers of web users. It would be fair to say that greater than 85% of Internet users frequently come into contact with ads served by DoubleClick.
Google could potentially have access to not only the majority of the world's search history but its browsing and e-commerce history as well. The company could know more about web surfers than they know about themselves."
I have a bunch of extensions (Adblock Plus, CustomizeGoogle, Greasemonkey with Disable Text Ads, etc) and I don't think I've seen an ad, text or image, in weeks. What are these ads people speak of? ;)
Block *.doubleclick.net and www.google-analytics.com
Gets rid of annoying slashdot ads too.
The company could know more about web surfers than they know about themselves
Could it tell me where I left my keys?
I am too lazy to search for all the links to prove my point, but I know Google is attempting to doing this, and last time I glanced at the ads, they still suck at it.
What about people that do searches for their relatives? Or their pets? My dog has glaucoma. I'd be troubled greatly if my researching glaucoma medicines (dogs use the same medicine as people for this disease) caused any sort of reaction from anyone other than a pharmacy to offer me lower priced drops/pills. (Hey, check this guy out - he's researching glaucoma medicine and new cars - no cheap loans for him or insurance!!!!)
:)
I'm doubly glad for adblock and *doubleclick*
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
So if I use adblock to block say *.doubleclick.net/* , does that mean that I'm safe from the thought-thieves?
I'll add some links! Get Adblock Plus here: http://adblockplus.org/en/ Get Filterset.G Updater here: http://www.pierceive.com/ With this pair of extensions, you won't ever see ads again, and the blacklist will update itself automagically.
Legalize it.
So instead of taking a year trekking round the world to "find themselves", people could just ask Google.
Deleted
Good gods, they're in the "scum of the earth" category to my routers. I've had both their DNS and their IP ranges filtered for a long time. The entire site hasn't exchanged a packet with them in YEARS.
Is this bad? Now instead of being spammed about stuff that i give squat about, i would get spammed with offers that i would bossibly want to buy. Does it matter that they know much about me? In a dictatorship? yes. here? no.
If you are worried that someone would see info about you, remenber that strength lies in numbers. The have insanely accurate information on every person in the western world, what are the odds that they would look you up?
Google->pr0n
crazy dynamite monkey
Good thing I use http://www.msn.com/
*puke*
One the surfers who do not block these things.
What with AdBlock, selective blocking of cookies etc, my surfing habits are just about invisible. Only by tracking the IP address could anyone read my habits. But then, I am behind a NAT with many other people, so this is hardly reliable.
So what will happen (and probaly already has) is that the people who do not know any better will form the basis of what "surfers" do.
Much like a few people determine the TV ratings and so the really good shows go away. You know, the shows that require some modicum of intelligence to understand and appreciate.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
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Imagine when at birth, they will be able to predict your whole life.
Now that I think of it, they will be able to predict it on conception.
34
Maybe soon Google checkout will know when it's my wife's birthday, and tell me "No no, don't get her that, get her this instead" when I add something to the cart.
Ok then if they know so much maybe they can give me a website where they sell life-size anime plush dolls? And no, Teddy-Babes.com doesn't count, they look creepy and seem to be from the Muppet Show.
who the fark lets those things stick around long enough to have useful data? Isn't just accepted practice to do cookie maintenance every few weeks?
Except of course, now google can pair up my google ID with those doubleclick cookies I keep deleting...
What's this bullshit? Typical bunch of made up statistics and vague assumptions.
So they know about the endless hours of porn I watch? Hopefully not the midget porn though, right? I mean.. I was discreet about that. There weren't any ads I clicked on or anything.
Well, now I know my secret is safe.
Oh wait.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Holy crap, I think we need to undertake an emergency mission to airdrop some punctuation into this guy's office. That sentence was just about incomprehensible.
TrackMeNot is a Firefox extension that protects against search data profiling by issuing randomized queries to popular search-engines with fake data.
If you want to read my mind by analyzing my search queries, I hope you're prepared to sift through a mountain of noise.
Long-time Firefox/Adblock user here with something of an itchy trigger finger where Adblock is concerned. I've gone as far as completely gutting graphic-intensive web layouts via Adblock just to get pages to load quicker (Gradients on Slashdot? I see no gradients...) and every graphical ad, sponsor/partner link, or anything else commercial-looking I see usually gets the Adblock Special.
Well, for a long time I was willing to leave Google's text ads alone on the grounds of them being unobtrusive and generally not degrading my browsing experience. They stayed well enough out of the way that it wasn't worth it to me to block them for the minimal improvement I'd see in my load times and the minimal reduction I'd see in corporate crap sullying the pages I'm trying to read. Add to that the fact that the Google text ads were easily enough identified at a glance that they were always instantly recognizable and avoidable and there was never any compelling reason for me to risk harming a few non-profit websites I enjoy by screwing them out of ad revenue.
No more. Visual presence isn't the only factor to consider when determining which ads get the death sentence, though it has long (and for many, I suspect) been the most significant. Google's ads may not be visually offensive, but if they start down the road of Big Brothering me, no PC I touch will ever display a Google ad again. I know Google is a favorite of geeks everywhere, and those who know me know I'm a big fan of a lot of their products, but this rampant near-delirious compulsion to track everyone everywhere for the purpose of shoving marketing in their faces has got to stop. If I want to buy something online, I will seek it out myself, god dammit. This "the ads are relevant, you might find something you like" smacks of "it's for your own good" far too much for my liking.
Developers of technologies like Adblock and BugMeNot are heroes of the common man's internet and should be lauded as such. I think Greasemonkey likely falls in the same category, though I admit to not yet having used it due to a lack of knowledge of Javascript. Any tool to enhance and enforce control over one's own system is unequivocally, incontestably a good thing and I have a feeling we'll need more and more of them to counteract and undermine the efforts of commercial interests who want to sleaze their way to more ad impressions and massively pervasive marketing. Hmm, there's a fun acronym^W canonical abbreviation to accompany MMORPG. MPM. 's got a ring to it.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
privacy (see also: less need) generated by the creators' newclear power initiative/mandate? now that's a behavioral concept.
better days ahead?
from previous post: many demand corepirate nazi execrable stop abusing US
we the peepoles?
how is it allowed? just like corn passing through a bird's butt eye gas.
all they (the felonious nazi execrable) want is... everything. at what cost to US?
for many of US, the only way out is up.
don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.
'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.
some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.
it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.
concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.
'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
...who has never, ever, since they first got online bought a single damn thing via clicking an ad on a web site?
The Filterset.G updater, while nice (and updated!), I've found to be much slower than the Adblock Plus filtersets you can install straight from the plugin. Since Adblock had no such updater, it was a very nice additional feature, but it's memory footprint isn't worth the extra ~5 filters a month (IMO) for AB+.
Then how can you possibly be pro-grammar?
Sorry, sorry, I couldn't resist. Oh god, not the cabbage again. *ducks*
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
I find it highly amusing that something so speculative got on /.
Does the article use any substantiation beyond Google buying DoubleClick, which they arguably would have done for the sole purpose of keeping the company out of Microsoft's hands?
Honestly, people are giving Google a hard time on this one. I will too, if they screw it up. But at this point, all I see is a defensive acquisition against a company that has stated the intent of putting them under when they only have ONE revenue stream.
FanFictionRecs.net
"Google now has access to the cookies and subsequently browsing history of vast numbers of web users"
no it doesn't, the cookies reside on MY computer, and I purge my cookies every time I close the browser.
and what's wrong with cookies? nothing! sure, doubleclick can link the IDs together to form a *partial* internet history, but they can do that with my IP address/userAgent combo. I'm sure my adblocker*/useragent/ip forms a fairly unique signature. What does this give google that they didn't have before? As far as I can see, it just buys them a whopping chunk of target audience, but the data? they could have got that themselves, and cheaper.
* by which I mean, have the parent page try to load a bunch of commonly-but-not-by-default blocked images/url/paths. If there are 300 people sharing my IP, it's not likely that they all block the same paths nor that they all use the same version of the same browser. Thus we can generate a fairly unique signature for users behind shared IPs, without having to use cookies. I'm sure there's other info like screen resolution/colour depthat could be added to give greater accuracy. anyway, my point is/was that the cookies are basically useless, it's the target market that google wanted.
All this shouldn't be too difficult to work around. Google watching my every move? Nope: I use Scroogle! Then there's Tor, it's a bit slow sometimes, but if you don't like it run your own Tor server and help the network speed up. :) There are also all the other ad/cookie blockers mentioned by others here.
The only possibility worrying me is our government overlords demanding people give up the right to use this software in the name of anti-terrorism/anti-paedophilia. Until that time people have a choice whether they're anonymous online, which is good. The people who don't know how to remain anonymous can either read up or pay one of us IT chaps to tell them.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Agreed, I uninstalled it and noticed no real difference in terms of ads but it sped up Firefox quite a bit.
My apologies, that link should have been: http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Thanks for the tip; I'll experiment with that.
Legalize it.
I find it highly amusing that something so speculative got on /.
You must be new here.*
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
http://pics.nerdnirvana.org/v/technology/myhouse_g oogle_com.jpg.html
If anything, that should stop all Linux and Mac users from seeing those useless Microsoft and Dell ads.
funny, I block everything apart from google ads. not only do they *shock* sometimes look interesting, but it's also a nice way to thank the webmaster.
Revenue Science [www.revenuescience.com] has been doing this quite well over the past few years... cross-correlating across the various customers they have, fairly accurate behavioral targeting is now possible... and no, i dont work for them, i just find myself deleting more cookies from them now.
Google has no way of knowing whether you blocked their ads or not, as the code is removed client-side.
Imagine if a site KNEW that you just LOVED deals, so they'd mark down that 8-bit tie just when you strolled by the site. Or, maybe the site KNOWS that you just pissed off your wife and increases the prices of flowers knowing that you're going to buy anyways.
"Don't be evil"?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
You can also limit the lifetime of your cookies to end-of-session. Since Firefox can remember all of your login info and such, it's really not much of an inconvenience.
Dear Google,
Do No Evil. (Please?)
Signed,
Every Web User
This article seems very speculative, if not pure fantasy. It assumes Google will somehow turn your search history and ad-clicking history into some kind of predictive model of your brain. The author doesn't really seem to understand any of the technology involved, he repeatedly claims that since Google now owns DoubleClick, they have (legal) access to ALL of your cookies and browsing history. Most of the statistics he quotes are totally useless, for example:
In other words, 3 out of 4 times, he can predict which of the people visiting an automobile price/review site will buy a car in the next three months. Considering that most people wouldn't go to Yahoo Autos unless they had some interest in buying a car, it's not really rocket science to track users and decide which are the "serious" ones and which are just window-shopping. The whole article is filled with speculation that once Google has access to similar data, they'll be able to accurately predict everything we do online, but what the author fails to deliver on is how they'll be able to make the jump from predicting click-through rates on ads to full behavioral models everyone who surfs the web.
Also, the article feels like it's written by a 5th grade English student with a thesaurus. Run-on sentences galore, wild trips of imagination that aren't supported by the article's sources, and a pathetic lack of proper punctuation besides the occasional period. He even uses a smiley face at the end.
Karma: Contrapositive
It seems I can.
99% of ads are javascript-based. You can always turn it on for trusted domains where you get some ajax-y benefit.
What if someone were to create fake cookies and bust the curve so to speak? If eBay can be spoofed, cookies should be chump change.
This gives me an idea. Rather than a traditional ad blocker, someone should create an AdFaker. While you're away from the computer, it will periodically search and surf on various topics to throw GooClick off your track. You could choose from different profiles to convince them you're planning a bank heist, traveling to Madagascar, or whatever you like.
There wouldn't be much practical benefit, but it would be fun to see what ads you could get to appear!
All this in the name of pure friendship and endless devotion from Google!!!!
I did not know i had to live in a commune while surfing the web.
People should boycott all websites that needs cookies in order to display information, the fact that a website absolutely needs cookie should, in itself be illegal, we , as consumers should have the right to block cookies and not be subjected to a warning "This requires cookies".
Yeah sure, there is the option to block all cookies but it also blocks you from a lot of websites, you can also clear the cache and delete all cookies after ending a browser session but the point is to not have to be subject while surfing.
let's see how they fare if a large group of people start surfing elsewhere where FREE and ANONYMOUSLY means something.
Since we know ads are not going to go away, I'm all for more targeted advertising. There is the worry that really good advertising might undermine one's self control and contribute to greater consumer debt, but that's really a self-discipline issue. I hate being advertised to, probably more so than anyone, but more so, I hate being encouraged to buy something completely irrelevant to me like I might see in some local commercial with terrible audio trying to sell me a Chevrolet Jimmy during a hockey game. Really, intelligent ads would be better for everyone because the industry would be more efficient, get more sales for less exposure, and so have to waste less money and create less annoyance. Of course, greed would probably dominate and the amount of advertisement would remain the same, people would just get poorer and have more crap in their attics...but for those with self-control I think their lives would actually end up being enriched and improved by smart ads. Still, no ads would be the preference...but this is a whore of a world, and there is currently no ferry to another one.
"Filterset.G Updater" is outdated and is no longer recommended by many. Use adblockplus with the two built-in self updating lists. "EasyList" and "EasyElement".
IAADM (I am a data miner) -- my rant on this and similar items of corporate grandstanding about what they're capable of.
http://texact.blogspot.com/
yes, obviously. But why are you telling me this? I sometimes click google ads, either out of genuine interest or as a way of thanking the webmaster of the site running the ads for a good webpage. I don't see how your response was relvant?
change your host file, and say good by to ads: http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
Yes, but many ads pay only when they're clicked, and it's difficult to thank a webmaster by clicking an ad that your browser has scrubbed.
That said, webmasters who want a "tip" would, in my opinion, be much better to put a little paypal donation cup than a bunch of ads. Using advertisments to make money introduces conflicts of interest that can threaten the quality and integrity of the site.
Advertisments generate money based on the volume of visitors to the page, not their enjoyment or interest in the content. If you load up a page, you see the ads, regardless of whether the story was a life-changing insightful essay or a waste of the bandwidth it took to download it. This encourages webmasters to be sensational and attention grabbing, but not necessarily anything beyond that. Donations reward webmasters for high-quality content which is appreciated and valued by the audience, regardless if it gets the most hits or makes the front page of Slashdot.
It's true that donation-based sites often don't make as much money as if they used an ad-based structure, but if you're running a site where your primary interest is not creating good content but maximizing profit through advertising, in my mind you've no more integrity than the shmucks responsible for broadcast television, so why would I want to support your site anyway?
Google is in the business of collecting exceptional amounts of personally identifiable information. You use a gmail account? That tracks email content ads that are served to you. It also allows google to track every search YOU do when you are logged in and using google. Google checkout? Tracks where you purchase stuff. Doubleclick uses cookies on your computer and what for? Frequency capping which makes sure you dont see the same ad 200 times, and creative rotation to allow you to see a series of particular ads in sequence. Plus the most they track of you is an IP address. Google sounds a lot worse to me.
I switched a moment ago after looking it up in response to your comment. Thanks. :)
Legalize it.
You guys are missing the point.
AdBlock blocks ads. It does not block cookies. Doubleclick is still tracking you unless you refuse to allow their cookies. To handle that aspect, use CookieSafe. NoScript would perhaps also increase privacy (I've seen doubleclick scripts on sites).
Beetle B.
People who use NAT for internal networks are going to come up with some strange profiles.
Cookies you say: that disappear when you close the browser?
People behind the NAT not always using the same browser/OS?
the meld of X-box on line + slackware/opera + XP/firefox/opera + W2000/opera is going to look like a
profile a marketer could sell anything to.
Amazon has enough trouble trying to sell me X-box stuff, I don't use an X-box.
I whitelist all cookies. Basically, all cookies except those on my list are deleted every time I close my browser. I do this with the aid of the CookieButton Firefox extension.
This needs to be set as the default behaviour in browsers. Add a button which lets the user decide to keep data from a particular site. Put it over as "let me stay logged in to this site after closing Firefox/IE".
Of course, they still have my IP address, or would if I didn't block *doubleclick*. However, thanks to mass adoption of NAT an IP address is hardly very useful for identifying a single person, as legal courts are staring to realise.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Meh, just have your browser ask about all cookies. Is it annoying at first? Sure. But a) once you've confirmed/denied the cookies for your common sites, you don't have to worry about them again, and b) it gives you some insight into how many frickin' cookies websites try to plant in your browser.
...also, finding ads that make it around my currently existing filters is rare, but when I do it's like a game trying to come up with the best filter expression to A) block the image/object and B) not block anything useful in the process. I really don't mind updated lists, but it takes the fun out of a new adblock install if I don't get to impress the person who I just installed it for by "magically" removing their ads! After the gloating though, I go straight for the lists...
I think that's the problem. Once they integrate DoubleClick into their network, they can connect all that personal information that they already have to a detailed browser history
Don't worry, they're working on it. See Spimes. In theory if all the objects in your locality were identity tagged and GPS enabled then yes, an internet service could identify your keys and tell you where they were!
Well, the legal team at Microsoft would like you to think so, based on their recent attack on the deal: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-goo gle-antitrust.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
With apologies for the shitty link format
If you signed up for gmail using your cell phone then they already have real-world ID data to associate with your searches.
Adblock Plus blocks images, Flash, scripts, stylesheets, and maybe more. Basically all external content from the point of view of a page. Blocking the scripts often blocks cookies too.
Myself, I block all cookies and use a white-list. Works great.
I did this for about two weeks, but every time my girlfriend wanted to use my computer, I had to unblock some site she cared about that I didn't. Same thing with NoScript. I wish there were easy-to-find blacklists for these things too, like with AdBlock, that only let through known trusted sites and blocked tracking cookies.
Legalize it.
From the its-not-hear-already dept.
And no, I'm not new here(hear?)...
I got nothin'
Default deny is much much better. Getting asked about cookies 50 times a day is annoying to say the least which is why I only enable cookies for sites that really need it for login etc, which is a LOT less than all the sites I visit.
lol, making money isn't my primary interest, but the hosting isn't free and it is nice to get some money for the site. nor is it fair to imply that I can *either* create good content *or* run ads. I think (hope) that I manage to do both on my site. In fact, with contextual ads it makes much more sense to create good content than not to. You might even find that running ads makes people create better quality pages (though I wouldn't bet on that).
I'd sure rather look at ads than have to pay for content.
Having said that, I do plan on getting a paypal donate button for the site, so I'll see how ads compare against donations.
Consider that ads subsidize most media: newspapers would be many X price without them, compare price of DVD boxsets to broadcast TV ? Even Slashdot is subsidized by ads. Thus as consumers we ought aim to make these ads more relevant as:
1) We'd get to read better/more useful ads
2) Our media companies could provide us cheaper/better content from extra revenue
So long as it is fed with rich data, our new overlord Google will start inferring things about us & personalize advertising more. E.g. knowing that we really like classical music say by search history thus offering specific cheap CDs. Possibly our phone will get an SMS as we pass a shop which has a particular CD that we're interested in in stock. Possibly knowing that we don't make purchases online Mon-Fri 9-5 unless it is lunch might aid pricing...
Also more people are using broadband even for say TV rather than accepting media broadcast so personalised ads are becoming more feasible/relevant. However we'll have to buy into this & co-operate more explicitly than in the past, the contract will need to be made clear but there is potential large benefits for all. Users need to start thinking about these changes now.
and add in all permutations of the pests you discover, like myspace and all the othe social sites. It's more than 10k entries.
It recommends matching each domain to 127.0.0.1. Instead tie it to 0 (zero). Then your puter won't even pause for the lookup.
It isn't the same web with this!
Setting up adblock etc on every computer on my network can be a bit of a pain. I don't suppose there's anything I can put on my router that will strip out ads on the fly?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Give her her own account, duh.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Who pays for ads?
It's the end user, the consumer, the you and me.
If I need something to buy, I search for it myself. Until then, stay off my face.
Thanks.
The other night I finally caved in to my girl friend's desires to have a cat. Of course I can't just have any cat so I went on Google to do some research. I decided that I want an American Bobtail (at least until I figured out that the damn things can cost in excess of $2000 but that's another story). Once I decided I wanted a bobtail, I Googled "american bobtail breeders". Of course the context sensative ad came on the right hand side of the page. I thought about clicking on it but instead went for the first result from Google which was something about the American Bobtail Breeders Association or something like that. I browsed through the site, found a link to the breeders and looked up one in my local neighbor.
The breeder in my local neighborhood was the exact same breeder whose link was the link that I ignored before it was a context sensative ad on the right side of the page. It turns out that Google knew where I wanted to go before I did. It was kind of creepy.
Now see, this is what I like to see. An evolutionary theorist who follows the logic of the theory all the way to the end.
Evolution = No Free Will
If we were truly nothing more than the sum of our parts, then our will would be dictated by the reactions between our parts, which, in turn, are dictated by the laws of physics, which would mean free will does not exist. There wouldn't even be an illusion of free will because there would be no actual mind to conceptualize such an illusion.
Obviously, I disagree with the basic premise of the theory, however, it is nice to see that there are at least a couple logical people on that side of the universal(multiversal) origins debate.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Google and doublecrook can eat shit and die in the woods.
I have blocked access to ALL google and doubleclick systems on my lan.
No machine connected to my lan can access anything related to google or doublecrook.
I've installed ad blocking software into my firewall (smoothwall) and ads are blocked at the frontdoor.
I despise ads and cookies deeply and I despise the corporations that show them in my face.
Now they can shove them up their asses sideways. You want to track my browsing?
Track me through TOR you f**king parasite scum.
Apparently there are people who still haven't blocked content from DoubleClick. Oh the humanity!
My first reaction when I heard DoubleClick was worth over 3 billion was to get this sick feeling in my stomach. I just got back from two weeks in Spain, where the old cities are virtually ad free. It was nice, but I didn't really realize it until I hit Frankfurt airport on the way home....
Such a band could only be described as "average."
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
It's not a perfect solution, but blocking third party cookies gets rid of the most insidious. Like the ones from doubleclick.
Use the profile manager so that she can have her own profile, bookmarks, cookies, etc.
Beetle B.
1. Can Adsense ads on non-google properties actually track users, i.e. decide it's the same user that was on A, then B, then C, when none of A, B and C are google.com ? Wouldn't that require the right to access third party cookies, which most browsers forbid by default ?
2. If they can, does google actually do it ? Is there a unique user id read/written by the adsense ads, or is it accessing the google/gmail account cookie somehow ?
I tried looking into the cookies set by google, with the help of LiveHttpHeaders, but couldn't make head or tail of it... Thanks!
"I for one welcome our Google Overlords" I will promptly purchase a google credit card when available and even more rapidly buy whatever they advertise. And in the famous word by . . .Borat "Not"
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. - Thorstein
In my day they reprogrammed us to be who they wanted us to be!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Create a dns server and download some pre-made host files easily googled. :) The only problem with that approach is that it may delay pages opening while the dns server hammers itself looking for adblock.com...
You're nothing; like me.
rm ~/.mozilla/default/gzypa63s.slt/cookies.txt &&
touch ~/.mozilla/default/gzypa63s.slt/cookies.txt &&
chmod a-w ~/.mozilla/default/gzypa63s.slt/cookies.txt
No more cookies!
Alternatively, between the rm and chmod visit those things you want cookies for, then make your cookies.txt read only.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
have sex, breed...
/.ers" indeed. I suppose appealing to the mob made you feel better.
Sorry, but the OP is such an effete snob. I wonder who grows his food, refines his gas, assembles his electronic toys, defends his freedom to be an ass on-line, etc. Calling people sheeple and acting superior is one thing, but you give your true nature away at the end, "we
Feeling superiour because someone doesn't know a technology is all too common on slashdot. It's about as common on slashdot as feeling superiour because you don't believe in God or because you do believe in the coming Global Warming Catastraphe.
Just six weeks ago, what I was searching for and purchasing and googling is completely different than what I'm getting today. My needs were satisfied. If they send me ads for similar items, it will just be noise for two or three years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Have a look at http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=d ont+be+evil
Two that it almost got.
BLONDE VIET
BET ON DEVIL or BET ON D EVIL (D like THE)
It seems I can.
With the ease of use that which NoScript provides that focuses on cookies.
nor is it fair to imply that I can *either* create good content *or* run ads.
Sure, plenty of people make good content and make money off ads - otherwise the internet would be nothing but a cesspool of spam and obtrusive advertisement. But I think the claim that it's a conflict of interest is pretty inarguable. Presumably, your motivation for creating and maintaining your site (which is neat btw) is to share coding information that you think is useful and interesting with like-minded individuals. This is well and good, that's what makes the internet great.
However, when ads are introduced, your site is beholden not just to your motivation, but the advertiser's. If you get rewarded on the basis of how many people hit your site (or how many click banners, or buy products through links), then there are two conflicting guiding principles in the management of your site. One principle says "make stuff that I think is good, regardless if it has mass appeal", and another says "get as many eyes as possible on this site, because eyes=$$$" When they agree, everything's fine, but when your profit motivation comes in conflict with your personal motivation, your integrity suffers, and that sucks for you and your audience.
Privoxy works well, although you should know that you have to point your web browser to it via proxy settings. I believe it comes with a large list of predefined filters that help clean up the web whilst using it.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
I wonder if putting a copyright notice like:"This data may not be used otherwise than for the sole purpose of responding to this request. All rights reserved " as part of your outgoing http-headers will be a viable option to protect yourself.
In principle it should be, because you are the author of this request. If enough people would use it even a class-action against violators should be an option and make the measure more effective.
Since W3C's privacy policy standard (P3P) is driven by Double Click among others I expect very little support for end users from that direction, especially since it has been acquired by Google.
Is there anyone who can support or reject my idea from a legal perspective? Technically you could use several of the plug-ins mentioned above to inject the statement. A website with sample statements would help as well.
It's just becoming more accurate. I actually find it slightly refreshing, because this type is less insulting. Let's say I wax nostalgic and flip over to Lifetime to see The Amy Fisher Story.(We'll assume I've been drinking.) Just because I'm viewing "television for women" doesn't mean I want to see 3 ads for Lysol Disinfectant Spray and the Gerber Life Grow-Up Plan during each commercial break. I do happen to be a woman, but I'm not a soccer mom, and I feel like I'm being pandered to when they shove that down my throat. ("Buy these housecleaning and childcare supplies, little lady!") On the othere hand it IS a good channel to run the ads featuring tampons for your heavy-flow but active days, and women who spontaneously discuss how "fresh" they feel. Similarly on target would be certain commercials during, for instance, The Man Show. There's a lack of feminine hygiene awareness in those commercials; some demographics are relatively easy to peg.
Others are not so clear. According to some statistics somewhere, if I'm watching Comedy Central at 2 a.m., I'm probably a young straight male. I'll accept that more males are watching than females, but I find it hard to believe that the numbers are skewed so heavily in that direction that I need to see several hundred Girls Gone Wild ads in 90 minutes. I have perfectly good boobs of my own and don't need or want to be asked to buy videos of drunken girls flashing a camera; I could go take off my shirt and hop in front of a mirror if I really just had to see some bouncing titties. (Not to mention the wonderful world of free online pr0n, which is better than those videos anyway.) I wouldn't mind Comedy Central knowing that I am watching reruns of South Park if it meant that they would show me only ads I might be interested in, or at the very least don't make me want to throw things at my television.
Obviously, it's not an exact science, and there will always be a certain amount of junk in with the rest, but I think it's nicer to be pigeonholed more a little more accurately. Like if they narrowed it down even to me being a female in my mid-twenties, instead the current assumption that I'm 18-35, and probably a guy. Or maybe take it one step further, that I'm a female but not much of a girly-girl, and I don't want to Bedazzle my favorite pair of jeans.
These were all examples from TV/Old Media, but there's a lesson there for New Media. A 36 year old may buy more like "18-35" than "36-45", and that's worth knowing. [semi-random rant]Even if I wanted to enlarge it, I don't *have* a penis. Stop promising me 3 inches. Stop it, stop it, stop it. You're polluting our internet tubes. All those enlarged penises tend to get stuck and clog up the works. I'm sitting here spamming refresh on the Random Kitten Generator, (which BTW is the cutest site ever) so maybe I would be interested in kitty toys or adopting a cat? A subscription to Cat Fancy magazine? As it turns out I'm not really looking for any of that, but it's an educated guess, and my kitten pictures wouldn't have to navigate so much penis congestion to get to me. I think we can all agree that's a good thing.[/rant] People aren't buying things from sites they don't go to or even look at. I actually look at the ads Google returns with the search, because sometimes it's what I'm looking for. I stop ignoring things when they stop being irrelevant and intrusive. For this reason, advertising that targets individuals rather than broad groups of people arbitrarily lumped together is bound to have positive results.
Hasn't someone written an addon that clicks things and downloads pages randomly yet?
Have you read my journal today?
It's only a problem for the supplier of X. It would be quite healthy for the rest of us to be left to make up our minds, or to simply not care, whether we prefer X or Y.
I don't see any conflict of interest. I know if my content is crap no-one comes to my site and no-one clicks my ads. If my content is great there will be more visitors to see and click my ads. I don't think I've ever thought "I must write this article in a particular way because it will attract more people to click on my ads" - it just doesn't work like that. I think you've just overestimated the appeal of a few paltry (and it would be very paltry if your content was crap) ad-clicks over the attraction, satisfaction and reward of running a website with great content and satisfied visitors. And on the Web, niche-appeal is more effective than mass-appeal when it comes to visitors and click-through rates - mass appeal just puts you into competition with the big guns. The most successful contextual ad-related sites are those who communicate clearly with a narrow target audience.
Besides, if anyone thinks they can create a poor or fake content website just to get a ton of Adsense clicks they will soon dispossessed of that notion when Google blacklists their website and cancels their Adsense account. This worked for only a short while a few years back until Google got wise to it.
You can say it, but I can't use it because I'm up to FF 2.0 and this extension is badly in need up updating.
However, you're right that cookie management has become yet another necessity for sane surfing. Cookie Safe seems to be the modern equivalent. Gonna give it a go.
While you're at it, why not hide the http referrer as well.
I find it easier to have Firefox allow only 1st party cookies and delete all cookies on exit. For the few sites I want cookies to be saved for log in details I just add them to the exception list as "allow". This way I don't get any prompts and no cookies can trace me.
Ads are what allow us to use great sites like /. for free. I love slashdot, but I wouldn't pay a subscription fee for it. I understand the frustration from crazy flash ads that are visually disruptive. But, if you want to use the free service, shouldn't we support it by at least viewing the "commercials". This is the same philosophy that keeps TV and radio free for the masses. Why should it be different for the internet. Why should we expect the people at slashdot to pony up all the funds it takes to keep this massive site running?
As long as the ads are small and unobtrusive just leave 'em be. Am I just crazy, or do we live in a society where everyone expects everything given to them on a silver platter at absolutely no personal cost?
My Gawd, you mean there are people insane enough to let their browsers store cookies from DoubleClick? Yiikes!
J
no need to go that far. In the privacy settings of firefox change the "Keep Until" option for cookies to "Until i close firefox" and all the cookies will be cleared as soon as you close the browser.
the nice thing about it is you can override it for specific sites through the exceptions button and allow selected sites to keep the cookie permanantly. i do this for slashdot and a few selected sites where i need to preserve my login.
Since the cookies.txt now only contain cookies of important sites i'm thinking of putting my cookies into a SVN repository so i can synchronise them between computers.
You might be blocking some of them But have you been to ebay.com lately? Mouse over just about any image on ebay's home page. Note the domain us.ebayobjects.com. Doubleclick owns that domain and serves all those images for ebay. They have plenty of other clients like that. I used to work for doubleclick - I know the tricks.
So not only are you proud of using adblock to cheat your favorite websites like Slashdot, you think everyone should be doing it? I'd like to see the quality of the websites that would be around when the only/main revenue source is completely gone. If you don't like the ads, don't use the site. You guys are pathetic.
This proposal seems to handle the issue of hiding your real bying intentions nicely. However, I can see two snags:
1) You will get loads more companies all trying to sell you Madagascar travel guides, bank robber masks and the like. Some of these will get through your automated defences, or may even house visit?
2) Eventually companies will learn to treat this sort of data with the suspicion it deserves. But governments are much more gullible. So expect visits from the tax authorities asking how you can afford trips to Madagascar on your salary, and court cases using this as evidence that you have secret income you are not declaring.
Other than that, the idea sounds great!
All very good points. Just installed httprefer...thanks ^.^