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The Advertisers are Watching You

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the zip-it-up-buddy dept.

pcause noted that the New York Times is running a story about the information being collected about you by internet advertisers. Of course much of this is not news to you, but it's important that the mainstream media is more aware of the issues surrounding this.

13 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. You may be surprised who is involved by Spritzer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds like the 4th largest bank in the U.S. exposing me to no less than 12 single pixel tracking images from the likes of doubleclick, ru4, advertising.com etc. when I want to login followed by tracking by an outside source while using the "secure" area of the site(hooray for AdBlock). I complained and complained. I finally received a response from the office of CEO Ken Thompson telling me to piss up a rope. I am no longer a customer.

    1. Re:You may be surprised who is involved by Spritzer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No, it was a real letter of all things. Maybe I should scan it and post it when I get home.

  2. Mainstrem media attention not "important" or good by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's not good news that the mainstream media has picked it up, because they just use if for a lot of sensationalist fear-mongering that only serves to scare the uninformed public even more. I was watching CSPAN this morning and they were talking about this. People were calling in who obviously had no clue about the internet saying things like "My wife refuses to buy anything online because of stuff like this" and talking out of their asses.

    Stuff like this doesn't really inform the general public, it only frightens them and makes them even more irrational. It's like the occassional story about the kidnapped kid or terrorist attack that causes everyone to freak out and start demanding irrational laws.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  3. That may be... by Alien+Being · · Score: 3, Funny

    But i'm not watching them. Thanks Adblock!

    1. Re:That may be... by Mox-Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I use adblock, too, and in the time before I did, I *never* clicked on an online ad. Not once. Nor can I imagine a situation in which I would. ever. So why shouldn't I adblock not only slashdot, but every website?

    2. Re:That may be... by gnick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So why shouldn't I adblock not only slashdot, but every website? I don't recall ever clicking an ad either but, if I blindly speculate correctly, some ad-revenue is generated based on targeted viewing rather than purely click-through.

      Feel free to correct me if anyone has actual knowledge/data. I reject the argument that white-listing is stupid because advertisers suck - I know they do but, if they pay sites I like to provide content to me without forcing me to subscribe, I'll put up with them. But, if white-listing slashdot (et al.) really does not help them at all, then I'll clean out my white-list.
      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    3. Re:That may be... by gnick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's intention is to delude you into purchasing something on issues aside from the products qualities. I feel filthy standing up for advertisers - Ads have become a blemish on the planet and I'm sick of being attacked in every possible venue by random images telling me that I need random things. In fact, I'm of the opinion that prescription drug ads should be illegal.

      However, I still think it's a little inaccurate to say that all ads are trying to get you to buy something based "on issues aside from the products qualities". That's often true - Fear-mongering / Band-wagon attacks / etc are common. But ads do exist that do nothing more than try to make you aware of a product's qualities rather than trying to delude you.

      I'm not saying, I'm just saying...
      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    4. Re:That may be... by misleb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I also use Adblock (I'm sure that a lot of this audience does), but try to use it responsibly. If you completely Adblock pages that you like that rely largely in ad revenue to stay afloat, you are ensuring that the level of service will degrade or that other (possibly more invasive) methods of generating revenue will be implemented. For sites you want to keep going (e.g. slashdot), especially ones with well-targeted ads, remember the white-list option.


      I still don't get the supposed benefit of "well-targeted" ads. Every time I hear that phrase I think of the book/movie Minority Report.

      As for sites like slashdot shutting down... meh. I like slashdot and all, but quite frankly, if it went under because a few people who don't like to see ads block them, then so be it. There was an internet before massive amounts of advertising. There will continue to be an internet with massive amounts of ad blocking. If they invent more invasive methods, we'll block those too and you suckers who feel morally obligated to look at them will just have to suck it up.

      -matthew
      --
      "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
    5. Re:That may be... by srh2o · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You do what you want... but don't try to tell me that I'm not using Adblock "responsibly" The advertisers had their chance with me. What I got was pop-overs, pop-unders, drive by installs and more impressions of X10 cameras than I will ever care about. I got ads that blocked the content, that played loud sounds, that floated all over the page. Adblock is a response to irresponsible behavior by the advertisers. I use it and I use it on full. There was content before the ads and there will be content after the ads. There won't be subscriptions, because that is the kiss of death for a content provider on the internet. But by all means go ahead and whitelist if you wish. As for me I'm done with the constant barrage of ads. 90% of them are from spammy, sketchy vendors that I would never buy from anyway.

      Sites that want to make ad revenue work need to rethink their usage and their suppliers. Ads can be successful and desirable. If you doubt that take a look at the average Sunday paper. I purchase that each Sunday and pay more for it BECAUSE of the ads. Talk about a successful model. Content providers are going to need to provide something more than your second hand guilt argument to get me to turn off Adblock and they have no one to blame but themselves.

  4. I see dead ads by Nomen+Publicus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they are watching, why is it that I never see any "targeted" adverts? TV can be excused for just throwing everything into the aether and hoping that something sticks, but on the web why do I see all kinds of ads in which I have no interest in at all?

  5. Re:Mainstrem media attention not "important" or go by gnick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My wife refuses to buy anything online because of stuff like this We can't even get our secretary to order things online using the company card - We have to go to another group's purchaser if we want to use a vendor that won't accept phone orders.

    At the risk of straying off-topic, I'd like to see a "mainstream media" story about the different security risks/exposures between internet purchases, phone purchases, and in-store purchases. Tracking behavior is certainly easier online, but cutting people out of the loop does good things for security. Although imperfect, I trust automated billing a lot more than inmates working phone banks or high-schoolers swiping cards at their summer employment and throwing away paper receipts.
    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  6. Re:Cookies by mlts · · Score: 4, Informative

    One thing that people don't clear as often as cookies is the Flash Shared Object repository. A lot of advertisers use this to store persistent user data in lieu of cookies to monitor viewer activities.

    I personally use two ways to block this. First is NoScript which is a must have companion to Adblock. Adblock stops the known stuff, NoScript stops the unknown stuff.

    Second, on Windows, I deleted the Flash Player folder in Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Macromedia, and created a text file with the exact same name as the folder. This makes the Flash player unable to write any persistent data to disk. However, this does sometimes mess up sites like YouTube which store legit preferences.

    Third, I run a utility called ccleaner (used to be called Crap Cleaner) which is great for removing random junk left over in Windows apps.

    This is not perfect, but good for most sites. If you want better security, consider running your Web browser in a VM that dumps all changes since a known good snapshot. I do this for some entertainment Flash sites because I don't feel like allowing, even temporarily, all the data mining companies write access to my machine.

  7. Re:Mainstrem media attention not "important" or go by PReDiToR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How can we educate the general public into being able to raise their voices against something like Phorm without scaring the crap out of them?

    Once you know that every character in your page request has been sent through an adware service, you kinda lose control of your bowels ...

    --

    Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger