Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Much of Your Online Browsing Can Advertisers See?
dryriver writes: We all know the phenomenon of browsing from an internet site A to a completely unrelated internet site B, and having identical ads follow you from site A to site B. Logic suggests that some kind of advertising system is following you from site A to B, and possibly onto subsequent sites C, D and E as well. Logic also suggests that this advertising system can now put together a nice long list of whatever you are looking at online. So here's the question: How much of your online browsing is "monitored" or "logged" this way by advertisers? Can there be any realistic expectation of privacy on the internet if the default behavior of advertisers is to track you as much as they can?
Want more privacy, absolutely do not run windows anal probe 10 because if you do, you have already lost. Next up run add ons to control your internet experience, the first up a script blocker to block scripts you do not like especially bad advertiser scripts add to that a cookie control add on to either block cookies from particular sites or make them session only and delete them when you leave.
I prefer to control what is allowed to run and what is blocked. So for advertisers, show me shit ads and you are blocked, just one shit ad advertising crap products or services and that also includes ending up at a bad site, those providing ads services to that bad site and you are done, from there on in. You behave yourself with those ads and fine, they might even be informative.
Google search is becoming nothing but google ads, it is starting to look very much like the old asta la vista and MSN, all you see is ads on first the screen, drop to the bottom and look the fucking arse holes have dumped all ads at the bottom, you now have to try to find the bit in between to see your actual search and the shit fucks did that on purpose to force you to read the ads. Google is just becoming more and more shite, from the YouTube advertiser friendly horse shit to google advertiser search bullshit. M$ would have a chance now with MSN search but they decide to be douche bags with Windows anal probe 10.
Why is it, that old tech companies must go down, to be replaced by new client respecting companies, whom then become douche bag corporatists and must again be replaced. Why the crazy stupid business style, is it an American thing, is that the norm for American business, start small and customer orientated become big and become customer abusive.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
How much can the trackers/advertisers on your own site see? There are enough: rpxnow.com, crsspxl.com, google-analytics.com, janrain.com, pro-market.net, taboola.com, ml314.com, and (lol) analytics.slashdotmedia.com.
Trolling is a art,
Unless you take extreme measures, which only a small minority do, they can see all of it, or so near as not to matter.
The measures you must take increasingly break web sites, because we the public have trained the sites that it is acceptable to require privacy invading features for basic functionality. The more sites are broken in this way, the less people are willing to take the measures that might cause them a tiny bit of inconvenience, and so the cycle continues.
The only way for this to be avoided was if the public would have had a backbone. That is something it did not have. So here we are.
you might return it and buy a similar item
your friend might want one too and the ad reminds you to tell him you just bought one and it was an awesome product
you might break the one you bought and need another
you buying one makes you more valuable to advertise the same item to then someone who didn't