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Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

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Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#151

Post by speeder »

ancarda wrote: post #117
zikzak wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person I work with (very knowledgable about tech and IT) uses a flip phone and cash (as much as possible). If they want to send a gift they buy it locally, pack it up, and ship it. Etc. They don't even bank online. Why? Not sure but they have lots of free time and this is how they choose to spend it (trips to see a teller, back machines, part office visits, using public transport to shop for nearly everything).

>Why? Not sure Maybe they are sick of surveillance capitalism and don't wish to be part of it? I'd do the same, but I really don't want a flip phone. Maybe once Pine Phone with GNU/Linux is working reasonably well, I'll switch to that.

I actually want a good flip phone myself.

I bought a locally made KaiOS phone but it has too low RAM and keep crashing.

Nokia makes flip phones with KaiOS but they aren't allowed in my country sadly.

Reason is I want a phone I can repair myself, all my previous phones I had to replace because some unrepairable part that didn't need to be unrepairable (one of them it was the battery!) broke down.

Instead of shelling a ton of money to be tracked and buy a product that won't last, I wish I could spend my phone on something that will last.

And the flip cover is convenient for me because I keep forgetting to lock my phone and managed to pocket dial even with an android.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#152

Post by geofft »

baybal2 wrote: post #29

Opt out of VISA marketing https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do Second, disable GPS, and cellphone tower ID reporting (root needed.) So Google can't correlate you with sales records. At the moment, there is no way to disable Google AGPS spying on the stock Android. Third, block Google apps from reading your IMEI/IMSI/serial number, so they can't get AGPS data from your cellphone provider if it sell…

The first one seems most likely to be the relevant answer to how this was tracked:

https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-anal...

> Google’s third-party partnerships ... capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States

See also https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an... and https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no... - Google has deals with the credit card providers to get purchase data so they can link them back to your online behavior.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#153

Post by ngngngng »

reader_mode wrote: post #35
StavrosK wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and got ads abou…

> It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. The wierdest instance of this is I told my wife her father should consider geting those fixed bridge dentures, next day I start seeing all-on-4 ads on the phone. I asked her if she looked it…

You could certainly test this, just have a conversation every day about something random. Pick a snack food, something with a heavy advertising budget, and near your phone start saying things "man I really want some (snack food) right now."

If it's listening, you'll start getting ads specific to that snack food, best to try it with a bunch of different products to try and find a pattern.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#154

Post by paulcole »

durnygbur wrote: post #148
paulcole wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in dental marketing and you 100% are in the target demo for All-on-4. It’s a very popular/trendy service and is being advertised heavily now because it’s profitable, (relatively) easy to do, etc. Good target markets are: Grown adults with $$$ who either don’t have teeth or know someone who doesn’t have teeth (likely parents/grandparents/in-laws). This is basically every upper-middle class adult. More people th…

Jesus. I see dental protesis ads around the time when I see my parents. I don't have the time to set up the things for them so I'm sure their cheap Android smartphones are surveillance blackholes.

What other ads do you see when you’re around them?

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#155

Post by II2II »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #121
jeroenhd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the dumbest ad strategy ever. Why on earth would ads about a product you just bought be effective marketing material. This is like how you get a million ads about dishwashers the day after you Google around and buy one. At least wait for a short duration of time to let the target run out of medicine before adversiting new stuff.

Many purchases are recurring consumables. Food, clothing, medicine, office supplies, car parts- none of it lasts forever. What does it cost to be reminded that you can buy more? Also, completely unrelatedly, if you saw some armchair internet rando claim they'd debunked a major and long-standing business strategy of market sector leader, how seriously would you take them?

> What does it cost to be reminded that you can buy more?

At a certain point in my life, one where I sought fewer material comforts (and had less media exposure), I used to claim that advertising won't convince me to buy anything but it may convince me not to. There is a very fine line between persuasion and overstepping ethical boundaries.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#156

Post by taneq »

carlmr wrote: post #142
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably even for that tiny fraction of people who buy a dishwasher right after buying a dishwasher there must be a limit to how many times they will repeat the cycle, otherwise ... well, we can imagine the planet Earth completely covered in dishwashers and somewhere under the mass of white cubes, a constant mouse clicking sound and a cry of anguish... Must. BUY. M O R E .

Well my girlfriend just bought a laptop, it was broken, she returned it, she bought a different laptop, again broken, and now bought a third one. Looking at how many products are DOA nowadays, it might be that a person that just bought something is more likely to buy it again than the average person. Also in general I've noticed there are a lot of people that return online purchases a lot, even the non broken ones, s…

Is she buying them secondhand? What’s the DOA rate on laptops these days? Two in a row must be rather unlikely.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#157

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

ancarda wrote: post #117
zikzak wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person I work with (very knowledgable about tech and IT) uses a flip phone and cash (as much as possible). If they want to send a gift they buy it locally, pack it up, and ship it. Etc. They don't even bank online. Why? Not sure but they have lots of free time and this is how they choose to spend it (trips to see a teller, back machines, part office visits, using public transport to shop for nearly everything).

>Why? Not sure Maybe they are sick of surveillance capitalism and don't wish to be part of it? I'd do the same, but I really don't want a flip phone. Maybe once Pine Phone with GNU/Linux is working reasonably well, I'll switch to that.

https://calyxos.org/ and https://grapheneos.org/ both go part of the way. They're hardened, privacy-preserving Android flavors that work best on Google Pixel 3 - 5. CalyxOS emulates google services so you can use basically any Android app, while GrapheneOS goes further down the security hardening hole.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#158

Post by scruple »

metafunctor wrote: post #146
bladewolf47 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if it fits with what the poster you replied to was saying but I find it a bit curious when I buy say a guitar on Amazon and my recommendations (emails or ads in other sites) over the next few days are still guitars. I do not remember seeing one of those promotions which follow a purchase being about accessories or add-ons.

I dunno, I’ve bought several guitars in a row…

Well I've had it happen with toilet seats. In 40 years on this planet I've only ever needed to purchase that one. I'd imagine if I needed to get more than one that I would get them all at the same time.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#159

Post by pen2l »

Tangentially related, for the first time ever I saw Gmail losing its anti-spam game. We were doing some home-modeling and we went to Home Depot sometime early this month. And... some entity somehow discovered this. And then all of a sudden I started getting spam emails related to Home Depot's/home rebuilding. The spam emails successfully pass through gmail's filter because they seem to emanate from aol,gmail,hotmail,yahoo etc. email addresses.

Here's an image: https://i.imgur.com/KqIN6oB.png

I'm about as impressed as I am mortified. I thought I had my opsec down, I was using noscript, I use throwaway email addy's where I suspect I'll be spammed.

But I was had too.

This Hecatoncheires entity is getting ever-larger. It knows a lot. It knows me well. I have seen evidence that it knows about the medication I take, the insecurities I have, my half-baked aspirations and plans. I feel defeated at times when I see its knowledge of me manifested in the ads I am shown, I feel confronted because at the time of this writing I don't know where this leak occurred, I don't know at what vector exactly I'm being had.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#160

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

fsflover wrote: post #133
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better: flush your smartphone down the toilet. I mean, if you have to try and double-guess your phone to make sure it's not spying on you the game is lost. I don't even know what game that is. But it's lost.

Or replace your phone with a one you can trust (Linux phone).

https://calyxos.org/ and https://grapheneos.org/ both go part of the way. They're hardened, privacy-preserving Android flavors that work best on Google Pixel 3 - 5. CalyxOS emulates google services so you can use basically any Android app, while GrapheneOS goes further down the security hardening hole.
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