Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to See What the Internet Knows About You

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 105 posts

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#61

Post by mirimir »

jereees wrote: post #53
com2kid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently got tired of all the creepy targeted advertising, so I hit the nuclear option. Credit cards, mortgage providers, retail stores, and car dealers all sell customer information on the open market. Every cell phone company out there knows what provider you have, stores knows what type of clothing you like to buy. Wiping your computer clean prevents the ads from appearing on your PC, but the tracking of you i…

What are some ways in which you can prevent this sort of real life tracking from happening or at least minimize it?

Pay cash. Don't identify yourself, unless legally required. Maybe use an alias. As much as possible, buy from local businesses. Or through informal marketplaces. If you really care, travel a few hours by car before shopping. And keep your phone off, in a Faraday bag.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#62

Post by [deleted] »

jereees wrote: post #53
com2kid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently got tired of all the creepy targeted advertising, so I hit the nuclear option. Credit cards, mortgage providers, retail stores, and car dealers all sell customer information on the open market. Every cell phone company out there knows what provider you have, stores knows what type of clothing you like to buy. Wiping your computer clean prevents the ads from appearing on your PC, but the tracking of you i…

What are some ways in which you can prevent this sort of real life tracking from happening or at least minimize it?

[deleted]

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#63

Post by _rpd »

mungoid wrote: post #48

It seems so strange to me that there is such an ever increasing push to get people to click ads when I can't tell you a single person I know that ever actually clicks one on purpose. If I see an ad for something I just search it instead because I don't trust ads.. Except for one time years ago when I saw an ad on my own site for a drawing tablet and getting my account suspended for cheating even though I actually bou…

It sounds tautological, but ads are designed for the type of people that click ads. This is a far larger portion of the population than you might think. For example, consider that the first 3 links on a search page receive over 50% of all clicks. The first 5 links receive 67% of all clicks. Only 9% of all users view the second page of search results.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#64

Post by mungoid »

commenter98456 wrote: post #24

Why is targeted advertising acceptable? it is not ok for a seller to stalk potential buyers. I get that everyone has accepted this as a "fact of life" but consider how TV advertising was done. The advertisement is tailored to the show you are watching and the time of day. In other words, if I'm on a tech blog, advertise to me tech products, if I'm reading a cooking recipe, advertise kitchenware,grocery delivery and t…

I definitely agree. And for some reason your comment reminded me of something a sales guy who used to work for a fairly large online company told me. He said the way they see it, is that it's similar to a company sending out kiosks to a bunch of different stores to offer samples. They aren't really trying to make a ton of sales at those kiosks, they are mainly after the demographic info about the customers who seemed most interested, and the stores they got the most hits at.

While I see what he was getting at, I think it is a somewhat weak analogy because if those kiosk people were like online ads, then on top of just keeping track of visible statistics like age, race, gender, etc. They would be also snooping around your purse or wallet, tracking where you came from, car you drive, etc. and then bundling all that data from all the kiosks to sell to some other company for marketing purposes.

I never really felt like arguing back with him because he's a sales person and I'm terrible at that, but it really didn't surprise me too much that they would think its just as innocuous as the Pepperidge Farm guy offering cheese samples at a grocery store.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#65

Post by i2shar »

komali2 wrote: post #4

>start with this neat and medium-scary site, which our friends at Gizmodo flagged, that shows you everything your browser knows about you the second you open it. (clickclickclick.click) "Subject has entered the website. Subject has 4 cores..." followed by a bunch of notes about my mouse moving around, or me making the window inactive. Hardly terrifying.

> Here’s another one.

The second link that follows that one (http://webkay.robinlinus.com/) really terrified me. I had no idea my private network hosts (192.168.X.X) or my private IP address could be scanned by a random webpage. Or the fact that the webpage could find out my laptop was charging with x% percent charge in real time, or the make and model of my machine and GPU. The geo location accuracy of my ip was also scarily accurate. All this when running in incognito with ad blockers. That is very close to being PII.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#66

Post by telesilla »

Anecdote: I'm having dinner last night with a couple at their house and I'm advising one of them about getting an appliance for her partner - so we browse some options on her cellphone together and find something suitable.

Perhaps 30 minutes later, her partner was on his cellphone and gets an ad for the same appliance, he let us know because it was something he had been wanting. They were both on the same IP address via the router. While they initially had a good laugh, it was supposed to be a surprise.

It really did annoy me and when I explained what was happening they found it equally amusing and frightening. I am pretty sure both of them went to bed that night worried that the other was going to be getting ads for things they might be looking at on the internet.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#67

Post by tokyoSurfer »

sparky_z wrote: post #50
gaius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of these ads is not to sell you stuff. Its to sell advertising to companies that don't understand this internet stuff but are terrified of being "left behind". The ads need to be plausible, thats why someone has to see them, but who that is literally doesn't matter.

How does that explain Amazon ads? They should actually want to make a sale, right?

Depends. They might want to to get you to come back and write a review/buy additional stuff.

On the other hand, this could be an affiliate that tries to generate any click so he gets a commission on your further purchases.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#68

Post by darkerside »

sparky_z wrote: post #50
gaius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of these ads is not to sell you stuff. Its to sell advertising to companies that don't understand this internet stuff but are terrified of being "left behind". The ads need to be plausible, thats why someone has to see them, but who that is literally doesn't matter.

How does that explain Amazon ads? They should actually want to make a sale, right?

Amazon is a marketplace/platform more than it is a direct seller at this point. The ads they're showing you were likely purchased by sellers, possibly including other sellers of the product you purchased (if you were shopping around).

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#69

Post by commenter98456 »

woobar wrote: post #45
commenter98456 wrote: post #24

Why is targeted advertising acceptable? it is not ok for a seller to stalk potential buyers. I get that everyone has accepted this as a "fact of life" but consider how TV advertising was done. The advertisement is tailored to the show you are watching and the time of day. In other words, if I'm on a tech blog, advertise to me tech products, if I'm reading a cooking recipe, advertise kitchenware,grocery delivery and t…

TV advertising was targeted too. They used Nielsen data to identify potential audience (white males, 40-50 y.o., middle class income) and show ads targeting this demo.

TV ads targetted demographics not individuals. I'm fine with that,that's actually what I'm promoting. targetting of demographics based on the content being viewed (as oppose to tracking information on the individual viewing it)

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#70

Post by quesera »

anigbrowl wrote: post #30
jcoffland wrote: post #9

Most of what the article complains about can be solved with an ad blocker. The rest by staying off of Facebook.

Staying off Facebook means committing social semi-suicide for a lot of people. It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, family members in distant places, and several sociopolitical communities of which I'm a part. For many people it's a necessity, and other channels like email etc. are far less efficient precisely because they don't leverage the networking effects. Th…

> This advise is like telling someone who's worried about toxins in their food to eat less of it.

Which, depending on toxicity, is exactly appropriate.

You're arguing that there are no options, but that's clearly not correct.

Post reply on HN