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How to See What the Internet Knows About You

nytimes.com

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Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#71

Post by drewmol »

i2shar wrote: post #65
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 a…

Thanks for this link, reminded me to install noscript on my Android/Firefox install!

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#72

Post by propogandist »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #56
dublinben wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered paying for the apps you use, or using open source apps (such as from F-Droid) that don't include ads?

Many apps don't have paid versions, only ad-supported, and even more apps don't have open-source equivalents. I'm sure you're aware of this.

install something like 3C, root your phone, disable all the analytics/ad-services from individual apps; also installing something like AdAway will block most ads via the Host file

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#73

Post by propogandist »

drewmol wrote: post #71
i2shar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Thanks for this link, reminded me to install noscript on my Android/Firefox install!

no script's not very useful anymore for desktop, you need something like uMatrix for the modern web

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#74

Post by PhantomGremlin »

andmarios wrote: post #18
jasonrhaas wrote: post #16

I recently got tired of all the creepy targeted advertising, so I hit the nuclear option. Turned off all targeted ads on all social networks, cleared all cookies, all search histories, and installed the Disconnect Chrome extension. Also disabled all images in my email to stop those email trackers. I've always used an ad-blocker but I don't think that stops the data collection aspects of it. I've always known this is…

I tried it a couple years ago with Google and once targeted ads were off, I would get many ads about gay dating sites. Once I turned targeted ads on again, these ads disappeared.

Bah. I hate their attempts at targeting, either way.

I normally don't see ads (NoScript, JS usually off). But when I do I sometimes see ads targeted at teenage girls (i.e. my kids). If the trackers can't get any info about me personally, they probably just default to analyzing other traffic from my shared IP address.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#75

Post by unclebucknasty »

tokyoSurfer wrote: post #67
sparky_z wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whether it's Amazon wanting a customer to take additional action or an affiliate trying to drive traffic, relevant retargeting is much more effective than non-relevant.

And from the affiliate's perspective, interfacing to good retargeting is just as easy as interfacing to bad. That is, it's a black box owned and managed by Amazon.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#76

Post by propogandist »

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 ads are overpriced garbage, spray and pray. YT is getting into the TV business to show you targeted ads. You clearly are unaware of the motivations of the ad industry and advertisers... we want to know everything about consumers, so the ad can hit them at the right moment in time and/or influence you to do our bidding.

The whole target pages, not people...that's the old way of advertising and the performance is garbage. It's better to find people, whenever they are on the web -- within reason -- whenever they may be exhibiting any sort of buying intent.

Block the ads, scripts and cookies etc., if you don't want to be tracked digitally. Ad targeting will only improve.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#77

Post by ingenuous2 »

reaperducer wrote: post #51
gaius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true, because who is clicking on these ads for things they already own?

You've got to think beyond the computer. Most big companies pay per ad view, not per click. Per click is for the low-end advertisers. Per action is for bottom-feeders. Think about billboards, TV, radio, and magazines. Can't click on any of them, yet hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on them every year because repeating the brand, logo, visual, or message works. There's a reason McDonald's and Coca-Cola advert…

I strongly disagree about your CPM/PPC/CPA categorization.

I work on conversion focused ad campaigns, so YMMV. For conversions, obviously CPA and PPC are superior. I do agree that CPA can be bottom feeders, but PPC is probably the bread and butter of most people I know.

I would suggest that most big companies are paying their agencies, who like pay per view because they can spend more without direct accountability like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Their job is easier without having to prove their efforts work.

Grain of salt and all. I'm also a guy who has yet to see proof that a branding campaign has value. (It may lift sales, but is it the most effective use of those dollars? Doubtful.)

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#78

Post by i2shar »

propogandist wrote: post #73
drewmol wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this link, reminded me to install noscript on my Android/Firefox install!

no script's not very useful anymore for desktop, you need something like uMatrix for the modern web

I researched and installed uMatrix immediately, but (due respect to the creator) the application is so hard to use and broke several web pages. I also installed WebRTC Leak Prevent Tool that helped a little.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#79

Post by yellow_postit »

jpdaigle wrote: post #8
owlninja wrote: post #6

These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hour…

I'm asking for something even more basic from ad targeting: as a Canadian, with a Canadian IP address, don't advertise products/services to me that are US-only. You'd think the web advertising industry would at least figure out how to never show me an ad for Hulu or Blue Apron, seeing how those companies don't do business outside the US so the ROI on having me click that is zero.

Reverse IP lookup is far from perfect when it comes to location identification. Also if you've recently travelled to the US wouldn't be out of the question to have a cookie set with that location info.
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