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How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

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Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#51

Post by chrishepner »

adityar wrote: post #39

if they're using hashed emails for tracking, we're pretty much clucked. There is an option in gmail that can prevent this. if your email is abcd@gmail.com, use abcd+sitename@gmail.com (gmail will ignore the stuff after the + ). You can also use . separators. Now, to keep track of that...

Whether this works depends on the site's email validation script: many don't allow the '+' character.

Gmail filters out '.' within usernames (e.g., john.smith@gmail.com and johnsmith@gmail.com are sent to the same account), but this gives you a more limited number of options, and is even harder to keep track of!

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#52

Post by pseudonym »

arindone wrote: post #41

I've said this before and I'll say it again -- why the complaints now, when Google has been doing this for years? Essentially, they can collect your information from emails, purchasing habits & financial information from Google Wallet, income, and combine that with Google+ social data, files you put into Google drive, and you have a complete profile that's ripe for advertising.

Google's marketing has done a better job of presenting themselves as "not evil". I won't comment on the accuracy (or not) of that; I'll just note that I only log onto Google accounts in an incognito window.

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#53

Post by pseudonym »

D9u wrote: post #13

There's always the option to delete your FB account. I went nearly 10 months without logging into FB last year, and doing so made it quite easy to delete my FB account at the beginning of this year. Regular removal of cookies, and LSO cookies, as well as clearing the browser cache, is also recommended. Then there's the ubiquitous "Connect" buttons which are spammed all across the web. Prudence dictates that we avoid…

Sadly that's not always an option, given the proliferation of Facebook amongst the "older" crowd. My entire extended family basically communicates entirely (barring face-to-face meetings) via Facebook nowadays.

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#54

Post by sdoering »

rhizome wrote: post #6
krapp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I'm sure governments around the world have been thinking quite hard about that.

Which is why online privacy protection laws are so important for legislatures to pass.

And which is by the way exactly the negative incentive for governments to pass this sort of legislation, as they love to get their hands on this kind of data via legal (or pseudo-legal) means.

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#55

Post by sdoering »

fnayr wrote: post #38
lifeguard wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your data is never deleted, only your account is "de-activated".

Incorrect (currently). They allow you to delete after you deactivate, but they make you wait 14 days while deactivated in the hope you realize you need facebook.

Well are you sure, that this is not only, what they tell you. Are you sure there is no table in their database called "deleted_unrecoverable_profiles"?

No one can be sure if it is that way, or if the data is really deleted. And knowing their take on user-privacy, I tend to believe, that data is never deleted by Facebook.

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#56

Post by keithpeter »

sillysaurus wrote: post #7
HunterV wrote: post #2

One thing this shows is just how powerful Facebook could become/already is. When they connect the dots online and offline of billion user's buying information and habits they essentially can electronically understand who you are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better. Just food for thought.

When Facebook connects the dots online and offline of billion users' buying information and habits, they essentially can electronically understand who you are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better. Why are people disturbed by this?

Predictions based on partial data could be problematic.

One example: I pay for fresh food and staples in cash, and buy 'grocery' items on a card. A data collection system that tracked only card purchases would give the impression of a very unhealthy diet.

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#57

Post by D9u »

dmoy wrote: post #22
ordinary wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deleting your account does not stop Facebook from tracking you, unfortunately.

Does Facebook actually delete stuff yet? For a long time they wouldn't delete accounts, photos, etc.

That's a good point, regarding whether, or not, FB actually deletes user data after we "opt out." Another consideration is how, when Facebook started out, users were supposed to actually know, IRL, the people on their "Friends List." I adhered to that rule all the way until my account deletion last January, but now a great number of users have people on their "Friends Lists" who they have never even spoken to in real life. This point is illustrated by corporate entities being on people's "Friend Lists."

As for FB allegedly tracking me subsequent to my account deletion, could someone explain to me how it could be so? I never posted my actual DOB, nor my cell phone, the email address I used to register hasn't been logged into for many months, and I'm using a new ISP - which uses dynamic allocation addressing.

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#58

Post by D9u »

byoogle wrote: post #18
w1ntermute wrote: post #4

I highly recommend Ghostery. I've been using it for quite a while now and have no complaints.

Lifehacker just did a comparison of popular privacy extensions and called Disconnect the best (over Ghostery and others): http://lifehacker.com/the-best-browser-extensions-that-prote...

I prefer Conformal's Xombrero browser.

https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xombrero

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#59

Post by kaybe »

D9u wrote: post #57
dmoy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Facebook actually delete stuff yet? For a long time they wouldn't delete accounts, photos, etc.

That's a good point, regarding whether, or not, FB actually deletes user data after we "opt out." Another consideration is how, when Facebook started out, users were supposed to actually know, IRL, the people on their "Friends List." I adhered to that rule all the way until my account deletion last January, but now a great number of users have people on their "Friends Lists" who they have never even spoken to in real…

A possibility could be if your email shows up in your friends' contact list which FB gets from their email accounts.

FB continuesly harrassing me to give them my email password - of all things to ask for! - is something I will never get. 'We'll check your contact list for friends! We won't save your password!' My email password! You wanna install a camera in my room while you're at it?

But some people apparently actually use the service, and thus FB can find out you exist and who you're friends with. They might also mention you etc.

Re: How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity

#60

Post by rcxdude »

AgentConundrum wrote: post #44
thelibrarian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable specific trackers on specific sites - e.g. unblock Google Analytics on your banking site, or Disqus on a favourite blog, rather than having to temporarily disable the whole extension browser-wide.

> You can disable specific trackers on specific sites Either you are incorrect, or this functionality is non-obvious. Based on recent experience, I'm leaning toward the former. When I go to edit my blocking options when a site doesn't play nice with Ghostery, I'm given options either to disable certain tracker-blocking or to disable Ghostery entirely on a given domain. There doesn't seem to be an option to stop block…

It's non-obvious, but if you click on the check-mark instead of the slider button, it'll be allowed on one domain only. Annoyingly, it doesn't use a tooltip but tells you what the button does after you click it.
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