41–50 of 135 posts
Every single advertising company is exploiting every single side channel that they can. This should not surprise you.
Sure. And in this case, they're showing me irrelevant ads, shopping results I can't use and more. It's not surprising me, it's baffling me because it's just stupid to do this .
Every single advertising company is exploiting every single side channel that they can. This should not surprise you.
It's getting very serious. I created an fresh anon Instagram account using a cellphone number that I used with FB. And voila, someone I know is a recommended for me to follow on Instagram. They have no shame. And no one is holding them accountable even with proof.
I'm sorry that you were oblivious to this, but their job is to track and monetize anything they can unless it's explicitly outlawed. Even then, Alphabet breaks the rules (namely of the EU) all the time as they seem to be content with paying fines on a regular basis. https://www.wired.com/story/eu-hits-google-third-billion-dol...
I recently bought a brand new pair of golf shoes from a physical store. I did not even search for them or look at any golf shoes online. The next day, I got Google ads served for the same brand of shoes I bought... Coincidence? Seemed very creepy. I know they sometimes do "re-tageting", but in this case I am sure I didn't look at any stores online. Only the fact that I physically visited a store with my tracking devi…
I would guess it is linked to a membership with the store or a credit card used for purchase.
Are you sure there isn't a mix-up with your VPN? I travel a lot internationally and never experienced anything like this.
I mean, I'm sitting in my apartment in Seattle and Google says I'm in Quintanna Roo. Given that I don't have any devices left in Mexico, I'm not really sure what else could be happening. to be clear: my VPN is Tailscale configured to use an exit node running out of the apartment I'm currently sitting in.
Various companies including Google have systems to determine a phone or computer's location via WiFi. To do this they have a table of the approximate locations of routers worldwide.
How does that table get updated? In part it's due to cell phone traffic. If a cell phone's location is determined in some other way (such as via the cell phone network), they will assume any visible router is nearby. So, for example, this would be a way of finding out where a coffee shop's WiFi is.
If, say, a mobile phone is in Mexico (determined via the cell network or GPS) and it's using an exit node in a different country, the inferred router location is going to be wrong. Ironically, using the VPN from Mexico is probably what broke it.
One way to fix it might be to change the exit node somehow. Or maybe connecting to the VPN while at home, using a cell phone, would fix it?
I logged into the WiFi of a Russian airport once and from that day I had Russian spam in my email, fake invites on Google calendar, attempt to break into my Shopify account and others (probably using data from breaches)
[1] https://support.google.com/websearch/workflow/9308722?hl=en
Every single advertising company is exploiting every single side channel that they can. This should not surprise you.
Sure. And in this case, they're showing me irrelevant ads, shopping results I can't use and more. It's not surprising me, it's baffling me because it's just stupid to do this .
Nobody cares, the business is making 10x what it would need to survive. Worst case scenario they still have their reputation (I still remember conversations before buying Azure: "it's Microsoft, it can't be that bad"...)
A small company either does things right or eventually gets destroyed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do they get mac address from HTTP requests?
In a http request/response, mac address would be meta data. ARP is not a thing there. That would be an example of data snaffling.
I tried some quick packet sniffing browsing Google and did not see my MAC transmitted—as I’d expect (bc like you said, ARP not thing at this layer) also research on “MAC included in http metadata” turns up no results…
If you have any more info on this I’d love to learn more—as I’m puzzled to know why this would happen?