A New Ad

I did a google search for medicine for toenail fungus. Ads for those type of products are following me around now. Where you searching topics about vampires?

Does anyone have access to your computer?

Damn, I'm going to do a search for large breasted women if it's that simple. I'll take notes & get back to ya.

freetown fred wrote:Damn, I'm going to do a search for large breasted women if it's that simple. I'll take notes & get back to ya.

Yer a sick sick man, Fred!

cokehead wrote:I did a google search for medicine for toenail fungus.

Vicks.

Franco, it's for a video game called Second Life.

No, I don't play it. It's an MMO. I hate MMO's.

franco b wrote:I have noticed that when I shop around on the net ads for those things seem to follow me around on other sites.. Somebody is watching me.

Google is watching you. Do you happen to see lot of Google ads on other sites about heating?

When you do a search from Google and/or visit another site serving Google ads they can generate a profile from this information. They set a cookie on your computer to identify you. When you load an ad on this site they read the cookie and then serve you ads based your profile they generated. That's not the only way they could do it either, for example they could go by IP but that becomes problematic because different users can be using same IP.

FYI I believe Google has a specific category of ads they don't serve doing this. If you were searching for something "personal" those types of ads would only show up sites with similar content.

If you wanted to take this even a step further let's suppose you have Google account where you have filled in some personal data like your phone number or email address. They could buy data from a data miner like those store clubs where you might list your phone number or email address on the form. From there they can serve you ads based on what you bought for dinner last night.


Just so it's clear I sharre no data with Google, Google is able to track you becquerel the ads come their server.

I did a lot of research about Hitzer and Harman recently and I'm getting ads about them pop up even when searching for other stuff. It happens, nothing to be concerned about. But I do delete cookies and clear my cache several times a week.

Sooo franco b, I guess I should stop whittlin oak stakes & sending them off to ya? Damn, so much for supplementing my meager Soc. Sec.

Richard S. wrote:When you do a search from Google and/or visit another site serving Google ads they can generate a profile from this information.

I expect the blackmail notes from Google to start coming any day now ....

Richard S. wrote:If you wanted to take this even a step further let's suppose you have Google account where you have filled in some personal data like your phone number or email address.

I generally put down a birth date that would make me about 177 years old, but it doesn't fool them. Judging from the email and snail mail solicitations I have been getting recently for Medicare supplements, the whole commercial world knows my age right to the day. On the plus side, I no longer worry about senility -- anything about myself that I forget, I can just ask Google or Progressive Insurance or FucBook.com.