Cracked tracks me hard!

[Monketi Ghost]

I visit Cracked occasionally but the quality of the site has taken a dive over the past few years.

Not my problem though. Today I opened the site to find advertisements for guitar pedals, obviously my cell has been cookied like Chips Ahoy.

I use Chrome browser and have the do not track set.

Should I be bothered by this? It feels like an intrusion. I know it's the future, ads being targeted at specific people, but danged if it doesn't feel like it's not worth it to go back to that increasingly crappy site.

 

[Howie Felterbush]

I'm pretty sure this places you in an exclusive club known as "everyone".

Don't sweat it.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

I'm pretty sure this places you in an exclusive club known as "everyone".

Don't sweat it.

I hate that group!
Thanks. I just don't like the feeling...

 

[Howie Felterbush]

I hate that group!
Thanks. I just don't like the feeling...

Yeah, it's a little too Skynet for me, too, but what are you gonna do?

I'm looking for a suit. The next morning, all the ads on every site I go to are from Men's Warehouse (like I'd wear one of their suits).

As far as I can tell, it doesn't really hurt anything, but it is a bit creepy.

 

[marplots]

It is creepy. All the porn ads I now see feature candy canes. I mean, sure I like candy canes. And porn. But do I want everyone to know that? No way.

(Forget you read this.)

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I just went to cracked.com. DoNotTrackMe tells me that there are 13 sites trying to track me there. Seems high. It also tells me that, although it blocks 12, facebook connect is turned on by default. Away she goes.

 

[ehcks]

Sites don't actually have to honor the "do not track" request. I'd be safe to say that many ignore it.

 

[arthwollipot]

Personally I prefer to have ads fed to me that I have even a vague chance of being interested in. I mean, I rarely respond to any ads, but it's better (IMO) that they're tailored to my interests than completely random.

 

[12AX7]

I visit Cracked occasionally but the quality of the site has taken a dive over the past few years.

Not my problem though. Today I opened the site to find advertisements for guitar pedals, obviously my cell has been cookied like Chips Ahoy.

I use Chrome browser and have the do not track set.

Should I be bothered by this? It feels like an intrusion. I know it's the future, ads being targeted at specific people, but danged if it doesn't feel like it's not worth it to go back to that increasingly crappy site.

It goes deeper than that.

I went to Facebook earlier tonight. It showed me an ad from eBay for a road case I looked at several days ago with the headliner: STILL INTERESTED?

So yeah; you're not alone.

 

[HawaiiBigSis]

Personally I prefer to have ads fed to me that I have even a vague chance of being interested in. I mean, I rarely respond to any ads, but it's better (IMO) that they're tailored to my interests than completely random.

^^This.

 

[Aepervius]

I visit Cracked occasionally but the quality of the site has taken a dive over the past few years.

Not my problem though. Today I opened the site to find advertisements for guitar pedals, obviously my cell has been cookied like Chips Ahoy.

I use Chrome browser and have the do not track set.

Should I be bothered by this? It feels like an intrusion. I know it's the future, ads being targeted at specific people, but danged if it doesn't feel like it's not worth it to go back to that increasingly crappy site.

"do not track" is not respected by any advertised whatsoever.

If you want to not be tracked you have to use randomizing extension and add on. I don't know much of chrome so I can#t help you there.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I don't know about Chrome, but on Firefox NoScript, Ghostery, Click To Play Per Element and AdBlock Edge mean that I rarely, if ever, see any ads at all and nor does anybody track me.

 

[malicus]

I don't know about Chrome, but on Firefox NoScript, Ghostery, Click To Play Per Element and AdBlock Edge mean that I rarely, if ever, see any ads at all and nor does anybody track me.

MG - try the Ghostery extension for Chrome.

 

[elgarak]

Personally I prefer to have ads fed to me that I have even a vague chance of being interested in. I mean, I rarely respond to any ads, but it's better (IMO) that they're tailored to my interests than completely random.

True.

But... you spend most of the time browsing what you normally browse. Then you do a one time research (say, for a broken appliance that needs to be replaced, or a gift for your grandmother's 90th birthday, which comes only once), and all the trackers forget what you've been interested in, and for a couple of weeks only deliver ads for things from the one-time-research.

Annoying as hell. In particular if it was for something embarrassing.

Yes, in principle a good idea, but the advertisers simply go too often to extremes, or use way too simple algorithms.

 

[Cuddles]

Sites don't actually have to honor the "do not track" request. I'd be safe to say that many ignore it.

Yeah, definitely this. If you want to stop sites tracking you, you have to physically prevent them from doings. "Do not track" amounts to little more than asking nicely, and you can imagine how well that's going to work.

Personally I prefer to have ads fed to me that I have even a vague chance of being interested in. I mean, I rarely respond to any ads, but it's better (IMO) that they're tailored to my interests than completely random.

Also this. For all the fuss people make about privacy, one thing that tends to get forgotten is that no-one actually knows anything about you. Computers know plenty about you, but is there really anything particularly bad about that? As arthwollipot says, there are obvious benefits to that. But people? To stick with the Cracked example, 13 companies apparently (I haven't checked myself) trying to track visitors there. Just think of how many people they'd need to employ if they actually wanted to have humans looking at any of the data. And 13 is far from the worst I've seen. There aren't enough to people in the world to actually track what everyone in the world is doing.

Of course, that doesn't mean there are no possible issues at all. Some people, scammers and burglars for example, absolutely do have an interest in your personal information, and the more places that collect it the more chance they have to steal it. So I certainly wouldn't advocate ignoring privacy issues entirely. But the sort of "Google/advertisers/whoever know what I'm doing" worries just don't really make sense. Sure, their computers know what you're doing, but not a single actual person at Google has ever looked at any of your data.

Incidentally, Google are particularly relevant here due to the mention of Chrome in the OP. Chrome is made by Google, and Google are the single biggest advertising company on the planet. If you're really worried about being tracked, using Google's products probably isn't a good start.

 

[jasonpatterson]

But... you spend most of the time browsing what you normally browse. Then you do a one time research (say, for a broken appliance that needs to be replaced, or a gift for your grandmother's 90th birthday, which comes only once)

And with me this "appliance" always winds up being something embarrassing.

"Daddy, what's a colorectal scan?"

For some reason the internet decided I needed a hot tub once. I don't believe that I've ever looked for one on my own, but every single ad on every single page for weeks on end was hot tubs, hot tubs, hot tubs. I looked up CO2 regulators once for an aquarium and got home brewing ads for at least a year after.

 

[Dissolution]

For some reason the internet decided I needed a hot tub once. I don't believe that I've ever looked for one on my own, but every single ad on every single page for weeks on end was hot tubs, hot tubs, hot tubs. I looked up CO2 regulators once for an aquarium and got home brewing ads for at least a year after.

Even if the advertising had been accurately aimed at you, how many times would you be looking to buy a hot tub? How many hot tubs can one man own?

 

[FreshHat]

Years ago, I sent an email message to ING Insurance on behalf of my mother regarding her home owner's policy.Shortly thereafter, and continuing for several weeks, many sites I went to featured an ING ad.Really creeped me out back then.

Last February, I bought a Fujita HD bullet camera (a poor man's GoPro) online. I'm still getting all sorts of banner ads for it when I visit many unrelated sites.

(The camera is a little gem, btw.)

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Sites don't actually have to honor the "do not track" request. I'd be safe to say that many ignore it.

I'm not asking anyone to not track me. I'm preventing them from doing so.

Per: https://dnt.abine.com/#help/dnt

How does tracker blocking work?

When you visit a website, that site tells your browser to contact all sorts of other companies to get information about what you do and who you are. DNTMe stops that data collection from happening by preventing your browser from communicating with these companies.

It does not handle Macromedia's Java cookies. For them I use Better Privacy.

 

[geni]

I use Chrome browser and have the do not track set.

Should I be bothered by this?

No. If you think "do not track" has the slightest relivance to anything while using a browser made by the largest advertising company going worrying is just going to upset you.