web searching and targeted advertising

[[JiF]KellysHero]

It is getting better (and I don't mean that in a good way) every day. Last night I'm at home on my home pc using the Chrome browser to search for a couple of bolts to replace on my tractor. Went to grainger.com, mcmaster.com and fastenal.com. Came into work today and clicked on a news article on my work pc and what do I see halfway through the article? An amazon.com ad for the exact bolt I had been searching for at home. I'm assuming since I was signed into chrome/gmail at home and at work that is how I got the targeted ad.

[[JiF][AARP]Tissueman]

There is no such thing as privacy anymore. Sometimes I look at the ads and then figure out how they were triggered either from something I did or from a note someone sent me. One of my brothers deliberately biases his personal profiles on line saying he's a 80 year old Hispanic one day and a 24 year old Caucasian the next. I guess it keeps him amused.

Tissue

[[JiF]phantomx]

Google is insane for the tracking. They track everything and record everything. I have an android and am a heavy gmail / calender user. I have been noticing searches I look for in chrome are now showing up on my android as far as destinations and how "long" it will take me to get there from my current location. If I have a calender entry that has a location in it, my phone will automatically warn me on when I should leave from my current position to arrive on time (scary). When I search for things on my phone it shows up in my search history on my computer, etc...


Where I really saw this was on my last trip. I went to Houston for a week in May. I had booked my plane tickets online and get the itinerary emailed to me. My phone notified me the day my flight was, what gates I needed to go through, what the weather was like at all my layovers and final destinations, and local attractions at each location. It got this travel information from my itinerary email. While in Houston when ever I would look up things in Houston through my computer (using chrome) either in google search or google maps, my phone would start to show me how long it would take to get this searched location from my current position.

It is almost scary how much google data mines and how it displays this data. With that said I am a huge google user and love it but still scary.

Gotta love cloud computing when the company in charge holds all your data. People get worried about the government knowing everything...

[[JiF]Daterminaytah]

check out http://www.duckduckgo.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; non tracking search engine