"Am I being paranoid?" Topic

I googled "Persian carpet patterns", just to have some rug patterns to print out for interiors in gaming buildings.
A day or two later, I started getting ads for Persian carpets.

Here's the odd thing. I googled on my desktop, since that's where the printer is. But the ads show up on my cell smart phone Safari.

(Cue the morons on Frothers to larf at me for being an old fart with a flip phone….)

It's how all those free services on the internet are paid for. You are not being paranoid; they really do know it is you using the phone.

1984 IS A BIT LATE BUT MUCH SCARIER. Although it may be an inconvenience or a pain for may but do not sync your phone and computer or your tablet or anything else – includes your smart television. Turn off your GPS and any other convenience app you may have running.
Our laziness and hunger for making our life easier is costing us in ways we can hardly imagine.
Trust no one.

Had a friend prove to me at lunch one day how it works

We put his phone on the table and then just started talking – about 1 minute in we started talking about poker chips for a few minutes (neither of us has played poker since college days eons ago).

He then picked up his phone and turned on the browser and surprise it opened to where we could find poker chips locally.

Got to love technology

Winston,

The scarier part is the amount of other personal information that is available about you, which is being sold and re-sold online, both on the dark web and the "legit" online businesses and financial concerns.

This includes, among other things, your purchase habits, both in what you buy online, but also how you pay for it (Paypal, credit card, bank transfer, etc.).

I say keep polluting their data! I Googled up some lady's print tops to get schemes for painting some modern civilians. I still get plenty of ads for those, even though I'll never buy one.

On the one hand, I would rather get targeted ads than forever see "meet singles in your area," "refinance now!" and "lose weight fast.?" I have a great mortgage, a great wife, and, well, I'm not actively trying to lose weight.

On the other hand, everyone needs to know about privacy mode and VPNs and use them when appropriate. Privact/Incognito is not just there to keep your history free of embarrassing sites. and VPN means not even your ISP knows what you're doing.

These things will hopefully get smarter soon. It's a waste of time to show me lamps after I just bought one. Amazon knows what you bought, they should offer you follow up products, not equivalents to what you just bought.

As for polluting their data, someone needs to write some software to do that. When you step away from your computer you just tell it to do half an hour of innocuous random browsing and shopping so they have no idea what you're really up to. That would be cool. Kinda like the clone shopper thing someone did when they posted their grocery membership/rewards bar code to the internet so that lots of people could use it, get the discount, and record everyone's purchase under one username so it would be useless.

At the same time, those ads are paying the bills. An ad-free internet would mean paying for a *lot* of valuable stuff that is currently free.

Log out of your browser or use an incognito tab to avoid cookies.

FYI – you are better off searching for an item you want and not buying right away. Typically within a short time you will get ads for that item, sometimes with coupons or promotions.

As others have said, it is all part of the all encompassing internet ecosystem.

Not 1984. You are volunteering for this.

My daughter's YouTube account is logged in on my TV, so I take great joy in changing the architecture of the music recommendations it gives to her.

I also want to talk to the robopsychologist who counsels my grocery store database application after I buy Brussels sprouts, tofu, nori, and two pounds of back bacon. (BTW, the only observable result I've seen is a spike in the frequency of coupon offers for feminine hygiene products.)

On the other side, I appreciate when Amazon tells me that a favourite author or musician has released new content. I don't always buy it, but I appreciate the efforts of my personal assistant.

Don't just accept things as they are. Don't fight the power and turn stuff off and circumvent processes. Be deliberate about the way you live your life. Know what you're doing. Do what you want.

But….. Persian carpets!

Too bad Julia Stiles doesn't show up at my front door, merely by googling her name. I bet she would like my cooking, and is into AWI skirmish gaming.

Not paranoid at all. If I picked up a new item at Target on my way home from work, by the time I drove one more mile, put away my purchases and turned on the computer, I was already receiving ads for related products. That meant someone had to link product to credit card used to pay for product to home computer. It works much the same with Walmart, of course.

But my complaint is that the system isn't good enough. Used to be with Amazon I could ask why a book was recommended. Amazon would tell me why, and I could mark something "this was a gift" or "do not use for recommendations." That's gone now, and every book I buy by mistake or for a friend keeps generating useless recommendations. Much worse than it was.

Yes, it would be much better if THEY (Walmart, Amazon, etc.) would be more up front in what they were doing. You can find out, but takes persistence, and, well, being paranoid.

Winston

That's been happening to me for a few years now. Don't worry, your future is being decided for you:

YouTube link

But you better drop all your electronic devices and run to the hills if you get this next message:

link

Dan
PS. By the way, just Google images for printable dollhouse rugs.

You can still tailor the recommendation data for Amazon. There are a number of ways to get to it. I usually go through Browsing History. Or if you click on the Your Recommendations, you can get to the link that lets you customize them.

I routinely go and eliminate one-off purchases (book of the month for work) so they don't clog recommendations. I also cut out things I don't want recommendations for (such as SWMBO's romance novels – she wants one, she just goes to get it).

YouTube link

I'm not bothered.

I have the opposite problem.
When I've searched for [ 1/2" hinges ] it loads up everybody selling everything but those (grumbles at screen "No, I want 1/2 inch hinges, not 21/2 or 31/2.") Then there was the time I tried to look up information about "frequency bands" and lo and behold! Target claimed to carry them. And 40% cheaper than everybody else! Yes, ticks me off when I want to find specific science/tech info and only get ads in return to sites that have nothing to do with what I'm looking for…

I've been considering announcing on Facebook that I won the lottery, and now I'm asking for recommendations on what to put in my new three car garage besides the new Mercedes and the Jag.

Grelber

Just because you are paranoid does Not mean someone is Not out to get you … I think the saying goes !

The new saying, which I've made up, is: Be paranoid because they ARE out to get you.

I'm trying to convince our computer users not to click on every link they get in emails. They don't understand that the world is full of &*#$% people that really are out to get them.

I've been paranoid for decades.
My family and friends have learned to live with it.
However, the twitching still freaks them…

Hehehe.

P.S. Thanks Dan. You solved a painting problem. I have two Indian/Persian "generals" riding flying carpets that are about to be revamped.

"Don't worry that people are out to get you; Worry about the one that WILL get you…"