Recommended For You

Awww how nice.

Modern technology has taken us to the point where a computer, server, program, whatever, can actively make recommendations apparently based on what I have recently viewed online. EBay, Youtube, Google, and countless other websites do this claiming it is in some way to enhance my online experience.

But there is just one problem. The suggestions are always complete b*llox!

Oh I see, you have recommended the same Youtube video I just watched two minutes ago, or all the videos by the same musician. All these videos are in the side bar when I watch the video in the first place. Ah EBay, you have suggested I buy a £400 computer when I looked at a mouse pad two days ago, or the exact same book I just bought.

Fanb*sterd-tastic!

Seriously what is the point of this crap? I have never once thought, OK that's a good idea. I know what I want when I want it, particularly where money is going to exchange hands. I don't know too many people who have the disposable income to casually 'window' shop online for anything randomly suggested to them, particularly items costing several hundred pounds.

I'm not sure who sat down and designed the program that does this. But to me it seems to have been a waste of time and resources. I also hate the get out clause, the technology is in it's infancy. To be honest I don't see where things like this have left to go. Targeted advertising, sorry Purchase Behaviour Targeting makes sense in alot of ways. But when its executed with the precision of a Colossal Squid's penis, it becomes redundant awful quick.

www.theregister.co.uk...
www.ebayadvertising.com...

Also EBay seems to think it's a good idea to store my recently searched, or bought items on the sites home page. So that anyone else using my computer can see what I just bought.

Every heard of birthdays? Christmas? Generic surprises? So now I have to clear the front page after I log out, every single time I use the site. Good job.

What a marvel of modern technology this all is. And to think someday they might be shooting this directly into my eyeballs, in some sort of dystopian Minority Report universe.

"There you are mortal consumer, an acid style flashback of those sex toys you just bought."

I hear ya!

What book did you buy?

reply to post by snewpers


not being nosy or anything?

Your browsing habbits tracked by some websites are worth money to others, huge lists of people and what they like to look at or shop for is compounded sorted and sent to the people willing to find out (IE advertising and marketing companys)

Ever find that some adverts follow you from site to site? Thats it the tracking and targeted advertising network doing its thing, regardless of how acruate or effective it is, big companys work day and night to try to get the right adverts to the right audience.

The equasions they use will keep getting better till after a few months computer use, they can basicly read your mind and know what products to flash at you.

I wouldnt be supprised if in the near future, you get online adverts for pizza at the same times of day/week you might have ordered previously.

They are watching you and they want to sell you their stuff!

reply to post by snewpers


It was 'Food For Free' by Richard Mabey, as suggested by Jamjar on ATS.

Basically like a field guide to edible wild plants etc in the UK.

I have to agree. the suggestions are absurd. I look at a new blender and I guess that actually translates into a new washer dryer from GE. I wonder if companies pay to get their goods pushed like this in some way??? In other news I just purchased Pride Prejudice and Zombies for 1.35 used on Ebay... gotta love it.

reply to post by nikkibee


Well he mentioned he just bought a book. If he said magazine instead I wouldn't have asked. But askign a books title is usualy safe

Bet you want to know now too, eh?

reply to post by Biigs


That's quite worrying because there have been a few Russian Bride ads following me for a while. I honestly haven't been looking for them.

Also Google work at home for some reason.

reply to post by Biigs


yeah they like to track everything. I didn't really pay attention to the ads at first but I noticed that at work where I hunt for Canon lenses on a regualr basis I get alot of camera-related ads and at home, where I search for all kinds of stuff I get matching ads. This is horrible and to be honest, pretty useless.

If you can live without the functionality then disable cookies for all sites you don't class as trusted, enable your browser to clear it's cache upon closing and also run anti spy/malware software in conjunction with a good AV and software firewall.

I also run Google Chrome, always in incognito mode, personally I find it faster and ermm, easier guarding against prying eyes

Originally posted by Death_Kron
If you can live without the functionality then disable cookies for all sites you don't class as trusted, enable your browser to clear it's cache upon closing and also run anti spy/malware software in conjunction with a good AV and software firewall.

I also run Google Chrome, always in incognito mode, personally I find it faster and ermm, easier guarding against prying eyes

I will be doing this in two minutes. I seem to get alot of tracking cookies when I run virus scan, maybe this will prevent those too.

Originally posted by Big Raging Loner

Originally posted by Death_Kron
If you can live without the functionality then disable cookies for all sites you don't class as trusted, enable your browser to clear it's cache upon closing and also run anti spy/malware software in conjunction with a good AV and software firewall.

I also run Google Chrome, always in incognito mode, personally I find it faster and ermm, easier guarding against prying eyes

I will be doing this in two minutes. I seem to get alot of tracking cookies when I run virus scan, maybe this will prevent those too.

I run a weekly scheduled AV scan set for around 01:00AM on a Saturday morning, that way it can do it's thing and I can check the result when I wake up.

You could also always consider using a proxy service, pretty sure that would help especially if you did the cookie killing.

As a user of the internet for basicly the whole time its been up and available, ive gottern very used to ignoring adverts and rapid closing pop ups, that sort of stuff.

Its like riding a bike, you never forget and never really remeber operating it, you just get where you want to go like magic

While i dont like being watched and tracked, since i dont feel suseptable to the adverts, i find it just as annoying to have to go to such methods everytime i sit down on a fresh pc to avoid it.

I do have adblock plus for firefox installed however, just hit the block button above any ad thats anooying enough to have to deal with, boom gone for ever.

Okay maybe some get to me, generally tho, im oblivious to anything but the exact text/pic/whatever im on the site for.

reply to post by Biigs


Point being is that you can configure your PC so that automatically blocks half the crap you don't want to see without user intervention, just takes a little effort setting up

I have heard this type of software severely criticized. I think with good reason. this type of feature actually limits my ability to access new information and ideas. here is an example. i like alternate news sources. as such I frequent such sites as ats and the anonymous news network page on facebook. now if i type in any letter contained in those 3 words (a-n-o-y-m-u-s-e-w-t-w-k)into the facebook search window, guess what the first thing to pop up is? that's right. I also like to play the occasional mind-numbing facebook game as well. For one of them I needed 10 friends to be playing the game to be able to play. I only had 9 that i could convince to sign up. so i made a dummy account. worked well. even if I type the whole name out or copy the page address into the search window, it wont show the option of that page. I assume that it is because one of the only people who i have as a friend with that profile is a member of the u.s. military. that would set my preferences in line with the powers that be rather than with their detractors. ( I had already removed my real profile from the friends list so i could use the dummy as a spy personna in the game with no way for other players who i had friended to know about the connection.) this scares me. i'm curious about all the wonderous things that i might find on the interweb were i not already pegged by the software as a certain type of person. just a little food for thought.

Originally posted by LarrofDanu
I have heard this type of software severely criticized. I think with good reason. this type of feature actually limits my ability to access new information and ideas. here is an example. i like alternate news sources. as such I frequent such sites as ats and the anonymous news network page on facebook. now if i type in any letter contained in those 3 words (a-n-o-y-m-u-s-e-w-t-w-k)into the facebook search window, guess what the first thing to pop up is? that's right. I also like to play the occasional mind-numbing facebook game as well. For one of them I needed 10 friends to be playing the game to be able to play. I only had 9 that i could convince to sign up. so i made a dummy account. worked well. even if I type the whole name out or copy the page address into the search window, it wont show the option of that page. I assume that it is because one of the only people who i have as a friend with that profile is a member of the u.s. military. that would set my preferences in line with the powers that be rather than with their detractors. ( I had already removed my real profile from the friends list so i could use the dummy as a spy personna in the game with no way for other players who i had friended to know about the connection.) this scares me. i'm curious about all the wonderous things that i might find on the interweb were i not already pegged by the software as a certain type of person. just a little food for thought.

Blame yourself, for using Facebook what do you expect?

reply to post by Death_Kron


lol. i hear that! either way, just saying this type of thing has more to it than the whole annoying advert angle.

Like they said, Configure your browser to delete on exit

Cache regular and encrypted

History where you have been

Cookies regular browser cookies

Find an add-on to delete Super-Cookies

Super-Cookies like Flash-Cookies (Local Shared Objects/LSO and DOM Storage Objects)

Flash-cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin. Those Super-Cookies are placed in central system folders and so protected from deletion. They are frequently used like standard browser cookies. Although their thread potential is much higher as of conventional cookies, only few users began to take notice of them. It is of frequent occurrence that -after a time- hundreds of those Flash-cookies reside in special folders. And they won't be deleted - ever like on Google, YouTube, Ebay.

Some flash LSO-cookie properties in short...
- they are never expiring - staying on your computer for an unlimited time.
- by default they offer a storage of 100 KB (compare: Usual cookies 4 KB).
- browsers are not aware of those cookies, LSO's usually cannot be removed by browsers.
- via Flash they can access and store highly specific personal and technical information (system, user name, files,...).
- ability to send the stored information to the appropriate server, without user's permission.
- flash applications do not need to be visible
- there is no easy way to tell which flash-cookie sites are tracking you.
- shared folders allow cross-browser tracking, LSO's work in every flash-enabled application
- the company doesn't provide a user-friendly way to manage LSO's, in fact it's incredible cumbersome.
- many domains and tracking companies make extensive use of flash-cookie

IF YOU PERMIT DELETION OF LSO's, THEN COOKIE-STORED INFORMATION LIKE GAME SETTINGS OR LOGIN DATA (YAHOO SEAL) MIGHT BE LOST! MAKE SURE THAT YOU EXCLUDED IMPORTANT COOKIES FROM DELETION

Source Better Privacy Mozilla Add-ON by NettiCat

I run FireFox 4.0 with the following Add-Ons/Extensions/Plugins

Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon
BabelFish
BetterPrivacy
Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus
FireIce
Flagfox
Free Download Manager plugin
HTTPS-Everywhere
MAXA Cookie Manager
NoScript
PlainOldFavorites
RefreshBlocker
Roboform Toolbar for Firefox
Adobe Acrobat
DivX VOD Helper Plug-in
DivX Web Player
Goodle Earth
Google Update
Hulu Desktop
iTunes Application Detector
Java Deployment Toolkit
Java Platform
Microsoft WMP Firefox Plugin
Octoshape Streaming Services
QuickTime Plug-in
RealJukebox
RealPlayer
Shockwave Flash
Shockwave Director
Silverlight Plug-In
Turner Media Plugin
TVU Web Player
Unity Player
Veetle Broadcaster
Veetle TV Player
Windows Live Photo Gallery
WPI Detector
Yahoo Application State Plugin
Yahoo activeX Plug-in Bridge

I have stuff configured where certain websites, such as ATS, can run scripts and display ads

I also reboot my DSL modem regularly to change my IP address and occasionally change the MAC of my equipment. I don't worry about logon cookies because I use Roboform for all my logons. Be careful with software MAC because WinDoze bitches about it sometimes. Finally "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter www.winvistaside.de...

reply to post by Big Raging Loner
Eventually, your computer and those connect to it, will know you better than you know yourself.

That is true,but just the beginning. You will allow youself to get hooked into cloud storage, apps and sites and allowing them to not only exactly know your name--why should they care about that when they have a direct assess to your mind--but to know all of your wishes, dreams, needs, problems, desires, fears, and just plain interests. Eventually these machines will will collect enough info, distill it according to normal reasoning parameters and learn what your subconsciouss had directly your consciousness to become aware of. In other words, they will know how you will think and respond before you are consciously aware of, say, thinking to start a search to find an image of Lady GaGa's boobs.