That's what makes it worse for snoopers. On top of an IP address that changes multiple times per day I also have NAT.
I can't easily operate a server anyhow because of dynamic IP.
I've had IT pros try to show me that even my systems are vulnerable. All of them gave up :-)
Tough luck, they won't be able to, on account of the fact that our cell phones are just that, phones. No tracking via web and calls last typically 30-45 seconds.
Sure, but only _during_ that very search. Now that even a school kids could figure out how to do. It's the same as calling a carpet dealer and him saying "Well, we don't have that but you'd be very interested to hear that we have ..."
If they had enough intelligence on me there should be carpet tile links the next day when I was looking for phased array papers. But there aren't.
[...]
Not here. Nearly all PDF have only a Google link, the URL listed right below the entry is incomplete and thus useless (has the dot-dot-dot in there).
A lot of decision makes in the web marketing business do not seem to be excessively smart :-)
If people are negligent and leave their WLAN unprotected. We don't.
So how would Google then get at my MAC address when I do a search later?
Well, doesn't work in our area. Without cards, coupons and timing the sales the grand total at the cash register is nearly always higher. Usually a lot higher. How else are you going to find tasty microbrew at $4.99 per six-pack, short of starting a brewing operations in your garage?
Generally just two, in our case. Both two miles from here which is the closest any stores are.
comes up 2nd in Google for me and the link goes to the right site.
Maybe there is something fishy going on - are you sure you are actually using Google and you haven't been hijacked by some dodgy add-on? Could be worth checking?
I ran the antivirus program and it found nothing. The list of add-ons and plug-ins is the same as usual. Seems Martin Riddle experiences something similar.
Plus the blendersearch links are all empty, blank page. It wouldn't do a rogue "sales network" any good that way. If it was hijacking, why would they not target other sites such as Bing or Yahoo at the same time? All others I've tried (lots) work fine.
But people don't. The majority of people out here do exactly what the stores want them to do: They plan nothing, never compare prices and hurriedly shop every other day after work. Heck, some even regularly use convenience stores which comes really close to burning money.
We have one store (Food-for-less) that tries this. Doesn't work well, we get much better pricing at the card stores.
Absolutely not. For us the cards have value if the deals are good. If the deal ain't good we usually wait until they are (sale comes around) or go elsewhere.
It's amazing, sometimes while sorting the ads enclosed with the morning paper I happen to see out of the corner of my eye that ribs are on sale. So I tell my wife and nearly everytime she already knew, including the store and the exact price, and that it's already on her list. "So how did you find out?" ... "Yesterday, from my computation machine".
Certainly not us.
Possible but here they usually ask for your phone number. I never have any of those cards with me and when my wife asks me to stop at the store and buy some stuff I just give them our phone number. They key that in after ringing everything up, card data pops up, discounts get applied, li'l printer in the cash register runs once more. Sometimes the Dollar figure that was subtracted was quite surprising.
I does indeed sound fishy - you could try starting windows in safe mode, and starting firefox in safe mode too just in case ( disables all add ons for the session). In the hijacked machine I saw, the links appeared ok in the results page, but certain ones went "elsewhere" when clicked. Try linking to microsoft and antivirus sites, these are typically the first ones to get redirected.
Just tried it. Going to the Microsoft server and links on there works fine. Also in Google, when I let it list lots of links on the Microsoft domain and click on them it's fine.
But, for example, this link when found after a yagi antenna search goes to the "blendersearch" blank page when clicked:
formatting link
Only happens on Google, and that makes it useless for me. What was discovered as the cause on the machine you saw?
Quote "The Inspec bibliographic database contains nearly 12 million records of scientific and technical articles taken from the world's literature". That's nice when in need of citation-suitable papers before publishing your own paper _and_ your university has a paid up subscription deal. But for engineering?
And then I assume the same happens that does with IEEE, you get a brief abstract and if you want the full link they first ask for cash. In IEEE's case quite a lot of it.
Sigh. The point was that you can't just add '.com' to a word and expect to hit the right website. wsm.com doesn't take you to the radio station. creativeenergies.com doesn't take you to that company's website. it goes to a place selling lights. Too damn many domain names were snatched up by unrelated companies.
--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
(sigh) You're missing the point. You *will* reside behind one (or even *many*) IP addresses. So, your "fingerprint" will distinguish you from someone with an *identical* configuration operating from (behind) a different IP address. E.g., a cox.net customer.
Fingerprinting is a *lot* more involved than you think! Take a *studied* read through: paying close attention to the footnotes and the references cited. Your internet presence says a *lot* about who "you" are.
People who are motivated to make money by determining this information are very clever at extracting this sort of information -- *without* your participation and with very little that you can do about it.
DynDNS.
Talk to the folks at ThreatMetrix et al. -- folks who make money trying to figure out if you are you (even without knowing *who* you "is"). Most IT folks don't have very deep skillsets when it comes to the things you can do with technology -- especially when thinking outside the box!
The services are geared towards smart phone users *wanting* those services. "Where should we go for dinner?" Obviously, knowing where the person *is* when they start searching for restaurants allows "more acceptable" (read: likely to be acted upon) results to be presented to that user. If I'm in NYC, I sure as hell don't want a 40 page list of all the restaurants *in* the city if *most* of them will require an hour cab ride to reach! If I have to browse through pages of "unacceptable suggestions", I may end up *ignoring* the pitch that the service is making and finding something on my own: "How about that pizza place across the street?"
(those service providers want to be able to show that their service has resulted in increased business for their "customers"/clients)
You would *complain* if, while looking for information on JFETs, you were presented with a list of carpet tile vendors. Or, sausage vendors from the previous day's searches.
OTOH, that doesn't stop them from learning something about you and your tastes/preferences which they can then use to alter the results that they present to *you* -- vs. the ones that they present to *me*.
Why did the other folks in this thread repeating your Yagi search end up with different result pages?
I have a power switch on mine. I don't think its been "on" for more than 2 hours in the years I've had it (I have wired connections everywhere so have no need of wireless)
They get the MAC address of your AP. Perhaps also your PC's but that isn't important for that particular service -- your PC may not be "on" when Joe User is walking down the street trying to decide where to eat that evening (but your AP probably *will* -- esp since few have a convenient way of being powered off).
[Your MAC address will disappear from network traffic at the next upstream router.]
There are 5 "traditional grocery stores" here: Albertson's, Basha's, Fry's, Safeway, Sunflower. (we won't count places like walmart, kmart, "Joe's Super Fooderama", etc.). Each week, the flyers for all of them come out (Thursday, IIRC). They are *so* strikingly similar that we actively wonder if they don't have *spies* in each other's organizations... or, at the newspaper itself!
[Of course, it could just be that they are all passing on "promotions" from the same upstream suppliers at the same time]
I.e., their prices are comparable -- and neither of the non-card stores requires you to clip coupons to get those prices (nor carry a "card").
Other items that we buy often:
Amaretto: 19.99 - 21.99 (17.99 if you buy *6*) -- we paid 11.99 (and ended up buying everything in stock! :> ) Hoisin Sauce: 3.29 -- we pay 2.19 Popcorn salt: 0.50 ounce -- we paid < $2/pound
The important points are:
- to know what you normally buy
- know what the right "normal" price is
- plan ahead
- be able to purchase in quantity (without becoming a warehouse yourself!)
Most people are oblivious to all of the above. E.g., I watch my sister shop and I actually feel myself *cringing*.
We can visit at least 4 of the 5 stores in a 2 mile radius. Basha's is a bit further out. There are other stores in town that we hardly ever frequent as there is too much "close by" to chose from.
Some folks live off junk food and wonder why they are obese, diabetic, etc. I have no desire to crusade to save the world...
Safeway was the first to bring cards to the area. We are constantly amused by how many folks bring up "How expensive Safeway has become" (we haven't shopped there in years)
We start a list each week AS SOON AS we return from our weekly shopping trip. The first items on the list are those items that we forgot to purchase *this* week. :-/
Previously, we would shop on Thursdays -- coincident with the ads coming in the mail (and to keep friday and the weekend free). We have now begun shopping earlier in the week -- tuesday or wednesday. So, the ads hang around from the previous thursday.
When the ads arrive, we add items to the list -- along with those that we have found ourselves running short of during the week (e.g., "Have to remember to put toilet paper on the list next time it goes on sale"). We also plan our future meals based on the items that are most affordable: "Let's have asparagus and fettucini this week -- asparagus is on sale for $1.77/lb"
In general, our needs are relatively constant from week to week so it is easy to plan ahead. E.g., every Sunday we have an oriental-ish pork dish that we enjoy. So, we know to keep pork tenderloin on hand in the freezer -- and purchase more as we come close to the end of the *previous* batch.
I think many households don't do much planning. Either because they don't have the discipline or have convinced themselves that they don't have the *time* (though I can't see how NOT planning saves you any time! It just defers the planning until you are pushing the cart down the aisle!)
Wierd. I get that same link as number 4 on my results page (google.com):
An infection from a 2-year old trojan, can't remember the exact name but it was known to Microsoft Security Essentials. Or perhaps you mean the question more philosphically - another cause was me temporarily turning off "active protection" to diagnose a speed issue on the machine 2 years ago, then forgetting to ever turn it back on again. Another cause was the particular users habit of falling for every lame email scam ever conceived.... :)
Today it goes to a "vacuum-town" web site. Blank page, no data transfers.
My PC is pretty locked up for security. To the point where many "fluffified" sites will not work. I'll never understand why some script kiddies have to start a whole big program just to jump to a products page. My web site is able to do that without. It's sometimes bad, for example I cannot point out my scope on the manufacturer's web site (GWInstek) if I am at my PC. Because any such links start a script that gets shot down. Sometimes web programmers seem to border on stupid.
In the 14 years we live in this area I think my wife has forgotten one item. Once. Because she forgot her shopping list :-)
My wife has a menu plan written out for several weeks. She usually knows what goes on sale when. But we are flexible. Like when something unexpected goes on sale or when we spontaneously eat out with friends.
Then your family and mine belong to a very small minority. I'd have a hard time remembering more than maybe a couple of others who plan their food supplies to any extent, meaning past the next couple of days.
We had Thai-style kebabs yesterday, from the Weber. Along with baked potato and bell peppers, also from the barbie.
That, plus lots of people live hand to mouth. They aren't disciplined enough to save. Those people, which is the vast majority, will always pay more than you and I because they cannot take advantage of bulk sales.
Still, you can save a lot more with cards. They send out coupons to card holders that others simply don't get. There is no rebate available in the store and it isn't mentioned at the shelf sign. You get the discount at the register if you present card along with the coupon printout. That can easily exceed $5 for just one item. A slice of that $19.95 ice cake tastes so much better when you paid only $12 :-)
Quote "The most common way to track web browsers (by "track" we mean associate the browser's activities at diffrent times and with different websites) is via HTTP cookies, often set by with 3rd party analytics and advertising domains [9]."
That simply won't work here because, with a few exceptions, cookies are turned off. As for super cookies, well:
formatting link
Of course this means that I can't access numerous sites. Too bad for them because it may cost the companies behind them business ...
I know but that can be a pain. Plus I don't even want to :-)
Again, I must repeat my question: Why have I personally not been targeted with ads? What good does all the snooping and fingerprinting do it nobody tries to make a buck out of it? After all, the folks programming this don't work for fun or for free.
But I take it those are tracking features you actually want. We were talking about the rogue ones.
But when I search for carpet tiles again (which I'll keep doing until we find some of the good stuff I had back in Europe) I'd expect the snoopers to at least know that I live in the Sacramento region and throw some local store ads at me. Yet, this does not happen. So either the tracking isn't working with my computer or they don't know the bare basics of marketing.
So what good does this do if they don't present targeted ads?
No idea. All I know is that some Java script wants to start which my computer nixes. I switched to another search engine and it no longer happens.
Joe User won't be able to use our AP unless he knows the code :-)
Same here, comparable prices but that is because many people do not know about the coupon deals that come in the email. Those sans card don't get them. Sometimes they offer 2 for 1 deals. If you are using some stuff a lot that's a 50% cost savings you would otherwise not have.
BT :-)
The topper: Was at a client, went to dinner with an engineer. "Do you mind if we stop 20mins? Got to buy some groceries" ... no problem. He chucked stuff into the cart. Then I stopped him: "Hey, you can take a
2nd bottle of this and it's free, says so right there on the yellow sticker" ... "Oh, wow, thanks!"
-------------^^^^^^^^^^^ implicitly acknowledges that there are *other* ways of doing so!
But you don't *know* that you haven't been "targeted"! Google is more sophisticated than the bozos who pepper your email account with unsolicited email "ads".
Smart advertising isn't about putting ads in front of people and *hoping*. Smart advertising is about figuring out which ads people are more likely to *respond* to!
E.g., if I search for information on "olive oil", they could present me with *hundreds* of ads for different brands of olive oil. But, if the first N of them that I even bother to *notice* are not of interest to me ("light" olive oil, $1/gallon olive oil, etc.) then they haven't done a very good job getting me to part with my $$$. And, after a few ads, I (and most people) will tune them out.
OTOH, if they can correlate my "taste" in olive oil (no pun intended) with other characteristics that they have observed about me and determine the brands of olive oil that I am most *likely* to be interested in and present *those* to me, first off, then they are more likely to engage me.
They don't try to pitch *any* olive oil (from *any* of the olive oil advertisers that are willing to pay them for their "pitch") but, rather, want to be able to tell their advertisers, "We can
*increase* the effectiveness of your ads by targeting people likely to want -- or be willing to buy/try -- *your* product"
Why do you think they want to read your email? Track your searches? Know who you talk to on the telephone? Know which internet domains you contact (regardless of whether it is for WWW traffic, email, FTP, etc.)?
They're playing the numbers game. They have gazillions of bits of data about millions of different people. They don't need to know
*who* those people are (just like an auto insurance company doesn't need to know who all those 18 year old males are that get into so many traffic accidents).
They don't even have to understand the reasons behind these correlations -- or, even understand what they might "mean". "People who play Dungeons and Dragons tend, *statistically*, to like Orville Reddenbacher popcorn more than any other brand." "People who purchase black running shoes are more likely to vacation in Mexico." etc.
Ever notice how sites (e.g., Amazon) will indicate: "People who bought this item ALSO bought..." or, "People who looked at this item ALSO looked at..."?
They have to provide you with search results that fit with your description of what you are seeking. If you went looking for "black running shoes" and an ad for a Mexican vacation popped up, you'd think their search engine was broken!
OTOH, if you were searching for "running shoes" and had historically expressed an interest for "mexican resorts", they might *bias* their search results to offer you more *black* running shoes than *white* (leveraging the above-mentioned correlation)
Google has *lots* of data. There is a reason that they gather and horde it. *Not* just so that they can give it away "free" as search results!
I was explaining why they gathered it. More data. More ways that they can exploit it for other (saleable) services.
When I search for anything, I am presented with a list of local suppliers. Even a *map* showing me where they are in town.
See above. How do you know that the search results and ads that you are seeing aren't targeted to you? Do the search results for "yagi antenna" that you see on your browser
*literally* coincide with those that someone on the east coast sees at the same time? What about searches for "pork chops"? Or, "Mazda dealerships"?
Run NoScript (in firefox). I have scripts turned off primarily to prevent someone from "running code" on my machine -- that I haven't inspected (NoScript lets you selectively turn scripts on/off)
But he doesn't *need* to "use your AP" for his phone to be able to *see* your SSID and MAC! Google isn't trying to help him "steal service". Rather, they are exploiting *their* knowledge of geographical locations of router/AP MACs and SSIDs (because they know where *their* street view car was at the time it sniffed that information) to provide information to their applications/services "for the benefit of" Joe User in his quest for a restaurant.
Again, Google isn't trying to replace GPS to be able to tell Joe that he is 12.7 feet from a manhole cover, etc. Rather, they are looking to "better their odds" at giving him pertinent information that, hopefully, makes *google* a more attractive advertiser for that restaurant that he is about to visit.
Advertising is an *incredibly* inefficient process. Traditionally, it has been "blind" -- just throw lots of stuff out there and *hope*. Then, as more and more stuff clamored for our attention (causing us to tune it out), advertisers tried to find ways to "catch our eyes" (sex, silly videos, etc.)... or, put ads in places where we aren't (yet) conditioned to ignore them and can be catch our attention simply because they are "unexpected" and, thus, *noticed* (e.g., on the floor at grocery stores, on "wrapped" cars, etc.). This is why YouTube is a valuable property -- it "catches eyes".
Google's approach (with search, email, phone, etc.) is to try to refine their targeting of ads so that the viewer is MORE LIKELY to embrace the ad. Not look for *more* eyeballs but, rather, put the right ad in front of the *right* eyeballs.
Spend some time looking at where google is spending their money. What services they are providing "for free". Then, think about what they are potentially *getting* from those offerings (no free lunch) and notice any patterns that stand out.
Facebook is headed in a slightly different direction. They want to track relationships so they can become a "rating agency" of sorts. "Hmmm... this guy Joerg hangs around with a bunch of
*wild* people. Statistically, we've learned that wild people don't take good care of their personal health so let's not offer to write a policy for him..."
We *often* forget things (though rarely "sale items"). Usually because one of us "remembered" something to put on the list and *hoped* the OTHER actually did the "putting"! :>
E.g., the "blue" wire nuts (Home Depot) that I forgot to write down the other day will have to be purchased on our next trip (no problem as I can defer their need until then).
Some items that don't get used often tend to get overlooked. E.g., I haven't made pizzelles in quite a while and had *assumed* their was a supply of anise extract in the cupboard.
Other items I *habitually* forget. E.g., the past two oil changes found me standing over a car whose oil pan had just been drained of oil (i.e., not driveable) yet with no *fresh* oil to replace it! > fettucini this week -- asparagus is on sale for $1.77/lb"
Much of our schedule(s) is repeatable -- classes, activities, etc. So, much of our "at home" time can be planed far in advance (e.g., Sunday is "The Pork Dish" for lunch as we are both usually home to share that meal).
OTOH, there is a good deal of flexibility in our schedules, as well. "Openings" for artist friends, parties, the days when I do my volunteer work, etc. So, we can't always be sure -- even a few days in advance -- of *everything*.
This hits hardest with things like produce -- fruits and vegetables -- that can't usually be "ignored" for very long. E.g., yesterday we broiled ~5-6 pounds of fresh vegetables. They *won't* get eaten today (The Pork Dish) so they *must* get eaten tomorrow (else wasted)
We plan just because we don't want to have to *think* about it come meal time. When you're hungry is the wrong time to be thinking about what you want to eat.
So, it's a practice born of laziness and necessity (similarly, most days, I only wear black/navy or white shirts -- I don't want to have to *think* about what I'm going to wear! :> )
If you *plan*, I think you also get a better variety (even if you end up in a "routine"). It forces you to think about what you are eating so you can *see* when you're eating "nothing but steak" for 5 days in a row, etc.
But you nor I can do nothing about that. Nor can they, probably. OTOH, adding the discipline when you *can* is something that many folks *could* do, but don't (for whatever their personal reasons).
E.g., my sister, I'm sure, has no idea what her kids will be eating today -- and *she* is the one who will be feeding them!
There are also lots of people who simply don't prepare their own meals -- resorting to fast food, restaurants or other "prepared food items".
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.