I set the "do not track" thing in Firefox, but whenever I do a search for something on Amazon, I get Amazon ads for the same sort of stuff on all sorts of unrelated web sites. Amazon must track me and pay those sites to push ads at me.
Just for fun, I started clicking on them. A lot. Like 50 times a day. And the tracking stopped.
Try it.
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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
On a sunny day (Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:46:31 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :
Bill them, Dear Sir, we have evaluated the commercials you send us with the web browser. We find 90% of those suck, 5% are unusable, 3% funny, and the rest could, given the right target audience, make people think about buying -from the competition-.
That will be 600$ ex taxes.
IIRC I played that game with some *** many years ago, they did not pay, but it ended their campaign.
Okay, great! Just do your part to sabotage creative strategies for free enterprise! If it wasn't Amazon, it would just be some other company's ads. You accomplished nothing.
There are a lot of sites which ignore the "Do not track me!" header. Compliance is voluntary and is up to the whims (and business rules) of the sites you surf to.
A more "control at your end" approach is to use Firefox features and/or extensions which can control the implanting of "third party" cookies. If you set the browser so that it will not accept cookies associated with certain domains, or cookies which don't match the domain identity of the site you are browsing to, you can inhibit a lot of the cross-domain tracking stuff.
When cookies were created, it was unrealistic for a "site" to track individual users.
That is no longer the case. I suspect anyone with serious skin in the game does server side tracking. Turning cookies off does nothing.
To NOT be tracked, you'd need an IP address that changed *often*. Would have to use a different browser each time you visited the site (it is easy to fingerprint browsers; given that ANY IP address you are likely to be assigned comes from a FIXED pool of addresses -- unless you have multiple internet providers -- your browser fingerprint can narrow the possibilities down to "you or that other family"). Couldn't click on any links as most browsers fill in the "referrer" field (i.e., have to cut and paste URLs -- and *hope* the URLs haven't been "formulated JUST FOR YOU... to distinguish them from other folks visiting the same page!)
Similarly, any JS on the page reveals your presence to whichever site (domain) is serving up that JS.
And, of course, the more you do these things to *hide*, the more uniquely you identify yourself!! :>
"Ah, this must be that guy who likes to click on 50 things!"
I don't get it. What good can it be to shove the same ad into my face over and over again. Once I've searched the web for something, I know what's around. There is no point in going on. The only effect is that it gets me irritated. I'm *less* likely to buy a product that's a source of irritation.
I don't get it. What good can it be to shove the same ad into my face over and over again. Once I've searched the web for something, I know what's around. There is no point in going on. The only effect is that it gets me irritated. I'm *less* likely to buy a product that's a source of irritation.
People don't act on an ad on first exposure. Depending on the subject, it can take *many* exposures for the ad to "sink in". Witness political ads! Jeez, how many times IN AN HOUR can you re-run that SAME AD???
Also, the fact that an ad irritates you means you noticed it. Did you notice the other ads that didn't irritate you? :<
*When* you are ready to make a purchase, this seed is deep in your head. You *may* remember that you were irritated by "their" ad -- perhaps for an entirely different product! But, you *will* remember *them*!
The psychology that goes into advertising -- and the research behind it -- is absolutely amazing! And, if you read any of it, you would SWEAR that you can;t be manipulated by the techniques that they use.
Yet, you *are*! ("everyone" thinks they aren't -- yet the techniques are working so *someone* is mistaken in their self-assessment! :> )
And, the folks who *use* these techniques don't have to understand why they work. Just that "doing X" gives you "Y more sales". (Moving through a supermarket in a counterclockwise fashion, IIRC, results in more purchases. Why??? Shoppers won't purchase the $10 coffee -- but they *will* buy the $6 -- $6 for a cup of coffee??? $1000/year to watch TV???)
Why do they keep showing me, everywhere I go, the LC meter that I decided not to buy? Do they think that will change my mind? If I transfer enough click payments to The Drudge Report, I can apparently change their mind.
Everybody join in! Let's cost them some serious money.
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
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