Skip to main content

Google Brother is Watching You

A couple of days ago I wrote a blog post about Bioshock Infinite. A few days before that I went looking for graphics cards on the internet and at some stage I visited the website of a company called Overclockers. Today I log into Youtube and the first ad I am presented with is this:


Has someone invented the sport of trying to deliberately confuse advert profiling yet? Sci Fi Fans for instance who set their log on page to the romantic novels section of Amazon for instance.

By the way I should point out that http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ is actually a very good shop so I don't begrudge them their bit of targeted advertising. It is just another jarring reminder that big data probably already knows more about me than I know myself.

Labels:

Comments

Gankalicious said…
Yea, I get these all the time too. I figure I'm one step ahead of them though because I get a huge amount of World of Tanks ads which is a game I'm already playing!
9:17 pm
mbp said…
Gank you may just have spotted a flaw in the whole online advertising model. They are very good at showing you adverts for stuff you have already bought but not so good at predicting what you are going to need next.
1:38 pm
Eutheos said…
You might just go ahead and use adblockers. Apart from that, opting out of targeted advertising is a good first step. Then there is some greasemonkey obfuscating scripts available for Firefox. I see next to no advertising while browsing and the one I see is wildly irrelevant, just the way I like it.
4:39 am
mbp said…
I don't like ad blockers Eutheos. I guess I feel a moral obligation to allow ads adds as payback for all the wonderful free stuff we get on the internet. On a more pragmatic level I am sure that if everyone blocked ads the we wouldn't have an internet.

I will admit I used to use add blockers but that was about a decade ago when bandwidth was very slow and ads were very intrusive. They have become less intrusive partly due to broadband but partly due to better ad design. The privacy thing is a bit worrying I guess but for the moment I put up with it. I don't really have anything to hide. I do have a niggling worry about what would happen if some disreputable government got it's hands on all that data.
5:56 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein...
52 comments
Read more

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p...
1 comment
Read more

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get...
14 comments
Read more