Sometimes I wish the internet was less creepy

It does know. Thousands of businesses know. Surf and buy with another name through an ISPN hiding site and use a third party payer such as PayPal for all purchases online. Delete your surf/buy sign-on identity monthly and make and use another. Big Brother is alive and well and is internet savvy.

That freaked the sh*t outta me when I first saw that!!!

Yes the internet is creepy... I'm not saying I want a 1950's, Andy Griffith Show's Mayberry kinda vibe, saying howdy to my neighbor and letting the kids play in the front yard... but it took me years of no shopping to get over my credit-card-on-the-internet paranoia.

At least BN feels safe-ish. *peeking out from under my rock* Moreso than most places, anyway.

Tell me about it!!! Seems like on every site I go to there's a "meet lesbian singles" ad.

Could be a fluke, I get those too.

kbe, I just saw your post...

*crawling back under my rock... and digging a bomb shelter...*

Well, then why do I get all those viagra emails in my junk mailbox?

I just noticed another strange thing today.
I did not log in to Linkedin in months. Today I did, and one of the recomendations (something like "people you might know") was a Portuguese professor. How did it know I spent time in Portugal? I did not log in from there and none of the people on my list of friends is Portuguese.

They do track and sell your data.

Who is they? Anyway..I too am getting a little paranoid. Especially about Google. They know EVERYTHING!

I'm sorry. That sounded so conspiracy theory.
What I mean is I think advertisers pay the search engines to match their adds with various keywords generated by the search criteria you submit. I don't think the advertisers or search engines know or care who any particular searcher is. The goal is simply to find an audience for the paying advertisers's merchandise.

Do any of you use gmail? Off to the right there are ads from google that are taken from keywords in any given email thread. Some of the suggested ads are hilarious .

Bingo!! Did you ever see the movie "Brazil"

I've reduced my profiling (mask my IP/MAC address) by using a router between my cable modem and PC.
Here's an article that may help:

Stealth Surfing

Yes, gmail read my mind recently when it displayed ads on 'finding artists' and 'script writing.' One of my best friends and I were exchanging messages about my latest work and how I needed to find an artist to illustrate it. Gmail picked up key words in the messages and displayed related ads. Seems more invasive than helpful. I want the Internet to offer advice when I seek it. I rather the 'net not act paternalistically by suggesting what I 'should' do.

Yes, I agree with you. But Linked in is a professional network. And I never logged in to it from Portugal, plus today when I logged in I was using a new computer and a new internet connection. Their suggestion was not paid advertisement. It is a real person they think I may know (I don't but she actually teaches at the university where I was). I don't know, maybe it is just a coincidence or I am just missing something.

Part of LinkedIn's algorithm is not only friends but friends of friends (and friends of friends of friends), and normally whoever gets the most instances on that list will show up as someone who you might know. Facebook operates similarly.

I guess I don't notice ads anymore, even when I suspect they're targeted to my surfing/shopping habits. (A quick check shows me that an email I sent about a leaky pipe brings up Google ads for plumbers and a toilet seat warmer. ) Not directly related, but my ISP just acquired a new range of IP addresses that Google thought were from Spain, so it would display search results and my Google calendars en español. To echo sloan_8013, I would rather the 'net didn't try to be so "helpful."

What ads?

I use Firefox with AdBlock. I hardly get any ads anywhere, except where/when I specifically allow - like here on BN

I also have it set to delete all my cookies each time I close it.

Here are 3 non-tracking search engines (don't know how their results compare to the big G):

http://clusty.com
http://www.cuil.com
http://www.ixquick.com

an_oud_girl, maybe you should just pick a better basketball team to support than Florida.

I am a little worried that my eyes first drifted to the Jo Malone ad before settling on the live basketball schedule in the original post. I may have to go to a strip club and indulge in some late-night barbecue to sort myself out...

If pressed to offer comment, I would suggest that perhaps the Internet just makes it easier for everyone to be creepier than they already are. Whether it is a Google server farm in god-knows-where or just pervy Quagmire next door, there is always someone or something watching (or at least, someone or something who would like to).

A strange thing happened to me Tuesday. Though I was in an oblivious rush to get to a class I was already running late for, I did notice a very attractive young lady walking towards me. She smiled, and as we passed each other, she softly uttered a familiar "Hey". The strange part: I am almost certain that I have never met this girl before in my life. I have a semi-photographic memory (don't ask), I never forget names, and I never drink enough to blackout but I am utterly bumfuzzled--and more than a little intrigued--by this mystery woman.

The point, you ask? Well, if I actually had a Facebook account, I am pretty sure I could eventually track her down with some elbow grease. My purpose would be genuine; I merely want to know her name and why she seems to think we know one other. But the dark side of Facebook, and every other Internet application that aggregates and disseminates personal information, is pretty frickin' dark. Everyone becomes a peeping tom, and all of a sudden, you start finding out things about random people you didn't know and things about those you do know that you wish you hadn't.

As it is, I keep my *actual* friends very close and everyone else...well, at a friendly distance. I mostly use the Internet to follow European football, order apparel, and now purchase cologne samples and bottles. Probably the most objectionable thing I do online is make bad jokes on Internet fragrance forums. So even though I will intentionally be late for my class next Tuesday on the off-chance that this shrouded woman may show herself again, I swear--I'm not a creep.

Google scares me. I live in a fairly small town. I can actually Google my address and get an actual street view in front of my house. It amazes me that Google actually employed someone to drive around and take all these pictures. I mean, what are they collecting all of this data for?

Consider this a mea culpa. I'm afraid that I am responsible for some of this creepiness. One of my current software contracts involves designing artificial intelligence algorithms (high-dimensionality clustering algorithms and Hopfield neural networks) for one of the major American ISPs. These algorithms are designed to target advertisements to subscribers as effectively as possible. My current major effort (working on it right now, actually, between BN surfing) is to provide an interface to seamlessly integrate dissimilar third-party databases into our own. You can be sure almost all other ISPs and major websites are doing the same thing.

MadScientist's suggestion of deleting cookies is very helpful, but the new generation of software works around that by correlating IP addresses culled from IP packets and other (proprietary) data. Most people have dynamic IP addresses, which makes it more challenging, but we are finding ways around that too. The best current way to avoid this sort of tracking is to use the various anonymous surfing services available out there, which I recommend doing. Also, be sure to read your privacy agreements and EULAs carefully.

The below site is a treasure trove of web surfing safety information:

https://ssd.eff.org//tech/browsers#cookies

downloads etc:

http://www.free.privacy.org/privacy/tools.html

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Clicking links listed on one site to go to another site often gives the original site a tracking path of your web movements. Better to place your curser on the link to show the URL, copy and paste the link in the Http area at the top of your screen and THEN click the GO or equivalent button to get there to prevent this tracking.

A free download, Privoxy, from http://www.privoxy.org/ will warn you in advance if a link you are about to click is a 'redirect link' capable of doing the above.

Installing CustomizeGoogle plugin from http://www.customizegoogle.com/ and enabling "Remove Click Tracking" will avoid such tracking if you use Google via FireFox.

Avoid adding toolbars with 'attractive' features to your browser. The company producing the toolbar may have access and tracking your web wanderings from that point on.--from Popular Science Magazine

My use of proxies is no longer anonymous?

Proxies which do soup-to-nuts encryption (proprietary, fully-encrypted tunneling protocol) are quite safe since they provide a client-to-proxy direct port-to-port connection which fully encrypts all traffic. An ISP can't grab much useful information there. All they can say is, "Well, John Smith is using an Anonymizer server currently." The only concern after that is what a third-party is doing with your personal information if you are making a purchase at their website. The encrypting proxy will connect you to the third-party, but must decrypt your communication at the endpoint in order for it to be meaningful to the third-party. And third-parties have a vested interest in entering into information-sharing agreements with other third-parties, since it potentially increases sales for all committed parties. Naturally, this applies to all the social networking sites as well, who often fund their sites by selling off subscriber information.

That's where you have to closely scrutinize the third-party's privacy agreement. You might be allowing them to sell off some representation of your personal information (e.g. name + product purchased, etc). This information can then be correlated (by software like mine) with other purchases made at other websites. Sometimes that correlation is not very invasive, and may not even involve your name, using instead information like IP address, zip code, or something as mildly general as age and gender. Then you just get served ads for products you might be more interested in, but no one anywhere can necessarily sit in an office and say, "Gee, John Smith likes to buy amputee porn."

Just be aware that the type of technology being used now, which brings very powerful computational resources to bear, is very clever at figuring out correlations between seemingly dissimilar pieces of information, things that marketing folks cannot even perceive with many years of experience.

Thank you sir. I use them for the softball boards I frequent, but not when making purchases.

The technology is very awesome and very sobering at the same time.

Then you're probably good-to-go. I wouldn't worry too much about it.


To be honest, I'm a bit unhappy that I am currently being paid to use this technology to just make it easier to sell crap to people. And the software I write for my second contract just makes it easier for currency traders to make money. Neither of these applications really blows my skirt up, since they don't produce anything of real tangible value to anyone. Truthfully, I'd like to bag both of these contracts for a chance to apply this amazing technology to medical imaging. If I could develop something to detect cancer early enough to save peoples' lives, even just 10% more of the time, I'd probably die a happy man. I know this is possible. Fortunately, I believe that it will eventually happen in my lifetime, whether I do it or not.

Just an update:

Fate hath dealt me a cruel blow, for the mystery woman was not made visible to me on a chilly winter's eve this Tuesday past. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a *little* disappointed...

I am happy, however, to report that the Internet is still as creepy as it was last week. An overbearing ex found my new phone number online somehow and felt compelled to "check in" one more time the other day.