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So You Think They’re Not Watching Your PC?
Hey! You there, staring at this monitor. This is your PC talking to you. No, not you over there standing in the background. I’m talking to the guy sitting in front of me poking at my keys. Ouch! That one hurt!
So you thought no one was watching, did you? Let me straighten you out. About a month ago you clicked on a certain website, and I installed myself as a cookie on your computer, which is an innocuous little text file that you can’t see. Since then, I have been tracking your every move, recording websites you clicked on, the pages you visited, and the stuff you ordered. I then used this handy little algorithm to build a profile of exactly who you are. I now know you better than your own mother. In fact, I know you better than you know yourself.
For example, I am aware that you make more than $250,000 a year, live in a posh zip code in San Francisco, belong to a fancy country club, and drive a Mercedes. You donate to Republican political causes, send your kids to a prestigious private school, and bill it all to an American Express Platinum Card. Did I leave anything out?
Because I know every detail of your life, down to your inside leg measurement, I am able to harness the power of this machine to more precisely service your every need. That includes directing advertising to you which you have a high probability of clicking on. The more you click on my ads, the higher prices I can realize for those ads. The ad campaigns you now see are unique to your own personal computer because they are tied to your IP address. My program, called “behavioral targeting” is the next “big thing” in online advertising. It’s all part of the brave new world.
I see you have been shopping for a new car. Check out the new Hyundai at http://www.hyundaiusa.com/ which offers the same quality as your existing ride, at half the price. Your clicks this morning suggest you’re taking your “significant other” out to dinner tonight. Might I suggest Gary Danko’s on Bay Street at http://www.garydanko.com/site/bio.html ? The rack of lamb is to die for there. Your visits to http://www.travelocity.com/ and http://www.expedia.com/ tell me you’re planning a vacation. I bet you didn’t know you can find incredible deals in Las Vegas at http://www.visitlasvegas.com/vegas/index.jsp . Thinking about buying a condo there? They’ll even pay for the trip if you promise to check one out while you’re there.
Since we’re chatting here mano a mano, I noticed that that last pair of jeans you ordered from http://us.levi.com/home/index.jsp had a 42 inch waste, up from the 40’s in your last order. Better lay off those cheeseburgers. Pretty soon, they’ll be calling you “tubby” or “fatso”. Better visit http://www.weightwatchers.com/Index.aspx soon, or the legs on that chair might buckle out from under you.
Worried about privacy? Privacy, shmivacy. There hasn’t been privacy in this country since the first social security number was handed out in 1936. And don’t expect any relief from Congress. I doubt half those dummies even know how to turn on their own PC’s.
Don’t even think about trying to delete me. I’m a “flash cookie”, an insidious little piece of code that reinstalls every time you try that. Think of me as a toenail fungus. Once you catch me, I’m almost impossible to get rid of.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been passing your personal details around to some of my buddies at other websites. That’s why when you clicked on http://www.nfl.com/ you got deluged with product offers from your local team, the San Francisco 49ers. I’ve got friends at Google, Facebook, MySpace, and pretty much everywhere. Can I help it if I’m a popular guy? I bet the view from those 50 yard seats is great, isn’t it?
I noticed that your spending habits don’t exactly match with the income you reported on your last tax return. Do you think the IRS would like to know about that? I bet you didn’t know the agency offers a 10% reward for turning in tax cheats.
How did you like those triple X DVD’s you bought last week? Whoa! Hot, hot, hot! I hope your employer never finds out about those. It might not go down too well at your next performance review.
I thought it was lovely that you bought your spouse a two carat, yellow, vvs1, round cut diamond ring for $26,000 from http://www.bluenile.com/ for your 30th wedding anniversary. But who is Lolita, the Argentine firecracker, in Miami Beach? Does the old wifey know you sent her a $2,000 pair of diamond stud earrings? What’s it worth to you for me to keep mum on this? Maybe you should take a quick peak at http://www.divorcelawfirms.com/ and see what you’re in for?
Naw, I’m just pulling your leg. This is all just between friends, right? Think of it as a doctor/patient relationship. I’ll tell you what. See that leaderboard ad at the top of the page? Just click on that and we’ll call it even. Oooh that felt good! Click it again. Oh, baby! Not too many times. You’ll trigger my anti click fraud program.
Now you see that wide skyscraper add over on the right? Click on that too. Oh baby! Click it again! And there’s a little button ad at the bottom of the page. No, not that one. A little lower. What was that little cutie’s name in Miami again? Aaaaah.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on “This Week on Hedge Fund Radio” in the upper right corner of my home page.
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Plugin for firefox called
Flashblock , version 1.5.13Well they can see us , but what they gonna offer us, ETFs or Treasuries ?
Mortgade or just general adds ... we are not the ideal consumers :)
Thanks narlah! I just put it on my computer at work.
narlah
Aren't Noscript and Ad Block Plus prividing the same protection? All Flash is blocked until I give it permission.
I never receive popup ads, they are all blocked.
Targetted ads have nothing to do with cookies. Your geographic location is given by the IP address you use to surf.
ie - When im in certain countries (or surfing using their IPs) I can't watch certain youtube videos.
Now add in the facial recognition software. you put up photos on facebook. Your friends tag them. The exif standard tells the date of teh photo. Government instantly has an electronic dossier on you - You were here with X, Y, Z people on 123 Date.
Grerrrrrrrrrrrreattt.e
Another example of targetted ads:
Facebook sells use info - Location, age, sex - brings up ads targeted to you.
Gmail - Reads your email, finds key words and display ads releant to those key words.
for some reason my ads are always porn ;-)
They can recognize your computer without cookies or flash cookies nowadays, by checking all available info like browser, OS, screen resolution, installed plug-ins and so on - it usually gives a combination as unique as a fingerprint.
Not for anonymity, but for less annoyance I however recommend AdblockPlus and Flashblock.
Before uploading any self-shot picture I would recommend removing all EXIF information. (It is however possible and somewhat likely that today's cameras put a watermark into each photo... but at least not everybody can read it. AFAIK all watermarks in JPEGs can be defeated by rotating the photo by a few degrees and cropping and storing the result - but the image quality suffers also.)
Broken Trades, you are wrong. I was looking for a Washer & Dryer in one. For one of my Apartments that does not have room for a Stack unit. Low and behold an add for the All In One Washer & Dryer poped up on one of the pages I was on, Totally unrelated to Washers & Dryers. I was amazed.
This is an important Blog. Mad Hedgefund is right on.
The cookies guessed your desire once does not mean it will always be correct. It is like believing in voodoo. The cookies on my computer display Cramer on ZH. Enough said.
your first sentence (re: cookies) is simply incorrect, although the rest is accurate (and interesting/scary).
like you, i find google picasa and web-publishing to be very unsettling... innocent on first glance, until you consider the implications you cite.
what's amazing, is that we gladly volunteer almost as much info as they quietly glean from our clicks.
how obvious it all is once you become aware of the agenda and mechanisms.