
How to See What the Internet Knows About You - alexkavon
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/smarter-living/how-to-see-what-the-internet-knows-about-you.html
======
owlninja
These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted
ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a
pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't
need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just
got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle
related for the fact I drove 6 hours each way? The ads I always see just never
seem that smart given the terabytes of data that everyone supposedly has on
me. They really just seem to reflect my search history.

~~~
jpdaigle
I'm asking for something even more basic from ad targeting: as a Canadian,
with a Canadian IP address, don't advertise products/services to me that are
US-only.

You'd think the web advertising industry would at least figure out how to
_never_ show me an ad for Hulu or Blue Apron, seeing how those companies don't
do business outside the US so the ROI on having me click that is zero.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Nobody from the US ever visits Canada? This is a good example of how the
spotlight effect combines with confirmation bias to make advertising look
awful. All algorithms like this are going to have false positive rates, if
their most successful ads are the ones shown to Americans in Canada should
they stop because sometimes Canadians see them and are annoyed by them?

~~~
tomdell
It's doubtful that the most successful ads are ones specifically shown to
Americans in Canada, and the number of Americans in Canada at any given time
is probably very insignificant compared to the number of Canadians in Canada.

It really does seem like a boneheaded advertising strategy to market yourself
to a consumer audience when the overwhelming majority of them can't pay for
your products, and when it's presumably easy to screen that audience out by IP
address.

------
jasonrhaas
I recently got tired of all the creepy targeted advertising, so I hit the
nuclear option. Turned off all targeted ads on all social networks, cleared
all cookies, all search histories, and installed the Disconnect Chrome
extension. Also disabled all images in my email to stop those email trackers.
I've always used an ad-blocker but I don't think that stops the data
collection aspects of it.

I've always known this is happening and previously I didn't care because you
figure if you are going to get advertised to, why not make it relevant, right?
Well, it's more complex than that, here are the problems I have with this kind
of data tracking:

1\. Data can we used against you in ways you might not understand or have
considered. 2\. It's a waste of money and resources. Think of all the extra
bandwidth, server space, human time, that is spent on just trying to sell
people more shit. 3\. I don't like the idea of people making money off my data
without my knowledge. 4\. Targeted ads might distract me and cause me to waste
extra time online.

Bottom line -- I have a moral objection to the whole idea of it, and will do
everything I can do stop it.

~~~
andmarios
I tried it a couple years ago with Google and once targeted ads were off, I
would get many ads about gay dating sites. Once I turned targeted ads on
again, these ads disappeared.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I had a similar experience, but it was single women, and there was no way to
ask Google to stop showing me those types of ads. At the very least allow me
to block adult advertisements. Maybe it's on purpose...

~~~
keithpeter
With me it is retirement planning... I am in that age range. I've just taken
to either switching javascript off or using one of those hosts files that
blocks most stuff.

------
j_s
Michael Bazzell is an expert on (both sides of) Open Source Intelligence
(OSINT: data collected from publicly available sources).

[https://www.amazon.com/Michael-
Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/](https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/)

He maintains a virtual machine "pre-configured for online investigators" and a
podcast.

[https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/index.html](https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/index.html)

~~~
inovica
Thank you. Never seen this before - just ordered one of his books.

------
komali2
>start with this neat and medium-scary site, which our friends at Gizmodo
flagged, that shows you everything your browser knows about you the second you
open it. (clickclickclick.click)

"Subject has entered the website. Subject has 4 cores..." followed by a bunch
of notes about my mouse moving around, or me making the window inactive.

Hardly terrifying.

~~~
i2shar
> Here’s another one.

The second link that follows that one
([http://webkay.robinlinus.com/](http://webkay.robinlinus.com/)) really
terrified me. I had no idea my private network hosts (192.168.X.X) or my
private IP address could be scanned by a random webpage. Or the fact that the
webpage could find out my laptop was charging with x% percent charge in real
time, or the make and model of my machine and GPU. The geo location accuracy
of my ip was also scarily accurate. All this when running in incognito with ad
blockers. That is very close to being PII.

~~~
drewmol
Thanks for this link, reminded me to install noscript on my Android/Firefox
install!

~~~
propogandist
no script's not very useful anymore for desktop, you need something like
uMatrix for the modern web

~~~
i2shar
I researched and installed uMatrix immediately, but (due respect to the
creator) the application is so hard to use and broke several web pages. I also
installed WebRTC Leak Prevent Tool that helped a little.

~~~
omnifischer
Disable all these preferences from firefox!
[https://github.com/TheCreeper/PrivacyFox](https://github.com/TheCreeper/PrivacyFox)

Add:
[https://github.com/straytachyon/dnsmasq_ad_block_script](https://github.com/straytachyon/dnsmasq_ad_block_script)

Add2: You can even block select corp:
[https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists](https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists)

Add3:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052)

------
esnard
Have I been pwned[0] is missing from this list, and is an awesome tool to
check whether some of your information have leaked in the past.

Passwords are, in my opinion, way more valuable than browser history.

[0]: [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)

~~~
mikehain
Thanks for this site. I think the Snapchat breach finally explains why I've
been getting so many scam phone calls in the past few years.

------
losteric
Is the issue ad targeting, or data collection?

For me it's the latter. This is what Google thinks I like:
[http://imgur.com/a/g8Q7l](http://imgur.com/a/g8Q7l) \- reasonably accurate,
and I don't care if it's public or used for targeting non-intrusive ads. I
like those topics, I buy things, go ahead and show me your products.

My objection is over the data used to learn those interests. I don't want
Google tracking my search and page views across the internet, I don't want my
credit card company tracking my purchase history, and I certainly don't want
my ISP/phone provider tracking my "metadata".

I feel like this article glossed over that aspect. Google's "Ad
Personalization" page controls what Google uses, not what it knows. In this
age of state, corporate, and foreign surveillance/hacking, I'm far more
concerned about the latter.

------
commenter98456
Why is targeted advertising acceptable? it is not ok for a seller to stalk
potential buyers.

I get that everyone has accepted this as a "fact of life" but consider how TV
advertising was done. The advertisement is tailored to the show you are
watching and the time of day.

In other words, if I'm on a tech blog, advertise to me tech products, if I'm
reading a cooking recipe, advertise kitchenware,grocery delivery and the like.

As a consumer, I am more likely to remember an advertised product if the AD is
within the context of the web page I'm visiting.

Target pages not users! not even as precise as I mentioned above but
statistical approximations can be made, much like with TV ads (for example,
"ycombinator visitors are likely to buy artisnal cookware compared to people
visiting nytimes" )

The problem at the end of the day is that users in general don't like to be
tracked. some may sacrfice the privacy for the convenince but most will prefer
if the sacrifice wasn't neccesary.

I think better advertising solutions are what is needed. It is unfortunate how
much money is instead spent on technology to stalk users, as if using a
complex computer system makes it more accpetable or ethical.

~~~
propogandist
TV ads are overpriced garbage, spray and pray. YT is getting into the TV
business to show you targeted ads. You clearly are unaware of the motivations
of the ad industry and advertisers... we want to know everything about
consumers, so the ad can hit them at the right moment in time and/or influence
you to do our bidding.

The whole target pages, not people...that's the old way of advertising and the
performance is garbage. It's better to find people, whenever they are on the
web -- within reason -- whenever they may be exhibiting any sort of buying
intent.

Block the ads, scripts and cookies etc., if you don't want to be tracked
digitally. Ad targeting will only improve.

~~~
tjoff
"so the ad can hit them at the right moment in time and/or influence you to do
our bidding."

... yet they can't, not in a million years. And yet we sold our privacy so
that they could barely attempt something.

------
telesilla
Anecdote: I'm having dinner last night with a couple at their house and I'm
advising one of them about getting an appliance for her partner - so we browse
some options on her cellphone together and find something suitable.

Perhaps 30 minutes later, her partner was on his cellphone and gets an ad for
the same appliance, he let us know because it was something he had been
wanting. They were both on the same IP address via the router. While they
initially had a good laugh, it was supposed to be a surprise.

It really did annoy me and when I explained what was happening they found it
equally amusing and frightening. I am pretty sure both of them went to bed
that night worried that the other was going to be getting ads for things they
might be looking at on the internet.

------
jcoffland
Most of what the article complains about can be solved with an ad blocker. The
rest by staying off of Facebook.

~~~
anigbrowl
Staying off Facebook means committing social semi-suicide for a lot of people.

It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected
representatives, family members in distant places, and several sociopolitical
communities of which I'm a part. For many people it's a necessity, and other
channels like email etc. are far less efficient precisely because they don't
leverage the networking effects.

This advise is like telling someone who's worried about toxins in their food
to eat less of it.

~~~
OJFord
> It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected
> representatives,

Which should be recognised as madness in itself. Hopefully you're mistaken,
and it's merely one such channel.

~~~
anigbrowl
'Primary' implies at least a secondary, not a unity.

My local councilmember tends to respond within minutes or hours to community
concerns raised through Facebook, vsa day or longer via email. Given the
democratic nature of the position, being speedily accessible/accountable via
social media seems entirely appropriate, not to mention efficient.

I don't like that the dominant social media platform is a privately owned
commercial operation, but absent an accessible federated open source social
media tool with significant network effects, that's what we've got.

~~~
OJFord
Yes, I think Facebook being the primary channel - however many others there
are - is mad.

------
whatsmyhandle
I generally consider targeted ads to be relatively harmless, with one major
recent exception:

I'm starting to shop for an engagement ring, but since I live with my GF I
have to do online research in Incognito mode so ads don't ruin what I hope to
be a surprise someday.

File this under "things peeps didn't have to worry about 10-15 years ago"

~~~
OJFord
Careful, 'incognito' mode doesn't store cookies, but it's not a VPN, or
otherwise masking your IP address or location.

(Obviously, it also doesn't stop tracking based on being logged into a Google
account either for example, but I assume you thought of that!)

------
dublinben
This site also goes into a lot of detail about the digital tracks you leave
online, and how to minimize them:
[https://myshadow.org/](https://myshadow.org/)

------
pavement

      Please sign in to see what 
      the internet knows about 
      you.
    

Uh, actually, that's what I tell the internet about myself, for the most part.

It doesn't really impress me when I approach the internet and introduce myself
by name. Of course the internet is going to remember me, if I permit my
cookies and request parameters and IP address linger.

Much more interesting is when the internet makes my identity without my having
volunteered anything.

Oh well.

------
mirimir
Adversaries only know what you let them. But this article does little more
than rehash well-known clickbait. And it offers little useful coaching.

------
squarefoot
" The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon
about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year
now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. "

Advertising isn't just about what you really need, but also about what you
will need more, or again, or earlier, because the commercial impressed the
product need in your head. Neuromarketing is a science nowadays, and is pretty
scary to me.

Some interesting content on the topic here.
[http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/home](http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/home)

------
mungoid
It seems so strange to me that there is such an ever increasing push to get
people to click ads when I can't tell you a single person I know that ever
actually clicks one on purpose. If I see an ad for something I just search it
instead because I don't trust ads..

Except for one time years ago when I saw an ad on my own site for a drawing
tablet and getting my account suspended for cheating even though I actually
bought the tablet. Decided then I'm never gonna do ads on any of my sites.

I think the advertisers care more about about manipulating companies to buy
ads than actually increasing that companies sales.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
I have clicked ads. A lot of people do- if they're relevant and right there we
click them.

~~~
mungoid
Oh yeah, I definitely know people do. There wouldn't be so much advertising
out there if visitors didn't click them.

I'm just generally a little overly suspicious about ads because they can be
'phishy'. That and, like others have commented already, the ads i see are for
things I recently bought so I have no need to buy them again soon.

------
callesgg
I find it interesting that the internet is talked about as a monolithic
entity. Rather than as a bunch of different services and communities.

------
jszymborski
Here's my "completely not ergonomic but entirely satisfying if silent protest
is your thing" solution:

\- NoScript [0], First defence. Breaks 30% of sites, but you can selectively
enable local scripts to ameliorate that.

\- Self-Destructing Cookies [1], We all need cookies for logging in to things
and etc..., but once we've closed the tab, we shouldn't have to keep those
cookies with us. This means you have to log-in more often, but I prefer that.
Prevents people from seeing your email/facebook/etc... when you're still
logged in.

\- uBlock Origin [2], You'll occasionally need to allow scripts you don't like
because they're required for the proper presentation of the website. In those
cases, you can depend on uBlock to get rid of awful trackers.

\- HTTPSEverywhere [3], Because snoopers aren't always outside your network.

\- DuckDuckGo as default search engine [4] and not-Google Chrome as your
default browser, At the very least, you're not supporting the worst privacy
offender on the net.

\- Non-ad-supported/privacy-oriented service. In the paid category
(recommended), I suggest mailbox.org, due to their track record and founding
principles. In the free(-ish) category, ProtonMail.ch and tutanota.com.

\- Clear Cookies/History on Browser Exit

\- Forbid Third-Party Cookies

\- And because I believe in magical faeries, DoNotTrack set to True

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src=search)

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-
destruct...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-
cookies/?src=ss)

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-
origin...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-
origin/?src=ss)

[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-
everywh...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-
everywhere/?src=ss)

[4] [https://duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com)

------
Jimmie_Rustle
Why is this on HN lol

~~~
sctb
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines. We're happy
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