The Internet is Spying on me!

[VinceBordenIII]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

[Animal]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

[Stapes]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

I believe it. We allow these apps to have permissions that we may not be fully aware what they can do with it. I try to watch what I'm doing but you never know what falls through the cracks.

[megman]

A friend of mine told me the other day she was talking to her husband and said " seriously?" and SIRI said "can I help you?"

[Geist]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

I believe it. We allow these apps to have permissions that we may not be fully aware what they can do with it. I try to watch what I'm doing but you never know what falls through the cracks.

I, for one, am not a fan of every smart phone having passive listening technology, and I don't think it's conspiratorial. Alexa, go fuck yourself.

[CaptQuint]

[VinceBordenIII]

The way things are going, you won't be able to live in modern society and keep those things out of your house, even if you don't have Alexa or one of its familiars. Don't expect government to step in to protect you, either.

[CaptQuint]

My tablet has Alexa that is turned off. My iPhone had Siri turned off. I guess that doesn't mean they can't listen but they're listening to me watch military documentaries on youtube.

[CHEEZY17]

Have you thought of sending Bill Gates and Tim Apple a dick pic?

[Animal]

Have you thought of sending Bill Gates and Tim Apple a dick pic?

tim apple? holy shit, that's a time out.

[kwebber]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

I hope you understand what cookies are. You cannot be on the internet, and not understand what cookies are. Get Ccleaner, and run it. It will clean the cookies out of your browser.

[CaptQuint]

Have you thought of sending Bill Gates and Tim Apple a dick pic?

No, I'm not a geriatric pensioner.

[CHEEZY17]

Have you thought of sending Bill Gates and Tim Apple a dick pic?

tim apple? holy shit, that's a time out.

You understand thats a joke, right? Ol' Donny (in)famously referred to the Apple CEO as "Tim Apple".

[CaptQuint]

Have you thought of sending Bill Gates and Tim Apple a dick pic?

tim apple? holy shit, that's a time out.

You understand thats a joke, right? Ol' Donny (in)famously referred to the Apple CEO as "Tim Apple".

Don't leave out the part where Trump later said it was a “an easy way to save time and words.”

[WestTexasCrude]

Kinda different subject than what OP is talking about, but you order something (jeans for example) from Amazon and within minutes go to another site (USA Today FE) and there is an Amazon ad for the same exact thing you just ordered. It's kind of stupid since why would you want to order some more of what you just ordered. As to kwebber's comments about cookies, man I hate to clear cookies only because it wipes out all your preferences built up on YouTube.

[DandyDon]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

That was probably me. We were discussing a steering column for an old 70-something Dodge truck at work, and a coworker mentioned Steering Columns Galore. I have never heard of steering columns Galore until that day. We were discussing them and I had my phone in my pocket. I have never done a web search or any other type search for that company. Later on that week I started getting ads in my Facebook feed and targeted ads for steering columns galore.

[Animal]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

That was probably me. We were discussing a steering column for an old 70-something Dodge truck at work, and a coworker mentioned Steering Columns Galore. I have never heard of steering columns Galore until that day. We were discussing them and I had my phone in my pocket. I have never done a web search or any other type search for that company. Later on that week I started getting ads in my Facebook feed and targeted ads for steering columns galore.

well, i know it wasn't you. i know who it was, just not exactly what they were talking about. but it was an almost identical story. that just creeps me the fuck out.

[WestTexasCrude]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

That was probably me. We were discussing a steering column for an old 70-something Dodge truck at work, and a coworker mentioned Steering Columns Galore. I have never heard of steering columns Galore until that day. We were discussing them and I had my phone in my pocket. I have never done a web search or any other type search for that company. Later on that week I started getting ads in my Facebook feed and targeted ads for steering columns galore.

well, i know it wasn't you. i know who it was, just not exactly what they were talking about. but it was an almost identical story. that just creeps me the fuck out.

Welcome to your new high tech future. Masterfully warned about 20 years ago by the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report". I own a flip phone, have no desire to own a smartphone, be a part of FB, or anything alexis crap. You people need to wake the hell up.

[crash273]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

That was probably me. We were discussing a steering column for an old 70-something Dodge truck at work, and a coworker mentioned Steering Columns Galore. I have never heard of steering columns Galore until that day. We were discussing them and I had my phone in my pocket. I have never done a web search or any other type search for that company. Later on that week I started getting ads in my Facebook feed and targeted ads for steering columns galore.

well, i know it wasn't you. i know who it was, just not exactly what they were talking about. but it was an almost identical story. that just creeps me the fuck out.

Welcome to your new high tech future. Masterfully warned about 20 years ago by the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report". I own a flip phone, have no desire to own a smartphone, be a part of FB, or anything alexis crap. You people need to wake the hell up.

This is the same quote from Ted Kaczynski regarding technology. And we all know how that ended up. You cannot escape technologies move forward. My parents always come to me when they want to buy something for the grandkids because they don't want to use their credit card online. I have tried to explain that going to the store sends your information to a central database via the internet and criminals (good ones) target much bigger databases like that then the one at a time approach low level crooks try to use. Also there is something to be said about talking on a phone with SIRI. SIRI and Alexa (and I am sure others) are programmed to listen even when turned off. It's coded in there. So it is true that just talking to a friend on your smart phone could induce targeted ads.

[beagleboy]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

My wife's office (5 ladies) have tried this on several occasions and swear it is happening to them. They sit around at lunch talking with their phones on the table and two of them are getting ads associated with the discussions.

A website knows what type of computer you run and the browser and when you search it can put a lot of information together. Shocked me a few years ago when I was shopping for a new backpacking tent and boots and up pop ads for the exact things I had just looked at on LLBean and other sites. It's creepy as hell.

[VinceBordenIII]

[
My wife's office (5 ladies) have tried this on several occasions and swear it is happening to them. They sit around at lunch talking with their phones on the table and two of them are getting ads associated with the discussions.

A website knows what type of computer you run and the browser and when you search it can put a lot of information together. Shocked me a few years ago when I was shopping for a new backpacking tent and boots and up pop ads for the exact things I had just looked at on LLBean and other sites. It's creepy as hell.

This is true. They know I'm on a Mac, and they know I'm looking for PC components.

[JackRabbit_Slim]

I've seen numerous articles online discussing this phenomenon and all at least claim that it's untrue.

So...

[QillerDaemon]

A website knows what type of computer you run and the browser and when you search it can put a lot of information together. Shocked me a few years ago when I was shopping for a new backpacking tent and boots and up pop ads for the exact things I had just looked at on LLBean and other sites. It's creepy as hell.

This is true. They know I'm on a Mac, and they know I'm looking for PC components.

Every web browser has a "user agent" string that the web server can query to see what kind of browser is connecting to it and what system the browser is running on. In my case, the user agent string reads "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0". So a web browser knows (or can at least assume) I'm running the latest Firefox on a Ubuntu Linux environment, and possibly change the page it serves for to account for all that. If you want to know what a web server sees when you browse to it, click on this -> www.whatsmyuseragent.com and you'll see a lot of info that a server could use to track your connection to it. It can be really important for a web server to know if a browser is on a portable device like an iPhone using Safari, as it may have to change the served page considerably to make it display correctly on that.

Many browsers also allow you to change the user agent string to read off something besides your default environment. This is useful for a number of reasons, and there really isn't anything wrong with "lying" to the web server. For example, I used to bank with a credit union that had a real hard-on against their members trying to use the site with anything but Internet Explorer on Windows. So I told Chrome on Linux to pretend to be exactly that, and had no trouble using their site. But the "wrong" user agent may make the served page display badly, if at all. YMMV.

[WestTexasCrude]

I'm starting to put together the pieces of a new PC on Amazon. Suddenly seeing targeted adverts "Move Your Mac Files to a Windows PC."
Scary. They know I have a Mac, and I'm building a PC.

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

That was probably me. We were discussing a steering column for an old 70-something Dodge truck at work, and a coworker mentioned Steering Columns Galore. I have never heard of steering columns Galore until that day. We were discussing them and I had my phone in my pocket. I have never done a web search or any other type search for that company. Later on that week I started getting ads in my Facebook feed and targeted ads for steering columns galore.

well, i know it wasn't you. i know who it was, just not exactly what they were talking about. but it was an almost identical story. that just creeps me the fuck out.

Welcome to your new high tech future. Masterfully warned about 20 years ago by the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report". I own a flip phone, have no desire to own a smartphone, be a part of FB, or anything alexis crap. You people need to wake the hell up.

This is the same quote from Ted Kaczynski regarding technology. And we all know how that ended up. You cannot escape technologies move forward. My parents always come to me when they want to buy something for the grandkids because they don't want to use their credit card online. I have tried to explain that going to the store sends your information to a central database via the internet and criminals (good ones) target much bigger databases like that then the one at a time approach low level crooks try to use. Also there is something to be said about talking on a phone with SIRI. SIRI and Alexa (and I am sure others) are programmed to listen even when turned off. It's coded in there. So it is true that just talking to a friend on your smart phone could induce targeted ads.

Yeah, I get that. My point wasn't to sound like Kaczynski. My point was that the more you immerse your daily life in this endless array of hi-tech, expect to be subjected to the underside that nobody talks about. I mean think about it. Do you really need to buy a SIRI or Alex? When all it takes is a couple of steps and click once. I remember being a teenager reading "1984" for the first time. It's description of the govt looking at you through your TV horrified me. Is this not what Orwell predicted and warned about and what everybody has grown strangely complacent about (Also what he warned about).

[crash273]

i have no idea if there is any truth to this since i don't have a smart phone. But I heard someone say the other day, that they were talking to someone with their phone sitting on a table next to them. the phone wasn't being used, just sitting there. And they were talking about something pretty obscure. I can't remember what it was, but say it was blue berry pancakes.

He said that later in the day he was getting target ads on his phone for blue berry pancake mixes.

That was probably me. We were discussing a steering column for an old 70-something Dodge truck at work, and a coworker mentioned Steering Columns Galore. I have never heard of steering columns Galore until that day. We were discussing them and I had my phone in my pocket. I have never done a web search or any other type search for that company. Later on that week I started getting ads in my Facebook feed and targeted ads for steering columns galore.

well, i know it wasn't you. i know who it was, just not exactly what they were talking about. but it was an almost identical story. that just creeps me the fuck out.

Welcome to your new high tech future. Masterfully warned about 20 years ago by the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report". I own a flip phone, have no desire to own a smartphone, be a part of FB, or anything alexis crap. You people need to wake the hell up.

This is the same quote from Ted Kaczynski regarding technology. And we all know how that ended up. You cannot escape technologies move forward. My parents always come to me when they want to buy something for the grandkids because they don't want to use their credit card online. I have tried to explain that going to the store sends your information to a central database via the internet and criminals (good ones) target much bigger databases like that then the one at a time approach low level crooks try to use. Also there is something to be said about talking on a phone with SIRI. SIRI and Alexa (and I am sure others) are programmed to listen even when turned off. It's coded in there. So it is true that just talking to a friend on your smart phone could induce targeted ads.

Yeah, I get that. My point wasn't to sound like Kaczynski. My point was that the more you immerse your daily life in this endless array of hi-tech, expect to be subjected to the underside that nobody talks about. I mean think about it. Do you really need to buy a SIRI or Alex? When all it takes is a couple of steps and click once. I remember being a teenager reading "1984" for the first time. It's description of the govt looking at you through your TV horrified me. Is this not what Orwell predicted and warned about and what everybody has grown strangely complacent about (Also what he warned about).

My daughter is reading 1984 for the first time in school. When she is done I am going to ask her what she thinks. She is like all other 17 year olds and is technology to the max.