Re: [PLUG] Yipes! Those Web Ads are KILLING Me!

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 12:34 PM LeRoy Cressy via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> I know that VPN's will not stop the ads, but the original complaint was about all of the personalized ads the original poster was receiving.  A VPN basically can hide your location from whoever.  You can be anywhere in the world.  Thus the personalized ads are basically gone.  Iptables is still good for blocking spammers and etc.
>

It would prevent personalization as a result of geolocation, but that
is about it.  Most of the personalization comes from correlating your
activity across sites.

Facebook still knows who you are if you have Facebook tracking cookies
on your browser, even if you use a VPN.  Amazon knows what you bought
and where you shipped it.  Google still knows what you searched for
and where your "home" address is if you use maps (and if not they
probably have a very good guess).  Hiding your IP isn't going to stop
any of that, and that is the bulk of personalization.

I do recommend VPNs, but don't think that it is going to eliminate the
bulk of personalized advertising.  The techniques behind that are
pretty robust - they already need to be able to work with partial
information in the best of circumstances.

I guess you could say that the internet recognizes privacy controls as
damage and routes around it.  After all, censorship and privacy
controls are basically the same thing - control over the spread of
information.  If you want to keep info from spreading on the internet
you have to work pretty hard at it...

-- 
Rich
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