[HN Gopher] Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads
for it. Why?
How does google know I bought Voltaren? Is my bank purchase
history shared with google somehow? I guess it could just be
coincidence?
Author : wideareanetwork
Score : 289 points
Date : 2021-04-18 08:59 UTC (14 hours ago)
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Don't you use an adblocker? I could be being targeted with all
| sorts of stuff but I'd never know.
| vinni2 wrote:
| Adblocker stops you from seeing the ad but not from google
| deanonymizing and linking your transactions to your search.
| Also lots of websites these days require you to disable
| adblockers to function.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't use those websites.
| [deleted]
| paulcole wrote:
| How do you know you didn't see ads for it before? Isn't it likely
| you're only noticing the ads now because you just bought it?
|
| Is it surprising that ads are targeted at someone who actually
| bought the product? Doesn't this show that ad targeting works?
| You just happened to notice the ads after you made the purchase.
|
| What products did you buy that you didn't see ads for? Which ads
| did you see that you didn't end up buying the product?
|
| This is a case of you being aware of Voltaren because you bought
| it, saw the ads, and are now trying to connect the two.
| jrockway wrote:
| If they knew you bought this, wouldn't they _suppress_ ads for
| it? Why market to someone who has already closed the sale?
| decker wrote:
| Did you do searches related to the condition that caused you to
| be prescribed Voltaren?
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It's probably just coincidence. This week I was only thinking
| about something and there was an ad about exactly that product on
| Facebook, like 5 minutes later. I laughed out loud, since it was
| impossible.
|
| There were two explanations:
|
| - they are stealing my thoughts with 5G.
|
| - random things are random and I don't remember 99% of the ads
| where I couldn't correlate them to other events.
|
| (yes, there's a middle ground somewhere that they know the
| subjects that I'm interested in and sometimes someone throws a
| bullseye)
| [deleted]
| pen2l wrote:
| Tangentially related, for the first time ever I saw Gmail losing
| its anti-spam game. We were doing some home-modeling and we went
| to Home Depot sometime early this month. And... some entity
| somehow discovered this. And then all of a sudden I started
| getting spam emails related to Home Depot's/home rebuilding. The
| spam emails successfully pass through gmail's filter because they
| seem to emanate from aol,gmail,hotmail,yahoo etc. email
| addresses.
|
| Here's an image: https://i.imgur.com/KqIN6oB.png
|
| I'm about as impressed as I am mortified. I thought I had my
| opsec down, I was using noscript, I use throwaway email addy's
| where I suspect I'll be spammed.
|
| But I was had too.
|
| This Hecatoncheires entity is getting ever-larger. It knows a
| lot. It knows me well. I have seen evidence that it knows about
| the medication I take, the insecurities I have, my half-baked
| aspirations and plans. I feel defeated at times when I see its
| knowledge of me manifested in the ads I am shown, I feel
| confronted because at the time of this writing I don't know where
| this leak occurred, I don't know at what vector exactly I'm being
| had.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| The one that kills me inside is all of the student loan scam
| calls I get. I see straight through them, but it makes me think
| about all the people who don't.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Ebay sends me spam emails every day. Technically I guess it
| doesn't count as spam because they originate from ebay.com and
| I "consented" by signing up an account with them, but to me
| they're every bit as annoying and toxic as bona-fide spam.
| noxer wrote:
| They have to give you an option to turn it off usual a link
| at the bottom of the mail. However, never click on such a
| link from a real spam mail as that would tell them your email
| is read and you get more spam.
| throwaway823882 wrote:
| Old school internet ad tech worked around what you are trying
| to do. We were doing this in 2003, before Google started up
| AdSense and well before acquiring DoubleClick.
|
| The way it worked at [former employer] was, we had a lot of
| digital properties. Every digital property collected analytics
| on all visitors. All that analytics got post-processed and
| cross-referenced until we could form a "profile" on every
| visitor. Because you leave a teeny tiny trail of information
| everywhere you go, we cobble it all together until we know who
| you are on each site. The probability just gets higher as we
| collect more data. And we'd collect data from everywhere -
| e-mail marketing campaigns, ad traffic on partner sites, user
| profile data, web surfing habits, and buying access to
| privately maintained databases.
|
| Even if everyone wore a mask and black clothes everywhere they
| went, surveillance cameras still capture height, gait,
| mannerisms. Watch long enough and you know "Gait #24434
| mannerisms #593483 height #933 goes in/out of this residence at
| these specific times, goes to this supermarket, goes to this
| nail salon, sometimes goes to a house somebody else seems to
| live in".
|
| Maybe it's multiple people with the same gait, mannerisms,
| height - but in the same neighborhood? In any case, it doesn't
| matter if they are all different people as long as they behave
| the same way; we market to them the same. Your entire life is
| just a string of digits in a marketing-recommender algorithm.
| harikb wrote:
| There are so many possibilities here. There is the stores you
| visited and the Credit card company involved along with anyone
| of the ad tech partners who have a cookie on you tied to your
| email.
|
| Now how they know you bought X
|
| 1. Say CC sells data to say Bluekai (now salesforce). If you
| bought a hammer, they need not have known it was from HD, a
| middle man might simply be bidding for anyone categorized as
| shopping for home improvement goods and hoping to cash in on HD
| lead-gen/affiliate $$$
|
| 2. You likely searched online for these at some site and
| probably just don't remember that you did.
|
| The only thing that will get rid of this is to ban/regulate
| "affiliate" marketing (so shady companies who don't follow
| rules can't cash in), because so long as someone is willing to
| pay to bring sales, it will happen on way or another.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Google Maps is a huge vector most people don't think about.
| pftburger wrote:
| Seconded. Visited the dentist recently.
|
| On my way I looked up directions in google maps, then for a
| week had dental insurance adds.
|
| This one is obvious though.
|
| That was on iOS with it's pretty strict location tracking
| rules etc.
|
| I'd be interested to see if you can get it to show you adds
| just by visiting the dentist (and not searching) on a vanilla
| android phone (IE google's location history on by default)
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Google used to show personalized ads based on your emails but
| that process is supposedly stopped. Now Google reads your
| emails still to filter out spam and sort it into its default
| folders for promotions etc.
|
| Also I guarantee I went directly to a website for a product, a
| vitamin, which I never searched for and purchased it and then
| received ads for the exact product and brand I purchased for
| the next week on Google searches and other Google ads and that
| was after they supposedly stopped personalizing ads. I don't
| know if it was the credit card company, or Google analytics
| being installed on their website, or then just selling my data
| but it was obvious that someone was sharing my data and I
| wasn't being told about it.
|
| Lastly just last week I had been searching for a bed on Google,
| a very specific California king bed so that I could try to find
| the lowest price. Literally the day after I bought the bed, my
| girlfriend saw that exact model of bed appear on her Facebook
| ads. She had never searched for the bed or any bed but was
| browsing from the same IP address as me so I assume and that's
| how they targeted her.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/variety.com/2017/digital/news/g...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's ironic that you provide a Google AMP link. Try without:
| https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-
| email...
| jjgreen wrote:
| Did you pay with cash?
| maxk42 wrote:
| I did an afternoon of googling for information on the hospice
| industry to satisfy my own curiosity. Then I fired up my TV to
| watch some streaming television. Now I'm getting video ads for
| hospice services every time I watch TV.
| jedwhite wrote:
| It's credit card purchasing data, which is sold and cross linked
| to your identity for advertising re-targeting.
|
| It is deeply invasive and should be blocked.
|
| It works like this. You go to a store and buy, say, a sexual
| wellness product. You then get targeted with ads online (search
| result ads, facebook ads, news media ads, amazon sponsored
| results etc) for the same product, or something related (let's
| say something embarrassing that you might not want other people
| to see). Other users on your same network or IP may also be re-
| targeted with the same ads.
|
| Credit card data tracking is a levelling up of surveillance
| capitalism. It is deeply intrusive. Not all card providers
| participate, but it is a significant source of revenue for them
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90490923/credit-card-
| companies-a...
|
| [Edit: Removed specific reference to a medication as it likely
| triggered anti-spam]
| 0898 wrote:
| How would the card merchant know what specific product you
| bought though? Is that data transmitted too somehow?
| jedwhite wrote:
| Yes, the product details are included.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| For some merchants.
|
| https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/
| ArnaldoTeCodea wrote:
| hdghd
| [deleted]
| felle_realist wrote:
| There could be many ways but it doesn't really matter that much
| which of them was used this time. The real solution is twofold:
|
| - Block ads. All ads. No advertising allowed, ban it, rigorously.
|
| - To do that effectively on a "main stream" mobile device (i.e.
| not a Pinephone or Librem running some form of Linux with a
| mobile shell) you need an Android-capable device on which you
| install an AOSP-derived distribution (LineageOS being the most
| well-known and -supported). Do not install Google apps ("gapps").
| Install a system-wide ad blocker, there are several options here
| ranging from a simple hosts-based solution (efficient but less
| effective) to vpn/proxy based solutions (effective but less
| efficient), I use the former. Use Firefox with uBlock Origin,
| sync your filter list with the one on your PCs for a quick start.
|
| Also, pay with cash if you can to deny the beast some more data.
|
| If you use "free" wifi make sure to only use it to connect to
| your VPN server, don't use it directly other than to check
| whether your flight or train is in time etc.
|
| Don't feed the beasts, starve them. It doesn't matter whether
| that beast goes by the name of Google or Apple or Amazon or
| anything else, just don't feed them.
|
| Don't use the Google search engine directly, use it through a
| meta-search engine like Searx. Don't use "stock" Android, stock
| iOS, stock Windows as they come on those shiny new gadgets, at
| the least find out how to disable the myriad of "telemetry" these
| things come with. Replace stock Android with an AOSP-derived
| distribution - unfortunately there is no similar option for Apple
| devices. If you're mostly using PC-type devices as glorified web
| terminals you're better off doing that using a free Linux
| distribution (Debian is a good choice, free of commercial
| interests, no tracking included), no need for Windows or MacOS
| here.
|
| Don't even thing about using Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Echo
| or whatever voice-related gadgetry they come up with tomorrow,
| that stuff is straight out of an Orwellian nightmare. Any voice
| processing should be done locally on the device, it should work
| without any internet connection. If it needs an internet
| connection to work you just don't use it. This can be generalised
| to other services as well, there has to be a clear reason for the
| service to need an internet connection or you simply deny it such
| - this is possible on the mention AOSP-derived distributions by
| using a firewall which blocks outgoing connections, iOS users are
| sadly out of luck in this respect unless they are willing to
| permanently fight Apple for control over their devices.
|
| If you can, run your own services - mail, chat, web, video, media
| etc. This takes a bit of effort but it gives a lot of freedom in
| return.
|
| Source: my own experience over many years of doing just the
| above. I might see a few ads per year, if that. My data is mine,
| stored on my storage devices, hardware running on my own
| premises, backed up to other devices I control.
| grok22 wrote:
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/google-tracking-cred...
| -- that's from a quick Google search. Even though the article
| says "secretly" etc...there is really no conspiracy theory-like
| secret to this and it's well-known that everyone sells data to
| whomever they can make money from. It's more like what user
| jonahbenton has explained in another comment. The makers of
| Voltaren are able to broadly advertise to anyone who might be
| interested in Voltaren -- they don't know specific users. But
| Google (or any other advertising provider) has access to info on
| who might be interested in Voltaren at present -- which might be
| decided based on various factors including your credit-card
| purchase data. If Google does wants to dig down, they probably
| can use various info to drill down to you specifically and that
| is what makes people rightly uncomfortable, but what I am trying
| to say is that in general they are not specifically targeting you
| for the ad -- but a broad category/bucket of "people who might be
| interested in Voltaren at present". One might say it is the same
| thing...
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Your girlfriend googled it on the home wifi when she saw it in
| your medicine cabinet and your home wifi is also associated with
| your devices
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Huh. Good argument for paying cash.
| shoto_io wrote:
| You might have "googled" the term or a related term
| subconsciously some time before you've made the purchase. I do
| this all the time even when I'm purchasing things offline.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| SaaS idea: a tool that monitors your advertising profile (keys,
| whatever you want to call it) and gives you the same information
| that your browser+adtech markets are auctioning about you. Also
| allows you to delete keys you don't want to share.
| azotos wrote:
| I think that Android phones can record stuff you say about
| marketings/ads purposes. Check if this happens for you here
| https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?pli=1&product=29
| johnsmith4739 wrote:
| Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon: you were having ad-blindness until
| your purchase that brought up to your conscious level the
| "Voltaren" concept. As you cannot recall the previous cases where
| you saw the ad because it did not make it into your conscious
| mind, it seems that the ads started only after your purchase.
|
| Your perception works in 2 modes - bottom-up (signal processing)
| - and the ad didn't make it through - and top-down (pattern
| recognition) - exactly the experience you report - you recognise
| a recent pattern.
| walligatorrr wrote:
| Google and Facebook both have in-store conversion tracking:
| https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en-G...
|
| https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/help/1150627594978290
|
| Wouldn't be surprised if this data is used to refine which ad
| these platforms should show you.
| karxxm wrote:
| Maybe you saw the commercial unconsciously before, went out and
| bought it, and then saw it consciously. I'd bet money on it that
| this is the case most of the time
| Ovah wrote:
| Tangential: a while back I bought a very specific cheese from
| Lidl. And the very same evening I got a Lidl ad for that very
| cheese on Facebook. I have never signed up as a member, the only
| things that connect me to that place would be my credit card.
|
| I did bring my Android phone that has got Messenger lite
| installed, but that's stretching it tbh.
| DavideNL wrote:
| Your public ip provided by mobile/celltowers already reveals
| your location quite accurately (even with all location services
| turned off.) So it's definitely possible.
|
| Google is an ad company, they sell your profile/interests and
| such to advertisers, it's their core business. So it's not
| "stretching" at all...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| My money would be on coincidence. How often did you buy something
| and got irrelevant ads?
|
| I had such a coincidence happen to me once. I saw an ad for a
| product I've never heard about online... and a short while later,
| I saw the same ad on non-smart broadcast TV, billboard, in print
| or some similar place where I could be sure that the ad was not
| targeted. Had it happened the other way around, I would have
| doubted it myself, but it was clear that this could not have been
| anything but coincidence.
|
| Besides that, why would the company behind it spend money on
| promoting the very product that you already bought? If anything,
| the fact that you bought it would be used to _not_ show you ads,
| at least until some time later when you 'd be likely to buy
| another one. (Retargeting frequently gets this wrong because they
| see the interest but don't get the purchase information.)
| m-i-l wrote:
| I had a similar super-creepy and definitely not just a co-
| incidence experience a while back, which I shared on HN[0]. Short
| summary is that it was almost certainly the result of Google
| buying my credit card transaction data from Mastercard and using
| it to personalise my Google news feed.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884687
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Did you take your phone with you to the chemist, and did it have
| GPS or Wi-Fi enabled? That wouldn't explain the exact match but
| the product category, and choosing Voltaren feels like a pretty
| plausible coincidence given the category.
| donkarma wrote:
| IIRC this is the most probable cause. Not to be a conspiracy
| nut but it probably didn't help if you spoke of it out loud
| either
| nomorefools wrote:
| Did you bring an Android phone?
| g8oz wrote:
| I guarantee this type of tracking is going. And I'm sure that the
| marketing industry is aware that these tactics are running on
| borrowed time. Once the mechanics of how it's being done are
| collated by EFF type activists it will turn into a political
| narrative and action _will_ be taken. Right now people are too
| confused by their strange experiences, doubting themselves and
| swayed by less outlandish alternative explanations. Sometimes the
| hooves you hear are in fact zebras not horses.
|
| The players in the surveillance ecosystem have shaped themselves
| into narrow forms that allow for plausible deniability. App
| makers, device makers, the monetization SDK providers, the re-
| targeting platforms with their Orwellian forecasting &
| optimization calculations and especially the data brokers each
| play their part in a division of labor as powerful as Adam
| Smith's pin factory.
|
| The pushback will come from the EU in my opinion. The U.S Big
| Tech file is going to be taken up with tackling the monopoly
| power of platforms for the next few years.
|
| In the meantime beware of free apps on your phone and look up how
| to opt out of marketing on your smart TV. Pay for sensitive items
| with cash. If your phone is Android use the Firefox browser with
| the uBlock Origin plugin.
| znpy wrote:
| > I guess it could just be coincidence?
|
| Could it be? of the billions of items you could be advertised
| for, why then exactly Voltaren?
|
| Do you have an android phone, by chance?
| friehe wrote:
| I get Voltaren ads all the time on YouTube. I don't use it or
| any similar products. Maybe they just have a large advertising
| budget.
| lpapez wrote:
| I was seeing this happen in our household as well. For now, the
| only answer I have is using UBlock everywhere + having PiHole up
| and running. These two really go a long way for at least blocking
| the creepy ads, but I think we have passed the point of no return
| when it comes to preventing tracking itself. Everything is being
| tracked all the time by insanely advanced ad-tech.
| giardini wrote:
| It's simple hygiene: clear out browser data after each session,
| use private browsing (fwiw), and a VPN.
| thisismyswamp wrote:
| In this thread: people who assume ad targeting systems are
| sophisticated enough to know what you buy at the chemist, while
| still stupid enough to recommend something you've already bought.
|
| OP probably googled something related before going out to buy the
| item :)
| motoboi wrote:
| Do you know companies actually send data to Google (and Facebook)
| to target ads?
|
| Its common and help companies target clients with ads on the
| internet in general (YouTube, sites, etc).
|
| It works like that:
|
| - The Chemist wants to sell things online or physically.
|
| - They pay google for ads for their products on sites related to
| its business lines or keywords about its niche.
|
| Google then show their ads for people in general, people
| interested on those subjects or to people visiting sites about
| those subjects.
|
| Interest is determined by search history and navigation (every
| google ad in a site (chemist or not) help google know you were
| there).
|
| Then the chemist want to target past customers with more specific
| ads (like reminding people of items in theirs carts):
|
| - They send google ads information about clients and past
| physical or online purchases / interactions.
|
| Google then match the user with its own database and connect the
| sent data with its own data.
|
| - Now the Chemist benefits from the google (because google can
| find you online)
|
| - Now other google clients benefit from this data (because now
| your google hidden profile is more accurate about your interests
| and habits)
|
| - Now Google benefits from that because it can use the purchase
| data to hone its models about ad-to-spend.
|
| The chemist also want to pay google a fraction of the purchases
| if the client saw an ad.
|
| - Google uses information sent in realtime by the Chemist and
| other companies, model this data and determine which people,
| sites and subjects have a bigger probability to turn an Ad into a
| sell.
|
| I have myself done that in the past and Facebook was quite
| accurate at turning ads into course subscriptions.
| fma wrote:
| Somewhat related...If anyone shops at Kroger or their owner
| chains (Fred Meyer, Ralphs, etc) and use their rewards
| card...know that they sell your data. That use the revenue to
| subsidize their prices - which is why they are cheaper than other
| grocery stores.
|
| You can opt out of it, or simply signup for a rewards card and
| not use your real info.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Opt out of VISA marketing
|
| https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do
|
| Second, disable GPS, and cellphone tower ID reporting (root
| needed.) So Google can't correlate you with sales records.
|
| At the moment, there is no way to disable Google AGPS spying on
| the stock Android.
|
| Third, block Google apps from reading your IMEI/IMSI/serial
| number, so they can't get AGPS data from your cellphone provider
| if it sells it.
|
| Better, get a de-Googled ROM
| durnygbur wrote:
| > Opt out of VISA marketing
|
| > U.S cardholders may opt out of Visa using their card
| transaction data for VAS, a suite of aggregated data products
| in the United States.
|
| So while outside of US, I don't get the perks like cashabacks
| and no privacy either!
| Havoc wrote:
| Is there an intl equivalent?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I might be naive but I don't see how the CC company would have
| the list of items you purchased.
| tpxl wrote:
| Technically the system is designed such that the CC company
| knows nothing of the receipt and the merchant knows nothing
| of the buyer.
|
| If you're using a store card, the merchant == the CC company
| and so knows everything about you anyways.
|
| If you're not using the store card, the merchant probably has
| an agreement with the CC company to share the information, so
| the technical implementation is irrelevant.
| joshmn wrote:
| My initial response out loud: Holy fuck. This exists?
| soared wrote:
| Visa doesn't build audiences for item-level data. I used to
| build these audiences at oracle (there are other posts in my
| history about visa audiences).
|
| Geolocation is not very accurate from gps, so unless the store
| was off in a field by itself that's not what happened here.
|
| The only real way to avoid this happening would be to use a new
| credit card for each purchase, with a fake name/billing
| address.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| All valid suggestions, but at the same time the burden of this
| ought not to fall on the consumer. Additionally, even though a
| small number of individuals may have the motivation and
| technical ability to opt out of everything, they're still
| trapped by the network effect of everyone else doing it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This is the dumbest ad strategy ever. Why on earth would ads
| about a product you _just bought_ be effective marketing
| material.
|
| This is like how you get a million ads about dishwashers the
| day after you Google around and buy one. At least wait for a
| short duration of time to let the target run out of medicine
| before adversiting new stuff.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Cause, and effect.
|
| It throws dust into eyes of advertising efficiency
| measurement.
|
| Company pays for ads, and Google just sizes the ad
| impressions to what it can find.
| cicko wrote:
| No, it is not. In many countries, one can return the product
| within two weeks, no questions asked. Why wouldn't they, if
| they get a better deal from an ad?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Bought a cordless screwdriver at Amazon, now get lots of ads
| on Amazon for cordless screwdrivers. Bought a dishwasher, now
| get ads for dishwashers. Dumb I know (or I'm dumb because I
| don't get it)
|
| Other comment explains it though: Many people return the
| dishwasher or screwdrivers (they might have ordered several)
| - Amazon wants to make sure you buy with them (though my
| account history should show that I practically never return
| things because I hate getting returned things as new).
| lolc wrote:
| The models use past behaviour (looking at dishwashers) to
| predict future behaviour (buying dishwashers). Spending
| cash on something is a much harder signal of interest than
| looking at it though. So the models would be stupid to
| ignore that. The question of "how many dishwashers does
| that person need" is hard to answer and thus mostly skipped
| when opportunity costs are low.
|
| Personal anecdote: Recently I cancelled an order because a
| better product was shown in ads post-purchase.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Simple Bayesian logic.
|
| P(buying crap) < P(buying crap | has bought crap before)
|
| Advertising is applied statistics and works on large cohorts.
| Nobody cares about you personally or your psychology.
| jamesrr39 wrote:
| Upvoted, this is a great comment. Thanks for finding the
| words to sum it up so concisely.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I've bought 3 mechanical keyboards in my life. 2 were within
| a week of each other because the first was defective and
| returned.
|
| Thus far, the clearest signal for answering the question
| "will I buy a mechanical keyboard in the next few days?" is
| "did I just buy mechanical keyboard?"
| soared wrote:
| Along with what others have said, the system isn't perfect
| and some marketers aren't great at their job. It's easy for
| recently purchased data to get mixed in with just about to
| purchase data. It's easy to forget to exclude an audience of
| people who just bought, etc.
| hunter-2 wrote:
| Well it makes sense in this particular use-case. Voltaren is
| an arthritis pain relief gel. This is something you will
| continue to need and would rather buy online instead of
| walking to a chemist when your joints are not in great shape.
| jwmoz wrote:
| I still get ads about leather wallets from when I was
| searching for one like 10 years ago.
| 55555 wrote:
| Same, but I think it's also just that Bellroy is just a
| massive Display advertiser.
| AlfeG wrote:
| Yandex Ads network has a wonderful button - "I'm already
| bought this product" to stop ad spam on the things already at
| home )
| sokoloff wrote:
| Why would I want to give the ad networks additional
| information and make their advertising more efficient?
| Given they exist, I'm perfectly okay with advertisers
| wasting money on badly targeted ads.
| grawprog wrote:
| Then again, could be fun to screw with them a bit. I
| wonder what would happen if you just kept clicking I
| already bought this on everything that pops up. Or better
| yet, just write a script that clicks it every time one of
| those ads appears. I wonder if it's possible to go
| through every single item they advertise and what would
| happen if you did.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If you want to stick it to the man there is:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/
|
| That clicks all adds for you. Maybe it can be modified
| somehow to click already bought item?
| Closi wrote:
| I suspect that when you do this the following thing
| happens:
|
| * Big businesses are unaffected as they use click fraud
| prevention services.
|
| * Businesses that don't use that have to pay more money
| to Google because people clicked on their ad, and they
| think their marketing is effective (at least from a click
| through perspective).
|
| * Google makes even more money because you are clicking
| on all the ads and it makes them look better. They can
| demonstrate how well their marketing platform works even
| better!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Because some things in life are win win. I actually
| prefer relevant ads vs irrelevant ads.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Me too, but I also prefer fewer ads over more ads. The
| more efficient we make ads, the more of them there will
| (virtually guaranteed) be.
| kd0amg wrote:
| Quantity of ads seems more like a decision for web site
| operators to make, balancing the wishes of viewers and
| clients. If a site's ads drown out the content I go there
| for, I'd give up on the place, but if a site's ads are
| "too relevant," I'd probably keep going there.
| newsclues wrote:
| Brilliant if you are selling the ads.
| tyoma wrote:
| The strategy is extremely effective, especially for high-
| priced but rarely purchased items like dishwashers, cars,
| flooring, etc.
|
| Consider: one of the hardest parts about advertising is
| figuring out when someone is ready to buy the product. That
| is why car companies bombard ads everywhere, just to catch
| you in the rare moment when you may be buying a car. Lets
| guess that maybe the odds of a random person wanting to buy a
| dishwasher is 1 in a million.
|
| Now consider someone who has just bought a dishwasher. What
| are the odds they need a new one or a second one? Maybe the
| one they bought is a few cm too tall/wide/deep. Maybe it came
| broken on arrival. What are the odds here? I have no data,
| but I would guess like 1 in ten thousand.
|
| The odds of you buying a dishwasher and then needing to buy
| another are _much better_ than the odds of someone wanting to
| buy a dishwasher in the first place, because the hard part is
| finding people who want to buy a dishwasher.
| [deleted]
| icoder wrote:
| I'm sorry but that doesn't make sense to me at all. Is that
| based on anything more than intuition because if not I'd
| like to say that mine sides with op. I'll add some numbers
| too. If a dishwasher has a lifetime of 20 years and a
| person is 'sensitive' to adds for dishwashers for a month
| surrounding the time it breaks, you're talking about a 1 in
| 240 chance if you 'randomly' target people with a
| dishwasher, which should be doable to predict with a 1 in 4
| chance using some basic demographics. That's roughly 1 in
| 1000 'total', 10x better than your 1 in 10.000 ;)
| tyoma wrote:
| I do not have concrete numbers, but would love to know
| for sure if anyone on HN is from the industry.
|
| I think once your dishwasher breaks, the time you are
| "live" to buy is closer to a week :). Also it is (maybe?)
| harder to identify a person with a broken dishwasher than
| one who just bought one and may need another.
| 55555 wrote:
| I used to think this, but people who just bought a dishwasher
| are probably somewhat likely to buy another dishwasher, even
| the same dishwasher, and there only needs to be a tiny
| fraction of a single percentage chance for it to be worth
| showing an ad impression.
| sgt wrote:
| Agree, I bought my first dishwasher a few years ago but it
| seems like every 15 years or so I buy a new one. It's
| possibly due to those ads. Just can't help myself!
| hulitu wrote:
| And people who just bought a coffin are probably somewhat
| likely to buy another coffin.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Presumably even for that tiny fraction of people who buy a
| dishwasher right after buying a dishwasher there must be a
| limit to how many times they will repeat the cycle,
| otherwise ... well, we can imagine the planet Earth
| completely covered in dishwashers and somewhere under the
| mass of white cubes, a constant mouse clicking sound and a
| cry of anguish... Must. BUY. M O R E
| <clickclickclickclick>.
| carlmr wrote:
| Well my girlfriend just bought a laptop, it was broken,
| she returned it, she bought a different laptop, again
| broken, and now bought a third one. Looking at how many
| products are DOA nowadays, it might be that a person that
| just bought something is more likely to buy it again than
| the average person.
|
| Also in general I've noticed there are a lot of people
| that return online purchases a lot, even the non broken
| ones, since you can't determine if the clothing fits, if
| the colors really look good, if it has a good texture,
| from pictures and descriptions online.
|
| They may not be good customers, but Google probably gets
| money per purchase, not for customer quality.
| taneq wrote:
| Is she buying them secondhand? What's the DOA rate on
| laptops these days? Two in a row must be rather unlikely.
| carlmr wrote:
| They are all new, I'm guessing bad luck.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I don't think they try to sell you what you've alrady bought,
| I think they're trying to sell you what you have shown any
| kind of interest in. Perhaps you filled in the order and then
| backed out- how would Google's recommender system know
| _that_? I mean, they sure _can_ but not for everyone,
| probably (hopefully). So the moment you show any kind of
| interest in some kind of product, they bombard you with ads
| for that same kind of product, hoping that they will get you
| in the short window of time right before you 've made a
| purchase.
|
| ... or not. Maybe their recommender systems have simply
| decided that buying product X is highly correlated with
| buying product Y where Y = X. Who knows? Probably not even
| google itself knows.
|
| Also, remember that google is not trying to sell you
| anything, they're only trying to maximise adoption of their
| ad platform by advertisers. Who cares what you actually buy?
| Not Google.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Many purchases are recurring consumables. Food, clothing,
| medicine, office supplies, car parts- none of it lasts
| forever. What does it cost to be reminded that you can buy
| more?
|
| Also, completely unrelatedly, if you saw some armchair
| internet rando claim they'd debunked a major and long-
| standing business strategy of market sector leader, how
| seriously would you take them?
| II2II wrote:
| > What does it cost to be reminded that you can buy more?
|
| At a certain point in my life, one where I sought fewer
| material comforts (and had less media exposure), I used to
| claim that advertising won't convince me to buy anything
| but it may convince me not to. There is a very fine line
| between persuasion and overstepping ethical boundaries.
| pas wrote:
| Sure, but for most people that line is not so fine.
| bladewolf47 wrote:
| Not sure if it fits with what the poster you replied to was
| saying but I find it a bit curious when I buy say a guitar
| on Amazon and my recommendations (emails or ads in other
| sites) over the next few days are still guitars. I do not
| remember seeing one of those promotions which follow a
| purchase being about accessories or add-ons.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| No automated recommendation system is going to be
| perfect; it's either going to over-recommend or under-
| recommend. From the way the Amazon system works, we can
| infer that they have decided that missing to the over-
| recommend side is a better business strategy than missing
| under.
|
| And it kind of makes sense if you think about it...
| really, what are the consequences of seeing these silly
| over-recommendations? Did you stop buying from Amazon? I
| bet the vast majority of people shrug or laugh, but don't
| change habits.
|
| Also, big one-time purchases tend to be rare, so
| optimizing a recommendation system around those is
| probably suboptimal compared to optimizing it around
| frequent consumable purchases.
| another-dave wrote:
| > I bet the vast majority of people shrug or laugh, but
| don't change habits.
|
| Or you tell all your friends about it and end up having a
| conversation about guitars/dishwashers or whatever.
|
| It may not be intentional on their part, but spin off
| conversations can be a nice by-product for them. Feels
| like it helps it stick in the mind, a bit like writing a
| witty TV ad.
| bladewolf47 wrote:
| I can see what you are saying, the downside is pretty
| much nil. And it seems like people do buy more guitars
| than just one. I'm currently just entering this phase
| where I just now stopped regretting the purchase because
| I couldn't play any music out of it initially. :)
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I think guitars are like bicycles where the optimal
| number to have is n+1 where n = the number you currently
| own.
| vbsteven wrote:
| Unless you are married or in a committed relationship,
| then it becomes n-1 where n = the number at which your
| significant other leaves you.
| metafunctor wrote:
| I dunno, I've bought several guitars in a row...
| scruple wrote:
| Well I've had it happen with toilet seats. In 40 years on
| this planet I've only ever needed to purchase that one.
| I'd imagine if I needed to get more than one that I would
| get them all at the same time.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| Its a math mistake on Amazons part.
|
| They've conflated "most purchases of a toilet seat are
| made by someone who buys another" and "most people who
| buy one toilet seat buy a second".
|
| There's a small, but high volume group of toilet seat
| purchases -- eg, office buildings or apartment
| maintenance.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| That's the sort of thing you buy a new one because one
| broke and now it shows up how tatty (worn, old, messy)
| the other one(s) in your house are. Or someone asks where
| you got it ... "oh, I can't remember but Google ads
| showed me the same one of available at $diy_store", or
| whatever.
| cperciva wrote:
| There's probably a nontrivial number of people who
| renovate houses one bathroom at a time.
| scruple wrote:
| I'm sure there are. I'm also sure, having been around
| house flippers (my brother flipped for a while, my MIL
| flipped for a while) and reno (my parents, my MIL, and my
| wife when we were dating) a few times in my life, that
| they don't buy them through Amazon/online.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I had a 2-4-1 offer on chainsaws sent to me.
|
| Business is subject to fads and stupidies, we have proof
| that open officez are a net negative, yet businesses
| continue. We have proof that getting people to change
| passwords every month is bad for security, but its still
| policy in many places. We have proof that using basalt or
| stainless rebar in RCC is more cost effective in the long
| run, but bs still continues.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Maybe enough people who buy chainsaws are running tree
| trimming crews?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Well buying something tells them a lot anyhow. Brand loyalty,
| possible interest in consumables, favourite places of
| purchase.. It's not necessarily to advertise the same thing.
| secondo wrote:
| To reinforce the notion that you've made the right choice and
| keep you as a long term loyal customer. This is an expressed
| part of car ad strategies.
|
| For medicinal products I'd be keen to see research on whether
| a treatment group being re-targeted would report better
| efficiency of a treatment than a non-retargeted control.
| clankyclanker wrote:
| It's terrible, but post-purchase advertising is an _entire
| field_ of advertising, trying to get you to keep thinking
| about the product, trying to encourage you to re-purchase the
| product after it runs out, and trying to encourage you to
| recommend it to others (by keeping it top of mind).
|
| https://www.shopify.com/retail/examples-of-great-post-
| purcha...
| jorvi wrote:
| > Better, get a de-Googled ROM
|
| Which means no push, breaking an absurd amount of apps.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Instead of a list of instructions, it might be nice to have
| details on how all the things you mention actually work...
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| That would likely be a much lengthier post with lots of
| detail. So much that the extent of surveillance would be lost
| to the reader.
| machello13 wrote:
| Use an iPhone?
| atat7024 wrote:
| This only works if you trust Apple instead of the firm you're
| running from.
|
| But it does "work". iPhone is the only phone besides a
| GrapheneOS phone with an intact security model worth writing
| about.
| FredPret wrote:
| Not to say that any organization (eg Apple) is trustworthy
| to an outsider, but at least Apple makes a lot of money
| upfront from the device's price tag.
|
| Their incentive is to not annoy their rich & powerful
| customer base with privacy violations.
| karmakaze wrote:
| > Their incentive is to not annoy their [...] customer
| base [...]
|
| Apple knows how much they can get away with annoying,
| that's why they can push updates that slow down your
| phone, or make devices less repairable.
|
| Privacy is trickier though because it's based on trust
| not annoyance and it doesn't take much to lose it. I've
| already lost trust in Apple. What I do trust is that
| 'privacy' is currently working for Apple to increase
| their market share. It also conveniently keeps data away
| from competitors.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Even better: flush your smartphone down the toilet.
|
| I mean, if you have to try and double-guess your phone to make
| sure it's not spying on you the game is lost. I don't even know
| what game that is. But it's lost.
| fsflover wrote:
| Or replace your phone with a one you can trust (Linux phone).
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| https://calyxos.org/ and https://grapheneos.org/ both go
| part of the way. They're hardened, privacy-preserving
| Android flavors that work best on Google Pixel 3 - 5.
| CalyxOS emulates google services so you can use basically
| any Android app, while GrapheneOS goes further down the
| security hardening hole.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| You still can't trust the baseband blob which has DMA
| access on most devices.
| fsflover wrote:
| These two devices do not have DMA access (and also have
| killswitches): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Get a landline and answering machine. Receive only pager
| while on the go.
| klyrs wrote:
| Pagers are rather famously unencrypted, and a hospital near
| you is almost certainly broadcasting personal and
| identifying information about patients right now, in the
| plain, and you can easily pick it up with an SDR.
| ancarda wrote:
| >VISA marketing
|
| Why is this even a thing? Maybe I should just go back to buying
| everything with cash, it's impossible to keep up with all the
| crap we need to disable or hack around
| conradfr wrote:
| That's why some people are working hard to make cash
| disappear.
| zikzak wrote:
| A person I work with (very knowledgable about tech and IT)
| uses a flip phone and cash (as much as possible). If they
| want to send a gift they buy it locally, pack it up, and ship
| it. Etc. They don't even bank online. Why? Not sure but they
| have lots of free time and this is how they choose to spend
| it (trips to see a teller, back machines, part office visits,
| using public transport to shop for nearly everything).
| ancarda wrote:
| >Why? Not sure
|
| Maybe they are sick of surveillance capitalism and don't
| wish to be part of it?
|
| I'd do the same, but I really don't want a flip phone.
| Maybe once Pine Phone with GNU/Linux is working reasonably
| well, I'll switch to that.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| https://calyxos.org/ and https://grapheneos.org/ both go
| part of the way. They're hardened, privacy-preserving
| Android flavors that work best on Google Pixel 3 - 5.
| CalyxOS emulates google services so you can use basically
| any Android app, while GrapheneOS goes further down the
| security hardening hole.
| ancarda wrote:
| Huh didn't know about these, thank you! I'll look into
| them
| walshemj wrote:
| I don't do online banking on my primary bank - only on
| the secondary NatWest one I keep < PS100 in.
|
| Its reducing the attack surface as I see it.
| speeder wrote:
| I actually want a good flip phone myself.
|
| I bought a locally made KaiOS phone but it has too low
| RAM and keep crashing.
|
| Nokia makes flip phones with KaiOS but they aren't
| allowed in my country sadly.
|
| Reason is I want a phone I can repair myself, all my
| previous phones I had to replace because some
| unrepairable part that didn't need to be unrepairable
| (one of them it was the battery!) broke down.
|
| Instead of shelling a ton of money to be tracked and buy
| a product that won't last, I wish I could spend my phone
| on something that will last.
|
| And the flip cover is convenient for me because I keep
| forgetting to lock my phone and managed to pocket dial
| even with an android.
| ecopoesis wrote:
| Because credit card rewards aren't free? Banks compete for
| credit card consumers by offering rewards. Those rewards cost
| them money. Selling consumer information is another revenue
| stream to make up for the cost of rewards. Most consumers are
| okay with this trade off: they get their airline miles / low
| interest / cash back in exchange for their purchase history.
| gambiting wrote:
| Credit cards are such an American thing though. Here in UK
| pretty much everyone uses debit cards with no rewards. I
| actually have a credit card just for emergencies but it
| offers no rewards either.
| gumby wrote:
| In order to bootstrap adoption of CCs, the banks pushed
| for a law in the 60s that put all the fraud liability on
| the banks, not the card users (and, to a lesser extent,
| not on the merchants). Your CC purchases are quite
| protected and it's easy to dispute a charge (apparently a
| very big deal in the phone and online sex businesses).
|
| As debit cards became popular here (well after Europe)
| the banks push them hard on people who aren't excellent
| credit risks (good credit risks = profit), because they
| push essentially all the risk onto the account holder and
| absolve the banks of any responsibility.
|
| I have three CCs (one of each major network) and pay them
| off every month; it's like having three debit cards
| except I get a free loan of a month's worth of spending.
| The term used in the banking business for people like me
| is "deadbeat"
| tolbish wrote:
| Don't you have to pay interest on your average balance
| even if you pay off your balance every month?
| AnonHP wrote:
| Not GP, but the answer is no if you pay the balance in
| full every month. The issuer anyway makes money from the
| MDR (merchant discount rate) charged to the seller. But
| they would _love_ customers who pay a partial balance
| regularly (at or above the minimum due) and charge them
| hefty interests like 20% per annum or 36% per annum or
| even higher, depending on a few different factors. Once
| you carry over balances from month to month, then every
| transaction attracts interest until the entire balance
| with interest is paid off.
| lozaning wrote:
| And then on charge cards (NOT credit cards) like American
| Express, you don't even have the option to carry a
| balence. Full balence must be paid every month in it's
| entirety.
| gambiting wrote:
| So here's the thing - I don't understand the liability
| thing. At least here in the UK I have disputed
| transactions on my debit card several times and every
| single time the charges were reversed during the phone
| call, I had the money back instantly. Is that only
| available for credit cards in the US?
| gumby wrote:
| That is correct.
| gpanders wrote:
| Citation needed. I use credit cards exclusively so I
| cannot say for sure, but I am _extremely_ skeptical that
| banks don't offer any fraud protection on debit cards in
| the US.
|
| AFAIK the main reason people prefer CC's over debit cards
| for fraud prevention is simply that with a debit card
| your money comes out immediately if it is used by someone
| else, whereas with a CC there is a 30-day buffer.
| walshemj wrote:
| CC in the UK use to have some nice rewards - and there
| are advantages in buying some thigs via credit card
| holidays for example.
| ancarda wrote:
| >Because credit card rewards aren't free
|
| So this isn't covered by the 1-3% transaction fee the
| merchant pays every time you use your card?
|
| >Most consumers are okay with this trade off
|
| No they aren't. Most consumers aren't even _aware_ they are
| paying with their privacy, so you cannot take a low opt-out
| rate to mean high levels of consent.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It doesn't matter if credit card providers are paid 0%,
| 3% or 5% on each transaction. If the law (and/or customer
| blowback) allows a company to sell customer information,
| management will eventually give in to selling it because
| it's a revenue source. When called on this they will give
| you a story about how it "lowers customer costs" and some
| people will accept this as a valid excuse, but none of
| this changes the reality.
|
| PS: this is really a response to grandparent poster, not
| parent.
| pksadiq wrote:
| > Why is this even a thing? Maybe I should just go back to
| buying everything with cash, it's impossible to keep up with
| all the crap we need to disable or hack around
|
| And some agencies may be more interested in these exclusion
| databases. So I don't think there is any way to get out of
| this maze. When you sign up to exclude from a list, you get
| included in many other.
| mulmen wrote:
| What's the risk here? Am I branded as a terrorist for
| opting out of marketing? What's the logic?
| corobo wrote:
| Lists can be used for things other than terrorists
| mulmen wrote:
| Obviously, such as tracking who opted out of marketing
| based on their credit card spend.
|
| The question is what unintended (and specifically
| undesirable) consequences that poses to the members of
| the list.
| qyi wrote:
| >Maybe I should just go back to buying everything with cash
|
| You should.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Cash registers will just start scanning serial numbers on
| bills and banks and ATMs will scan them when dispensing.
|
| Better to focus on privacy laws.
| fileeditview wrote:
| > > Visa marketing
|
| I guess this is one of the things that just has to be
| forbidden by law.
| lima wrote:
| In Germany (and probably all of Europe), it is forbidden by
| law.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I get the impression it's not forbidden in the UK. Here's
| the equivalent page from MasterCard. [0] (Incidentally,
| the captcha is broken so the page is unusable.)
|
| [0] https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/vision/terms-of-
| use/commi...
| ShockedUnicorn wrote:
| The captcha has been broken for months. I don't think
| it's an accident.
| guitarbill wrote:
| > To opt-out from our anonymisation of your personal
| information to perform data analyses
|
| The page is super vague, and the question remains if they
| can fully anonymise the data, but if they can, it's
| allowed. Personal data is covered under the GDPR, while
| anonymous data isn't [0].
|
| [0] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
| [deleted]
| beforeolives wrote:
| In the UK there are data science groups at banks that
| target specifically extremely wealthy customers based on
| their transactions and balances. I think that they only
| focus on wealthy customers right now because they haven't
| scaled up properly but the plan is to eventually expand to
| everyone.
| bingojess wrote:
| This has happened since banks started selling investment
| products, wealth managers simply pull up a list of cash
| heavy accounts who haven't opted out of marketing where
| they can push investment products. Think is biz model
| private bankers and 'Wealth Management' arms at banks are
| built upon
| walshemj wrote:
| High street banks in the UK don't really have products
| for HNW its normally high charging OIECs that are not
| good value.
|
| Ok Nat west has Coutts but not just any euro trash
| millionaire can get an account there
| briandear wrote:
| Or better yet, use an iPhone. Then you can use your GPS.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| Also google may read your email (if you are using gmail) -
| which contains your bank receipt (so seller), time and amount.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en
|
| > We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you
| ads.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| thats good to know but they don't say they don't read your
| messages (and keep your profile) for other reasons other
| than ads. I remember i got a message in google search
| saying you have purchased this product - not sure of the
| year, but they were clearly reading my mail then..[1]
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-stop-reading-
| users-em...
| jchook wrote:
| Not like Google has been fined unprecedentedly large sums
| numerous times for deceiving users and abusing their info.
| MereInterest wrote:
| They've also been asking for birthdays lately, obstensibly
| to verify age, but with the small print that it will also
| be used for ad targeting. But don't worry, they say, you
| can control how your information is used after you add it.
| On that page, the only option is whether to show the
| birthday publicly or not. There is no option to disable use
| for targeted advertising.
|
| Oh yeah, and Google frames asking for a birthdate as being
| "in order to comply with the law". They are deliberately
| ambiguous in order to imply that it is me who could be
| breaking the law, rather than Google. Also, the law only
| requires verifying age, and doesn't require storing the
| birthdate afterwards. That one is entirely on Google.
|
| So overall, my trust in anything that Google claims is
| rather low.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| You may not like the bevahior, butlt there's no
| indication of dishonesty there. Quite the contrary.
| MereInterest wrote:
| If you are referring my my description, then there
| absolutely is dishonesty. The notice deliberately implies
| (1) that is is a legal requirement on _me_ to provide a
| birthday, and (2) that I can disable the use of this
| information for ad targeting. Neither of these is the
| case. Therefore, dishonesty.
|
| If you are referring to reading email for ad targeting,
| you are correct that dishonesty in one area doesn't
| necessarily imply dishonestly in another. However, it
| does mean that a person or entity loses the benefit of
| the doubt, and must have independent verification of
| their claims.
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| No, they'll scan it for other reasons...
|
| I don't trust Google. They are evil.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| What other reasons?
| murukesh_s wrote:
| may be to build your profile (still not showing ads), but
| for potential future product like social network or video
| platform that will show you recommendations based on your
| profile.
| 55555 wrote:
| That's great and all, but they literally used to.
| rchaud wrote:
| Amazon went from showing every item in order confirmation
| emails, to showing none. That tells me they don't believe
| Google's promises either.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Google isn't the only company that might read your email.
|
| Also, hiding order info is a way to push you back to the
| store to engage in more Amazon ads.
| throwaway823882 wrote:
| Holy shit, what a great phishing tool. Send people an e-mail to
| opt out of Visa Marketing at a vaguely long/confusing URL and
| ask for their CC# and PIN. The fact that this site is real
| makes it more convincing.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Interesting one! But this is only for US. Is there something
| similar for Europe? (And for Mastercard as this is what my bank
| uses for my debit card)
| guuggye wrote:
| https://bb.visa.com/legal/privacy-policy-opt-out.html
| II2II wrote:
| > Better, get a de-Googled ROM
|
| If you have the patience and knowledge, I can't recommend this
| enough. If you don't have the patience and the knowledge, this
| is a good way to end up with a non-functioning phone. (It will
| probably be recoverable, provided that you have the patience to
| acquire that knowledge and don't mind being without a phone in
| the meantime.)
|
| When I say I can't recommend it enough, I mean it. I have been
| okay with simply disabling Google services for the past few
| years, yet Google seems to be embedding their services deeply
| in applications like Phone, Messages, Contacts, and Files. It
| is at the point where these applications would throw up a
| stream of notifications when Google services were disabled on
| Android 10. Even though they appeared to be usable, they are
| clearly trying to annoy people into re-enabling Google
| services.
| lorentztt wrote:
| Which one do you use/recommend?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I personally use a Pixel 3 running Grapheneos.
|
| You need a non-Verizon version of the device to do so, but
| there are services out there that'll hunt the devices down
| and even install the OS for you if you lack the
| time/patience https://grapheneos.org/
| https://noagendaphone.com/
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| For maximum security & privacy, go with GrapheneOS (used to
| be CopperheadOS back in the day). Caveat is that you won't
| have Google Play (or even MicroG), which means some Google
| apps (and paid apps) won't work and if you want apps from
| Google Play then you need to install Aurora app.
|
| If you want the above, but also want access to Google Play
| apps, then install CalyxOS.
|
| The third option is LineageOS (was originally CyanogenMod
| back in the day). This custom ROM is the most accessible
| for a variety of devices. It's good for privacy, but,
| because the bootloader is left unlocked (which may or may
| not be relevant depending on your threat model), it is the
| least secure of the three.
|
| Both GrapheneOS and CalyxOS have very user-friendly
| installation methods, but exist primarily for the Pixel
| line of devices. LineageOS has the most involved
| installation process, but it's available for the widest
| variety of Android devices.
|
| I've installed all three ROMs on several different devices.
| For the average person, CalyxOS will probably be the best
| bet (though I think the Trebuchet launcher in LineageOS is
| better).
| II2II wrote:
| It depends upon what is available for your device and what
| you want out of the firmware.
|
| What I will suggest is looking at the device specific
| forums at XDA. You will get an idea of what is available
| and what is reliable. Personally, I shy away from
| distributions that don't include a "what works" and "what
| doesn't work" section in the first post. I also prefer
| "official" distributions. At the very least, it is easier
| to track updates. The next filter I use is feature based.
| In this context, look for distributions that don't include
| Gapps and offer additional privacy enhancing features. Once
| you have something that you think you want, read the thread
| for the distribution. It often reveals pitfalls, variations
| within the model, and variations between carriers. These
| pitfalls exist even with the popular distributions, which
| is another reason to check out the forums.
|
| I went with OmniROM this time around, but I have been happy
| with Resurrection Remix on other devices. Some devices have
| nice alternatives that are specific to them. As an example,
| I use KatKiss on the Asus TF300T. For a while, it was
| running a more recent version of Android than my much newer
| phone!
| dessant wrote:
| Are you saying that Google collects and uploads your location
| data (GPS and cellphone tower ID), despite opting out of data
| collection on Android?
| [deleted]
| geofft wrote:
| The first one seems most likely to be the relevant answer to
| how this was tracked:
|
| https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-anal...
|
| > _Google's third-party partnerships ... capture approximately
| 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States_
|
| See also
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...
| and https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-
| no... - Google has deals with the credit card providers to get
| purchase data so they can link them back to your online
| behavior.
| rightbyte wrote:
| And people still think Google et al. eavesdropping peoples
| homes is tinfoil hat level ...
| rahilb wrote:
| It's probably a coincidence or just the worst advertisers on the
| planet. Why would I show an ad to someone who literally just
| bought my thing?
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > Why would I show an ad to someone who literally just bought
| my thing?
|
| The majority of targeted advertising I see is for items I just
| bought. There's also a reasonable explanation for this...
|
| Not every merchant shares purchase data, so if you do any
| research anywhere before making a purchase, they know you are
| interested, but as there was no tracking beacon on the site you
| ultimately bought from (or the purchase was misidentified or
| delayed or any number of reasons), that's why you are now
| seeing targeted ads for it.
| dorkwood wrote:
| It's pretty common. I once bought a fan online and had ads for
| that same fan follow me around for weeks. I believe they're
| called "retargeting" ads.
| asadkn wrote:
| Retargeting is generally done after you have shown interest
| in a product, but haven't converted yet. "Conversions" are
| always excluded if possible. It makes no sense to retarget a
| recent buyer.
| bombcar wrote:
| They may not know you converted, especially if the ads are
| internet and the purchase was in-person.
| dorkwood wrote:
| I agree it doesn't make any sense, and I would prefer to
| live in a world where ads were served as you described.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I have not done anything Voltaren related and have noticed a
| bunch of ads. So I think they just did a big ad buy.
| kruxigt wrote:
| It's listening from your pocket.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Have you been googling about your symptoms, illnesses or anything
| else that can have a connection to drugs like Voltaren?
| wideareanetwork wrote:
| No I'm almost certain I haven't. Because I've used it before
| and I don't really have any questions about it so I ran out and
| I just go buy more.
|
| At this stage I'm just assuming it's a coincidence.
|
| It has made me realize the holy grail for google and
| advertisers is to access your bank transactions and advertise
| to you based on that.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Indeed though I find it silly when I buy something like a
| laptop (I'm probably good for a couple of years) and start
| getting bombarded by "hey laptops galore!"ads. I just bought
| one, don't need another !
|
| It would be cleverer to identify the replacement cycle for
| each kind of product and only promote stuff the victim is
| likely to be looking for at that point in time (after 3 years
| likeliness of looking for a laptop replacement is higher).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| haffi112 wrote:
| A bank transaction would not reveal what product you bought
| whereas a receipt would.
|
| If prices were unique you could deduce something from a few
| items bought together though.
|
| In the business of advertisements the user pays for clicks.
| However, it would be much more reliable for the user to pay
| for ads that led to actual transactions instead of just
| clicks.
|
| Is there some reason for why this hasn't happened so far? (Or
| has it already happened?)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Some merchants do transmit information about the purchased
| items:
|
| https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/
| amelius wrote:
| A housemate might have seen the Voltaren lying around, then
| Googled for it on your computer.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Prescription data, at least in the US, is not very private. Many
| entities know that you met a doctor and they know when the doctor
| prescribes. Between PBMs, subrogation, wholesalers, and other
| factors, marketers are easily able to de-anonymize your identity
| for targeting purposes.
|
| In my family's case, my wife's hospital admission and
| prescription was sufficient to correctly identify her as likely
| 10-12 weeks pregnant. Their confidence in that was sufficient to
| yield us a Fedex'd box containing congratulations and starter
| kits of enfamil, on her due date. Since they don't read your
| records, just infer from events, they didn't know that she had
| miscarried, and nearly died in the process.
|
| I know this, because Enfamil identified the list used to target
| her, and I bought it for my zip code. I also learned that my
| neighbor 4 doors down has type 2 diabetes, and has expressed
| interest in a BMW or Audi at the end of her then-current lease.
| (She went Audi btw)
|
| When people lecture you about various observational biases,
| you're being paranoid, etc, they are full of shit. The marketing
| machine is way more wired up into everyday life than you can
| imagine.
| otterley wrote:
| If you can prove this, at least in the USA, this would be a
| serious violation of HIPAA and severe penalties would apply to
| entities who disclosed, knowingly received, or paid for
| personal health information without the patient's consent and
| used it for an improper purpose.
|
| https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Lol. No. You can comply with HIPAA and "anonymize" in a
| manner that a marketer can use to retarget, especially by
| combining with other data sources.
|
| HIPAA protects you against receptionists gossiping and
| wholesale release of your records. Not much else.
|
| When your doctor writes a script, that data is in the hands
| of a data aggregation company before your pharmacist looks at
| it. Every pharma rep has a report card for each doctors
| prescription practices as a result.
|
| Insurance companies and others sell claim data in aggregate
| and so do downstream partners like subrogation services. Some
| states even shared Medicaid claim data to aid in targeting
| ads and analysis to fight opioid abuse.
| otterley wrote:
| I don't dispute that aggregated data can be sold, but there
| is a causal link missing between possessing aggregated
| purchase data and marketing to a specific person based on
| certain knowledge that an individual has purchased a
| particular drug. We need to be able to prove that.
| losvedir wrote:
| Did you search for "pain" or "arthritis" or "migraine" or
| something like that? Visit a page devoted to your condition or
| symptoms? Could be whatever led you to get Voltaren in the first
| place also led you to issue search queries or visit sites in a
| way that let Google infer you might be interested in Voltaren.
| OskarS wrote:
| Or even just search the pharmacy website to see if that branch
| had it in stock?
|
| I would think something like this would be the most likely
| culprit.
| razodactyl wrote:
| https://www.visa.com.au/legal/privacy-policy-opt-out.html
| testicle wrote:
| Please check if you allowed to record voice:)
| seoaeu wrote:
| Because you aren't using an adblocker. Seriously, you should
| really consider uBlock Origin or similar. Google doesn't honor Do
| Not Track, so you should feel no obligation to honor their desire
| for you to look at their ads.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| It's always surprising when I happen to have to use devices
| that aren't my own, and there are ads. Disgusting!
| throwa9724567 wrote:
| If you purchased in the US using a discount card (eg: GoodRx),
| they get transaction level data from the pharmacy and can use
| that to retarget / market to you. It's not PHI / HIPAA protected
| since it's not flowing through insurance and is transaction data.
| zubi wrote:
| March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home
| from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the
| bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on
| the table started reproaching me for being careless about
| hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the
| key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked
| how come she hadn't thought that the usb memory-stick attached to
| the key-chain would be destroyed when being washed. I dried the
| keys along with the usb-stick, sat down at my table, opened up
| Facebook only to be greeted by an ad on top about water-proof usb
| memory sticks. I felt a chill ran down on my spine.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| What is the hypothesis? FB listening through a phone? The
| (closed?) Laptop? Alexa?
| azornathogron wrote:
| I don't know the timing of the events you describe, obviously.
| Is it possible that after you got angry at your girlfriend, she
| searched on the web for "waterproof USB keys", thereby
| associating your IP/system with that search?
| Aransentin wrote:
| Couldn't your girlfriend (or any other third party who
| overheard your conversation) have searched for memory stick
| water damage before you sat down and opened Facebook? It
| doesn't seem too strange to me that advertisers send targeted
| ads for a certain product to an entire household if they think
| somebody there might need it.
| zubi wrote:
| As a response to those who asked questions here in the
| comments:
|
| When I finally overcame the shock, the very first thing I did
| was to ask her if she, or a guest, indeed searched for, or
| otherwise "input" anything related to usb-sticks or water-
| proofness into a computer system. The answer was no.
|
| I don't know what to make of it. I don't want to succumb to
| conspiracy theories of the sort that ambient sound is recorded
| by our devices at all times. Most plausible explanation is
| perhaps the one about cognitive bias.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| An explanation would be that, in the beginning of Covid, your
| scenario (needing washable USB sticks) happened to many many
| people.
| zubi wrote:
| Excellent reasoning. I never thought of this but very
| plausible indeed.
| foobiter wrote:
| did you delete facebook?
| chaitanya wrote:
| Only plausible explanation I can think of is that perhaps you
| or your girlfriend looked something up about drying a wet
| memory stick.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I've put normal USB sticks through the washing machine,
| retrieved them from the dryer lint screen, and had them still
| work!
|
| (don't recommend it of course)
| glangdale wrote:
| We've (my wife and I) had a few odd ones like this too. That
| being said, no-one has substantiated this - which, to me,
| doesn't mean as much as people thinks it does.
|
| Suppose you were building this capability. Would you
| necessarily leave it on 100% of the time, and if someone
| started acting 'weird' around their phone ("hey, I'm sitting in
| a lab, and someone is just talking to me a lot") it might be a
| good time to turn off the capability.
|
| Plenty of malware knows to turn itself off when someone has
| Wireshark installed (or a number of other "tells" that the
| malware can get that you might be running on a security
| researcher's machine). Even simply running microphone-based
| data gathering infrequently might be enough to confound a
| journalist or researcher with limited time budget.
| utopcell wrote:
| FB ad tech is rudimentary if it only showed you ads to replace
| your USB stick and no dating sites.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Hahaha
| _Microft wrote:
| Did you order the water-proof usb memory stick? It might have
| contained a backup of your keychain memory stick. ;)
| KaseKun wrote:
| Unfortunately, though this is an excellent story, this is just
| an example of a bias known as "frequency illusion". It happens
| with a lot of things, like seeing the clock at 11:11 more than
| you do at 11:09. Or seeing lots of your make/model car but
| being blind to the hundred of other variants on the road.
|
| How many times have you opened up your laptop and not seen a
| Facebook add for something you just did, or something you
| discussed? You'll never notice those occasions.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I understand you have used Occam's razor to come to this
| conclusion. And its a perfectly valid point. But, this
| particular story has been repeated so many times around me
| that I am genuinely suspicious. But alas, the only way to
| know would be to look at the code. And even then we might not
| understand because its a blackbox type system which is ill
| understood by even its designers.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Well, another approach would be to do some controlled
| experiments: Pick a selection of somewhat-uncommon
| products. Get some volunteers to set up Facebook accounts
| on clean computers and phones with no adblockers. Monitor
| their incoming advertising messages for 2 weeks.
|
| Then randomly assign the products from the first step to
| the volunteers, give them information about the product on
| paper and ask them to hold verbal conversations about such
| such products.
|
| If they start getting adverts that happen to match the
| subject of those verbal conversations, something is going
| on.
| skybrian wrote:
| You need to default to uncertainty. It's not proven that it
| was coincidence, but it's also not proven that it isn't.
|
| Sometimes you never do find out what happened.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, it is a common cognitive bias.
| quenix wrote:
| The "11:11 on the clock" story has also been repeated by
| millions of people for decades. That many people fall prey
| to a cognitive bias does not make it any less of a bias.
| qyi wrote:
| Why would Google be recording your mic and using it for ads
| where they would just be caught for doing it? I mean it's
| completely possible. But more likely just confirmation
| bias. Speaking of Occam's razor, we should just dump modern
| "technology" (smart phones, smart TVs, the web, IoT, even
| feature phones were no good).
|
| There's actually nothing hard about the concept of a mobile
| phone, it's just a computer (or could even be a simple PCB)
| with a mic and speaker. No need for "secret sauce"
| standards such that nobody can tell if it's secure (I mean
| it isn't, the bugs just get patched every week, day,
| nanosecond, whatever). Hell, you can even make a completely
| open and simple (even more important than open) phone
| communication standard and charge 1 billion people tens of
| dollars per month to use your network and become the
| richest person on earth.
|
| edit: I mean facebook, or whatever (also facebook would
| have to gain access to the mic [maybe facebook has mic
| permission i guess, i am unfamiliar with smart phones])
| worik wrote:
| Because they have "voice assistants" that have to be
| always on, always transmitting, because the software that
| recognises your words on your mobile phone needs help.
|
| Facebook has access to your mic if you ever use it for
| its voice com functions (do not do that) and do not
| explicitly remove the permissions to access teh mic (do
| do that).
|
| They have been caught several times. Thing is people give
| them permission to record through the mic so it is legal.
|
| Do not confuse legal with good, it is evil.
| syndacks wrote:
| How is it that no such scandal has been uncovered? Surely
| by now some hacker would have been able to prove that a
| phone is recording, sending to server, processing, and
| returning relevant ad. Or surely someone would have come
| forward or whistle blown by now. So I'll quote Hitchen's
| razor for you:
|
| "What can be asserted without evidence can also be
| dismissed without evidence."
| newswasboring wrote:
| I have acknowledged that my reasoning is less sound than
| the occam's razor, and I didn't really assert data
| impropriety. So calm down.
|
| But about your first point. I don't think even the
| designers and maintainers of this blackbox understand the
| system. Looking at it from that point of view, the
| chances of a hacker finding proof for this is pretty low.
| IX-103 wrote:
| The thing is you can disapprove one piece without
| understanding the whole system.
|
| It would be pretty easy to show that a) sound is not
| being continually recorded and streamed over the internet
| and b) the device is not using enough processing power to
| decode speech. Both have been done, so this is veering
| into conspiracy theory territory.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| FWIW, streaming _voice_ over the Internet isn 't required
| for this attack - all the software needs is to send a few
| bytes long tag indicating the topic of an overheard
| conversation.
|
| The processing power required for this isn't big either -
| remember that 12+ years ago Microsoft Windows shipped
| with a speech recognition system that was in many ways
| better than what the phones currently offer, and worked
| _off-line_ and with almost unnoticeable performance
| penalty. And if you 're interested in probabilistic
| reporting ("there's 86% I've heard a word matching this
| tag in the last hour..."), you can relax performance
| requirements even further.
|
| So, out of the things you mention, the only somewhat
| convincing piece of evidence would be that the apps in
| question are _not accessing microphone in the
| background_.
| newswasboring wrote:
| My dude! we are talking past each other. I am not
| asserting data handling impropriety. That is not what
| concerns me. What concerns me is they are letting these
| black box systems emotionally manipulate me.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Many have tried. Steve Gibson (of GRC fame) did some
| wiresharking around one of his Amazon devices and found
| no abnormal networking traffic when he was talking to it,
| vs not.
| scubbo wrote:
| Alexa devices have been extensively and repeatedly shown
| to not be "passively listening".
|
| The same cannot be said for phone apps.
| worik wrote:
| Untrue.
|
| I am pushing the boat out because I rely on my memory.
| But there were reports from Apple contractors about what
| they heard on Sirri. It is always on, always listening.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > But there were reports from Apple contractors about
| what they heard on Sirri. It is always on, always
| listening.
|
| These 2 sentences may not necessarily need to both be
| true. As I recall, one could opt in (or was it opt-out?)
| to an Apple program to upload bits and pieces of spoken
| word for its people to parse "humanly" for it to improve
| its speech to text.
|
| I'm no Apple fan, but I'm not sure one implies the other,
| here.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > But, this particular story has been repeated so many
| times around me that I am genuinely suspicious
|
| So, one meta-step up in abstraction? People "notice" these
| these things which they talk about and now you're
| especially sensitive to hearing them?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's actually possible to evoke some interesting responses
| from the algorithms by reducing the amount of data input.
|
| For example: When I set up a new facebook account for my
| mother (at her explicit wish), she had no friends or
| interests marked yet. Facebook showed her some random ads
| and posts.
|
| During the setup I was scrolling through her timeline and
| my phone beeped so I stopped scrolling for about 2 seconds.
| The post shown was a random post about some fish.
|
| When I picked it up, I saw it quickly replacing the next
| random post with something about the same kind of fish. So
| evidently it even looks at how long you look at certain
| content to determine your interests.
|
| I suppose it is possible to derive other algorithmic
| determinations using similar methods.
| nexuist wrote:
| > So evidently it even looks at how long you look at
| certain content
|
| It does. Instagram constantly sends back telemetry
| including your scroll position, which can then be used to
| determine what you were looking at and for how long.
| Scroll right past an ad? you probably won't see it again;
| the algorithm knows it didn't have an impact on you.
| Meanwhile, spend a few seconds reading what it says, and
| this teaches the algorithm that you are interested in
| similar content.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Bullshit, Facebook was found around 2015-2016 to be draining
| iPhone batteries with background audio sessions. While they
| may have gotten more efficient with their methods it wouldn't
| be surprising if they were still recording audio.
|
| There's a moral hazard that incentivizes any company that can
| do so to bug user's homes for advertising purposes. IMO it
| should be illegal.
| fraud wrote:
| My issue with the whole idea of background recording for
| advertising is that it would be incredibly costly to store
| this data, transcribe the audio and turn it into anything
| even remotely meaningful for advertisers. I also don't know
| a lot on this subject so if anyone has better info that'd
| be great.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > store this data, transcribe the audio and turn it into
| anything even remotely meaningful for advertisers
|
| I disagree - even shitty, low CPU on-device transcription
| could give a signal to advertising algos.
|
| I doubt this is being done, but it is definitely within
| the range of possibility and wouldn't even drain your
| phone battery that much.
| aleister_777 wrote:
| All is needs to be is a list of keywords associated with
| your advertising profile.
| Cpoll wrote:
| You don't need to store the data, just transcribe it.
| That's basically the business model for Siri, Alexa et
| al. If you're worried about cost, just offload the work
| to the cell phone and accept the less-than-100%
| transcription.
|
| The only reason I don't think the big players are doing
| this _is_ the potential for scandal _. Random apps on the
| app store that ask for a million permissions, on the
| other hand, are probably doing this.
|
| _ It only takes one clever hacker looking to make a name
| for themselves. With that said, there are plenty of cases
| where companies _were_ caught spying, so maybe it 's not
| so cut and dry.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You can easily process the audio on the fly and reduce it
| to a probabilistic estimate of whether a tag from a
| predefined topic set was present in the conversation.
| Doesn't need to be 100% accurate. You don't need to store
| the audio - just stream it through the recognizer. The
| output of such recognizer will be something on the order
| of 8-32 bytes (an int for tag, a float for probability,
| an int64 for timestamp), possibly less if one's clever -
| and it only needs to be stored until the next opportunity
| to send it out.
|
| Also: people seem to be looking at modern speech
| recognizers on their phones and wrongly concluding that
| speech recognition _in general_ is very compute-
| intensive. It isn 't, if you're willing to make some
| sacrifices on accuracy and generality, and to do it
| locally instead voice data off to a cloud somewhere. A
| proper benchmark here isn't Siri or Google Assistant -
| it's Microsoft Speech API, as shipped with Windows 12+
| years ago.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I doubt it though, on Android 11 it now tells you when your
| phone is recording audio (I see it during a whatsapp call
| for example) and as far as I know iOS has something similar
| (an orange dot IIRC).
|
| So they would be caught out pretty quickly if they did
| this.
|
| I'm sure they did it before though, ultrasonic
| identifications during TV ads etc were really a thing.
| ericd wrote:
| This probably could explain most people's accounts of this,
| but I've been approached by companies who offered large lump
| sums to include their SDK which required microphone access in
| our mobile app, in order to fingerprint what our users were
| watching on TV while it was open, nominally to see what ads
| they were seeing. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they or
| others were going a good bit further than that and trying to
| run speech recognition on overheard conversations, unless
| it's illegal somehow.
|
| AdTech is frankly a revolting industry.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I don't buy the speech recognition, nor have I seen it
| offered.
|
| But the tv 'recognition' is a big part of selling ads on
| connected tvs, vizio, roku etc.
| neuronic wrote:
| No it's not. There has been more than one instance when me or
| friends _talked_ about topics and a day later we get weird
| ads for it on Instagram.
|
| Adtech is creepy and dystopian.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| As what % of ads that are unrelated to anything they talked
| about?
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I don't know how many times I internally chuckle when I
| glance at the clock some time before I go to bed and it's
| "21:12"; a meaningful number to me as the "2112" album and
| the band Rush was a big part of my youth.
|
| That, and I tend to go to bed between 21:00 and 22:00. But I
| don't attribute it to anything but me being in a position to
| look at the clock around that time, and I haven't wondered if
| I see it any more than 21:09 or 21:30. Would be an
| interesting histogram, if nothing else.
| samsquire wrote:
| I have the same for Rush 21:12.
|
| Recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZm1_jtY1SQ
| alex_g wrote:
| Purchased a hard kombucha at Whole Foods last week,
|
| Ever since, about 1/3 of my instagram ads are for it. Never
| had an instagram ad for it before.
| blueblisters wrote:
| A few potential reasons:
|
| - You fit the demographic of Kombucha drinkers in your
| locality
|
| - You visited a Kombucha blog/website recently that used
| retargeting to deliver an ad to your Instagram
|
| - An initial ad that caught your attention and Instagram
| used "dwell time" to determine that the ad is relevant to
| you
| alex_g wrote:
| Good points. I do fit the demographic, I have looked up
| pages related to Kombucha in the past (thought not in the
| last 6 months), and I did dwell on the first ad in
| amazement.
|
| Still, I got home from the store and started seeing the
| ads immediately.
| joering2 wrote:
| Have you spoke with someone about it? IOS and Android can
| easily analyze what you say and send relevant keywords
| home. This is very evil genius in a way that they do not
| send your voice feed neither your full sentences but only
| keywords that the law describe as "metatags" that courts
| found no to be an abuse of your 4A in the past.
|
| In fact, you didn't even have to be on the phone. You
| could just come home and told you wife what you bough.
| That would be enough to send keywords and know what you
| maybe interested in. I know for fact my cable box
| (Spectrum) is listening and analyzing to my
| conversations. We used to talk with my wife about the
| most crazies stuff and less than 48 hours, Spectrum TV,
| Sling and YouTube would inject relevant ads. Some were
| extremely home made and amateurish but always spot on.
|
| Do an experiment in home. Talk about something you dont
| have or is irrelevant to you. For example if you have no
| kids start talking about them. Use keywords like "our
| first child", "baby sitting", "hospital", "giving birth",
| "baby shower", I bet you less than 48 hours later your TV
| will be interrupting you with ads related to baby
| products; ads you have never seen before.
| alex_g wrote:
| Do you have any evidence of iOS analyzing and
| transmitting keywords? It's one thing to say it's
| technically possible and another to say it's happening.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Honestly speaking, this is more scary than them actually
| stealing data.
| lifeformed wrote:
| Maybe the subtle influences that led you to buying such a
| drink in the first place are directly related to increased
| advertising for them. Also Amazon has your Whole Foods
| purchasing data, so that probably trickled down somewhere.
| alex_g wrote:
| Technically my girlfriend purchased it with her Whole
| Foods/Amazon account, and she has not seen any ads.
| worik wrote:
| The first part of your comment is gaslighting.
|
| The second "trickled down somewhere" is the point.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Most people don't see completely irrelevant Facebook ads.
|
| Frankly, Facebook and their proxies always speak in
| meaningless nonsense about everything. If you asked Zuck if
| he ate kittens, you'd get some reply about facebooks mission
| and why cats are important.
|
| For some mysterious reason, all explanations for the
| "Facebook is listening" phenomenon are uniquely cogent, clear
| and dismissive.
|
| Personally, I have zero doubt that a downstream "partner",
| data provider, or affiliate is processing audio data of
| questionable origin for ad insights. Call center companies
| with tight margins do it, why wouldn't an ad company?
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > Most people don't see completely irrelevant Facebook ads.
|
| Most people don't _NOTICE_ the ones that are, either.
| johnboiles wrote:
| For me it's 9:41
| anigbrowl wrote:
| While this is indeed a possibility, your certitude is
| unwarranted.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Sure. Except in the last three years that "frequency
| illusion" has been happening to me with a... growing
| frequency. About every 2-3 months, Facebook shows my wife an
| ad for some completely random shit we're sure neither of us
| searched for before or mentioned to anyone else.
|
| I would agree with you last decade. This decade, I have my
| doubts.
| root_axis wrote:
| There is great statistical power in these ML models, in
| many cases the "random shit" will become the topic of
| conversation due to shared social factors that can be
| predicted, you simply neglect to recognize all the times
| the modeling failed.
| bordercases wrote:
| To everyone suggesting that it's the result of statistical
| bias: Why can we rule out what should be obvious hypotheses,
| like you are being listened to?
|
| Biases are not successful explanations by default, they are
| merely alternate hypotheses which require almost no evidence to
| assert; which is why people take randomness as null or prior.
|
| But it shouldn't be rational to stop investigating alternative
| hypotheses just because of the possibility of bias - this
| amounts to not desiring further evidence, being incurious.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| This is an amazing story but I believe it is a coincidence that
| you just happened to notice more than non-coincidences.
|
| I say this not because I am especially skeptic or rational, I
| say this because a similar thing happened to me yet I know for
| a fact that it was a coincidence. It feels unbelievable yet
| 1/1000 events happen every now and then. All in all, if
| Facebook knew you were a technical person it's not unlikely
| that an ad for a water proof usb stick would be relevant to
| you.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| This happened yesterday, bought some margherita pizza at 3pm,
| was talking about how much a little pizza oven would cost to
| make it crispy and if it would come out the same. At 6pm a
| youtube ad on the tv showed us a pizza oven.
|
| we need better legislation. advertising is a cancer on the
| entire earth.
| cglace wrote:
| Sounds terrible.
| benreesman wrote:
| Usually when this sort of thing happens someone searched for
| something or a related term in the previous 30 days (typical
| retention period in "hot" storage for such features) and doesn't
| remember doing the search.
|
| Most people, myself included, do so many searches so casually
| that we don't remember doing it much of the time.
|
| Source: FB Ads and IG ranking for 7 years.
| worik wrote:
| Use cash.
| antpls wrote:
| Today I browsed Google from my desktop PC about "Gundam" (the
| japonese anime) for about 1 hour. Pretty niche topic.
|
| Then when I was done, I closed all browser tabs, I unlocked my
| smartphone to check Instagram, and the second ads I get is a
| Gundam ad. I have no idea how my shadow "desktop" ad profile and
| shadow "mobile" ad profile matched. I share no accounts between
| my desktop and my smartphone : - I use different
| Google accounts on my phone and desktop (although I occasionally
| log in one or the other in private tabs) - The internet
| connections are different : 4G for phone, fiber for desktop
| - On desktop, I use Chromium with Ad block Plus - I do not
| use facebook nor instagram on my desktop PC
|
| So how the f. did Instagram know about my Gundam browsing on
| desktop.
|
| This must stop.
| sroussey wrote:
| LiveRamp connects all the "anonymous" identifiers together for
| a household.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Third party SDKs also report your location to these
| services[0], which makes it trivial to track your phone to
| your location (or they could just buy that info directly from
| the carrier).
|
| Your home ISP's assigned IP is also in a database with your
| name and a unique identifier. So it doesn't matter what
| adblocking you use, they still know where the hits are coming
| from.
|
| All this data is traded around the ad "ecosystem" and
| integrated real-time, so it can be milliseconds from action
| to ad-impression.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/lo
| cat...
| PeterisP wrote:
| If you log in different google accounts in private tabs, then
| any browser fingerprinting would immediately link them.
|
| Also, it's plausible that one of your contacts has your phone
| number connected with the email of your desktop google account.
| danbolt wrote:
| I think Instagram can usually figure it out from the Minovsky
| Particles given off by your PC for that short bit of time.
| aaron695 wrote:
| Why did you buy Voltaren and that's probably your answer.
|
| If you bought Voltaren as a joke though an offline random process
| ( which is hard to do ) then you might have more evidence it's
| linked to the sale part.
|
| The other day I watched Mosquito Coast again after 30 years.
| Afterwards I saw Apple are making a TV series. That's not a
| coincidence I just have no idea how it happened. It was not
| simple, a Ad or Article I would have read, it's an interesting
| premise I always remembered. It was downloaded from the torrents.
| It was after looking at a movie then director then actor then
| movies then the decision to watch. But something I don't know
| what, helped me stop there on the chain of browsing and watch it.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I guess it could just be coincidence?
|
| Have you ever noticed how you don't seem to see much of X, and
| then all of a sudden you see one X. And then you can't stop
| seeing X.
|
| Though, googles probably spying on you.
| dorkwood wrote:
| I suspect all the people putting this claim on the same level as
| "my phone is listening to me" conspiracy theories are living
| outside of the USA.
|
| One of the first things I noticed after moving to America was
| that I was being served ads for oddly specific in-store
| purchases. I checked my bank's terms and discovered that, sure
| enough, they were sharing my transaction history with "non-
| affiliates" so that they could market to me.
|
| From memory, they did offer opt-out methods for limiting the
| amount of data that they shared. Maybe you could see if your bank
| offers the same?
| cactus2093 wrote:
| Well the other problem in America is the payment rails are very
| primitive. How does your credit card company know which items
| you're buying, when the payment description will be something
| cryptic that you can only sometimes even match to the store
| name and that's it. It's not like your credit card company gets
| an itemized receipt of your purchases.
|
| I've actually worked at a company that was purchasing this data
| from banks, it was all anonymized and we were looking for
| trends. Maybe there are other companies that are able to buy
| the pii data and use it for marketing, but I think there are
| better, simpler sources. The stores/brands themselves can sell
| the data about their customers, or they are passing it to
| google to run targeted ads on their own customers and then
| google now has that data too and can use it for other things,
| etc.
| bombcar wrote:
| At least some credit card companies support (in some cases)
| getting an itemized receipt - I know I've been in my AMEX
| account and been able to see the full details of a purchase.
|
| It needs the credit card company, the payment processor, and
| the merchant to all have compatible systems that support it.
| I know I've seen it advertised as a feature of some business
| cards.
| hobs wrote:
| Your phone is listening (or at least some are) - I thought it
| was crazy until I was corrected by
| https://twitter.com/thezedwards who actually helped build one,
| reformed himself, and now does pro privacy work.
| vfinn wrote:
| Did he tweet about it or?
| hobs wrote:
| Yeah, I honestly couldn't be arsed to search in the twitter
| hose but he specifically corrected me on the topic.
|
| edit: and to clarify his comments were mostly that the data
| is not realtime, but the idea that audio recorded is then
| processed and within a day or two was much more realistic.
| contingencies wrote:
| 1. You are using Google logged in.
|
| 2. You are using a credit card and expecting not to be
| identified.
|
| Everything else is details.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| This happens a lot and what I find the strangest thing is that
| the ads are for things I just bought: travel I just booked,
| freezer I just bought etc. I do not need anything again that I
| just bought and so these ads are even of less use than they
| normally are...
| thisiswater wrote:
| I would like to contribute an anecdote which turned me from a
| "google is listening" skeptic to someone who turns their phone
| off as often as possible, especially during any kind of sensitive
| conversation. I'm one degree removed from this anecdote, but I
| have no reason to doubt its truth.
|
| A group of friends were on a road trip, driving for several days
| cross-country. These are university-aged young males, 20-23. None
| have any interest in starting a family any time soon.
|
| At the beginning of the trip, they agreed (verbally) to test if
| google was listening by discussing "nappies" intermittently,
| loudly and jokingly. They would only discuss nappies in person -
| everyone agreed not to mention this on any digital channel
| whatsoever, not to look up nappies for any reason, etc. That is,
| they deliberately excluded nappies from their online lives.
|
| They chose nappies specifically because they're completely
| irrelevant. None had ever to their knowledge been delivered an ad
| for nappies. None had ever purchased nappies or any baby product.
|
| Sure enough, end of the trip - ads for nappies.
|
| I would love an explanation more plausible than their phones were
| listening.
| decker wrote:
| Did everyone stop using the internet and stick strictly to
| cash? If not, is it possible that someone made a purchase or
| search that may have related to what people who need nappies
| might buy or search for, but didn't realize it?
| angrais wrote:
| >> I would love an explanation more plausible than their phones
| were listening.
|
| One of the three deviated and searched for nappies online prior
| to the trip.
|
| Rather than relying on external people to make judgement, you
| could test the hypothesis yourself: write on paper a phrase.
| Spend one week without ads and document all ads you see. Spend
| second week saying word N times per day. Also document all ads
| you see.
|
| Ask N people to do this and report your findings, then you
| might provide statistical insight and validate your hypothesis.
|
| Otherwise, who's to say one of those students didn't Google it
| before the trip?
|
| Does anyone have any ways to improve the design of the above
| experiment?
| thisiswater wrote:
| "One of the three deviated and searched for nappies online
| prior to the trip."
|
| This is a hypothetical which was deliberately excluded when
| they decided to run the experiment. These are intelligent
| young people acting in good faith to test if they're being
| spied on. Why would they have googled nappies?
|
| I'm sorry but I don't find that explanation convincing at
| all.
| angrais wrote:
| I agree. While they may have made an effort to control for
| not searching about nappies, they could have implicitly
| biased themselves in other ways. For example, one may have
| googled something similar without realising the similarity,
| e.g., "Baby Shark" (a popular song a few years ago) or
| such. In other words, nappies may be related to many other
| terms that they may have (implicitly) searched for.
|
| That's why running an experiment and capturing data (of
| searches amongst other things) could be more meaningful
| than anecdote from friends if a friend or such.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Yes, talking about nappies a lot probably has effects on
| other aspects of one's internet usage. With massive data,
| google may well pick up these statistical trends.
|
| A similar performance to a perceptive fortune teller.
| Google can appear to be a mind reader.
|
| Apparently, walmart used to send targetted ads when the
| pattern for pregnancy was detected - which created
| problems where not all parties knew about it, so walmart
| disabled it.
|
| Another commentor's two week experiment might need to
| have you _think_ about nappies for the first "control"
| week, to account for this bias.
|
| Also, note that "nappies" wasn't randomly selected, but
| suggested by the group. This choice and the ads may have
| had a common cause. e.g, Young adults concerned about
| pregnancy.
| sushid wrote:
| Do you ever get irrelevant ads? I certainly do. Multiply that
| by billions. You're going to find someone getting ads
| irrelevant to them.
|
| They could also have looked up something relevant to nappies,
| stayed in a house (and used internet there) where the owners
| have a baby, etc.
| thisiswater wrote:
| They were camping so I think it's unlikely they got confused
| with an ad ID which was interested in nappies.
|
| For the sake of good faith I think we should exclude "they
| broke the rules". Frankly, my friends aren't that stupid.
| samoraai wrote:
| Crazy! I read this HN thread on Safari on my mobile that i never
| use to access Facebook... a few hours later I'm on Facebook on my
| laptop in Chrome incognito mode, and one of the first ads that
| shows up is for Voltaren...how in the world?!?
| christophilus wrote:
| IP address, maybe?
| prox wrote:
| Your IP? And your mobile and laptop have been fingerprinted
| earlier to belong to the same person?
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Not coincidence. Not "bank purchase history" shared with google-
| in most cases banks and credit cards don't know item level
| detail.
|
| Lots of ways this data flow could happen, at least in the US.
| Happy to go through specific details I have seen if you want to
| share more about this, but two high level points
|
| 1. Remember that when you purchase something, the data about the
| purchase is BOTH yours AND the entity from whom you made the
| purchase. Most of those entities have data sharing agreements of
| various kinds for all sorts of legitimate business reasons
|
| 2. It isn't _google_ who knows about the purchase, and even the
| advertiser doesn 't "know" _you_ made a purchase. Advertising is
| zillions of two sided marketplaces, with an enormous ecosystem of
| data packagers and conveyers and linkers, with lots of concern
| about recency and freshness of data. Your purchase landed some
| key about you in a bucket that was mixed and repackaged with many
| other keys that the advertiser knows as "keys recently
| interested in Voltaren." Some of those keys are related to people
| who bought it, or who searched for it, or more indirectly who
| lingered while reading a page with an ad for it...and in most
| cases are very short lived. So give it a few weeks and many of
| those buckets of keys will have been completely remade.
| otterley wrote:
| In the US, you can't use personal health information for
| marketing purposes. If you can prove this link, a lot of very
| large organizations could potentially be in serious trouble for
| HIPAA violations.
|
| https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance...
| nexuist wrote:
| Is it personal health information if it's tied to an
| anonymous ID that contains no other details about you? I
| doubt the advertiser knows OP's name or address when they
| choose which ad to show.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Is it personal health information if it 's tied to an
| anonymous ID that contains no other details about you?_
|
| If it's deanonymized, is it then not personal information?
|
| > _I doubt the advertiser knows OP 's name or address when
| they choose which ad to show._
|
| Nonetheless, an advertisement is then targeted and it's
| well known that targeted advertisements reveal personal
| information.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Is there a feasible way to prove this link?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Subpoena Voltaren for documents? I don't know that there
| really is.
| aplummer wrote:
| The shop part (non-pharmacy) of a chemist isn't a covered
| entity though right, so hipaa isn't relevant at all?
| paul_f wrote:
| A pharmacy is a covered entity, a retail store is not. Does
| not appear this falls under HIPAA
| bcrl wrote:
| Where I live in Canada, most pharmacies have a separate
| cash for the pharmacist and the rest of the store. I
| wonder if there are any differences in reporting rules
| for the two.
| cush wrote:
| Depends which entity collected and sold the data.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| re 2., this is a Bad Thing. I fully agree that neither Google
| nor anyone at the drugstore 'knows' about the purchase, but the
| basic problem is that we've built a commercial marketplace that
| spies on people, but the information about people is treated as
| privileged commercial data in an automated and unaccountable
| marketplace.
| dantyti wrote:
| please do go into detail about how data about an exact goods
| purchase that is linked to a specific person (ignoring the bunk
| about 'anonymization') can be regarded as having a legitimate
| business reason
| rovr138 wrote:
| Marketing is a legitimate business reason.
|
| Other example, In the US, lots of jurisdictions have
| restrictions on ingredients. For example, dextromethorphan
| and pseudoephedrine.
|
| If you are buying over the counter medicines that contain
| these, in some jurisdictions, you need to provide an ID.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Marketing is a legitimate business reason._
|
| Pervasive targeted marketing is not a legitimate business
| reason.
| beowulfey wrote:
| On the contrary, pervasive targeted marketing is exactly
| a legitimate business reason in the context of increasing
| revenue efficiently, as most corporations want to do.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Selling cocaine is a great way to efficiently increase
| revenue, but it's not a legitimate way
| nemothekid wrote:
| Selling cocaine is a legitimate way to increase revenue.
| If the cocaine is real (i.e you aren't selling flour)
| then why wouldn't it be legitimate?
|
| It might not be _legal_ , but CocaCola is allowed to
| import coca leaves by the millions.
| nkurz wrote:
| Don't be ridiculous! It would be absurd for the Coca Cola
| company to be allowed to _directly_ import coca leaves
| for use in their "secret" recipe. Instead, it's an
| intermediary (the "Stepan Company") who imports the
| 200,000 lbs of coca leaves each year, removes the cocaine
| for pharmaceutical use, and then sells the remaining
| "flavor" extracts to Coca Cola:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/01/business/how-coca-
| cola-ob...
|
| (which is to say, thanks for encouraging me to learn
| about this)
| edoceo wrote:
| its legitimate. distasteful but legitimate.
| inetknght wrote:
| The word you're looking for is "legal".
|
| It's legal. It's illegitimate but legal.
| [deleted]
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| The first three results on Google show the definition of
| legitimate as "allowed by law".
|
| If you want to make a moral argument for why it shouldn't
| be allowed, then do that.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's legal, but not necessarily legitimate. Informally,
| people use the latter terms to articulate their view of
| what the law _should_ be, rather than what it is.
| edoceo wrote:
| why use a word with a known definition to try to mean the
| near opposite? its confusing.
|
| if you think the thing sucks, just say it sucks.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Many words have multiple definitions, as you are surely
| aware. _Legitimate_ is one of them.
| edoceo wrote:
| yep, all the definitions of legitimate equivocate it to
| legal/lawful.
|
| except here, y'all want it to mean not-lawful.
|
| I'm legitimately not smart enough to continue this
| conversation.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's just not true. Please don't make things up.
|
| Here are two (abridged) definitions from the Oxford
| dictionary:
|
| 1. conforming to the law or to rules
|
| 2. make legitimate; justify or make lawful.
|
| You're choosing to ignore the verb _make_ in the second
| definition, describing the act of conferring legitimacy
| on something, which necessarily implies that it was
| previously lacking.
| worik wrote:
| Depends if morals matter.
|
| If right and wrong are important then "legitimate"
| encompass them. So it s possible for something to be
| legal but not legitimate.
|
| There are not a lot of legal but absolutely immoral (the
| other way, illegal but legitimate - plenty) the actions
| of the FANG IMO definitely fall into the category of
| legal but illegitimate.
|
| Because to me good and evil are important considerations
| amelius wrote:
| > Remember that when you purchase something, the data about the
| purchase is BOTH yours AND the entity from whom you made the
| purchase.
|
| This is wrong. Because in my case the information is highly
| personal, while in the shop owner's case it's just business
| information.
| continuations wrote:
| How does Google link the real life person who bought Voltaren
| at a store to the online account or fingerprint that browses
| the Internet?
| vbsteven wrote:
| I don't think Google linked the account directly to the
| purchase. My guess would be that Google linked the account to
| the medication based on patterns from one of its many ways it
| gathers data.
|
| * visits to websites about that medication
|
| * visits to websites talking about symptoms for which the
| medication helps
|
| * searches for the above
|
| * I would not be surprised if Google picks up interests from
| other accounts using the same WiFi (or even other devices on
| close proximity)
|
| * there are some scary stories about Google/FB/Amazon
| listening to conversations
| whimsicalism wrote:
| So, then, completely different from what the GP suggested.
| vbsteven wrote:
| My comment was an expansion on GPs second bullet point.
| It's not Google that knows about the purchase, but Google
| that "somehow" picked up contextual info from OPs
| environment linking OPs online identity to Voltaren as a
| product.
|
| Edit: the purchase could have been involved somewhere in
| the chain but it's not necessary.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Your purchase landed some key about you in a bucket
| that was mixed and repackaged with many other keys that
| the advertiser knows as "keys recently interested in
| Voltaren."
|
| There's not really that much ambiguity in this sentence
| from the second bullet point.
|
| Unless my mental model of online advertising is wrong,
| your _physical_ in-store purchase should not be landing
| you in some Google advertising bucket.
| vbsteven wrote:
| I completely agree that they should not show up. It looks
| like I went lightly over that sentence and focussed more
| on the one after:
|
| > Some of those keys are related to people who bought it,
| or who searched for it, or more indirectly who lingered
| while reading a page with an ad for it...and in most
| cases are very short lived.
| nextos wrote:
| I think it's the last option. His phone probably heard him
| ordering Voltaren. It's also the simplest possibility
| (Ockham's razor).
|
| I know because after discussing extremely rare chemicals at
| an officemate's desk, he began seeing ads for them. Neither
| of us had ever Googled or emailed anything related. It was
| a brand new idea for a brand new project which we had
| started working on that morning.
| xbar wrote:
| Agreed.
| nexuist wrote:
| Can you prove neither of you Googled anything related?
| Surely either you or your office mate could have done
| further research later on, which would involve searching
| those chemicals online and browsing Web pages related to
| them?
|
| Alternatively if someone near you overheard your
| conversation, and Googled it, then Google could link all
| of your locations together and conclude that you are all
| interested in the same thing. This is how Facebook has
| its creepy ability to indirectly predict what items you
| are interested in - usually someone near you searches for
| what you're talking about later on in the day, and it
| guesses that it's important to both of you.
| planb wrote:
| This is not the simplest possibility. Based on how often
| Google Home misunderstands the simplest queries, the tech
| is nowhere close to getting purchase intents out of
| random conversations. Besides that - do folks on hn
| really believe the ,,our phones are listening 24/7"
| conspiracy theories?
| planb wrote:
| I scrolled down further in the thread and it seems they
| do...
| kube-system wrote:
| There's a lot of online marketing companies that do a lot of
| work in this area. It's pretty easy to do if you have any
| kind of ID or token to link the data. It can be done with
| credit card numbers, a phone's location services, membership
| programs, coupons, etc. Here's some of the stuff Facebook
| does, which just scratches the surface of what is possible:
|
| https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1150627594978290
| reaperducer wrote:
| _How does Google link the real life person who bought
| Voltaren at a store to the online account or fingerprint that
| browses the Internet?_
|
| Often, through the payment.
|
| People use the same payment methods in the same stores over
| and over. This data is accumulated by the stores, and sold.
| if you signed up for a "points card" or some other gimmick to
| get 2C/ off something, the personal information you used when
| you signed up is added to the profile.
|
| What you bought in the store is added to your profile (within
| legal limits in certain jurisdictions).
|
| Some stores have devices that listen to your mobile phone's
| identifiers (wifi, Bluetooth, etc) and add that to your
| profile. Now the data profilers know what other stores you
| shop in. Some stores are experimenting with facial
| recognition (Walgreens). That gets added to your profile.
|
| If you go to several in a single day, your route between the
| stores can be guessed. If you go to one or more places
| (stores, parking garages, streets that pass parking lots)
| that have sensors that read the NFC chips in your car's
| tires, then that can be added to your profile.
|
| Now they know everywhere you go, everywhere you shop,
| everything you buy, how much you buy, how much you spend,
| your race, your gender, how you dress, what brands are
| displayed on your clothing, and any visible hair, moles, or
| tattoos.
|
| That's just off the top of my head.
|
| And people wonder, "Wow. I am a little scruffy. How did
| Facebook know to show me an ad for a razor?"
| worik wrote:
| Hmmm....
|
| Use cash!
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Use cash!_
|
| It's a start. But unfortunately, doesn't get you out of a
| lot of the other surveillance methods.
|
| Also, paying cash is yet another bit of entropy. Like
| using Firefox.
| sofixa wrote:
| That doesn't help if you use a loyalty card, which a lot
| of people do for the promos.
|
| And even if you pay via card/phone ( which is literally
| multiple times faster and less hassle), the payment
| processor and card issuer don't know the individual
| items.
| zeeshanqureshi wrote:
| What I find surprising (and even mildly terrifying) is that such
| anecdotes don't even alarm people in many circles of the society
| any more. Lots of folks think this is what the future is supposed
| to look like and are completely ok with it.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| Never knew about the VISA thing most people mention here. That is
| some wildly impressive tech. I wonder how much google is paying
| them.
| juancn wrote:
| My guess is that you either searched for something (for example)
| related to a sports injury or some sort of pain, or you where
| nearby somebody that did it.
|
| Many cases of this are just clustering.
|
| Another option would be if they're integrating something like
| Close-Up data.
|
| Close-Up is a company that collects prescription data and sells
| it to different marketing companies. They usually collect what
| doctors prescribe, so they can tell if pharma marketing efforts
| are working. I'm not sure how deeply entrenched they are in the
| US (or how HIPPA compliant they are).
| metafunctor wrote:
| As others have explained, this is most likely your credit card
| purchasing data being sold, by your credit card issuer, to any
| interested party willing to pay for it. Yes, the data sold
| includes detailed product information linked to your identity.
|
| What I'd like to know is if the same happens when I pay with
| Apple Card, or when I use Apple Play with, say, a VISA card?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Yes, the data sold includes detailed product information
| linked to your identity.
|
| Not necessarily. I've only seen a few huge merchants sending
| level 3 data:
|
| https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/
|
| Staples.com and airlines are the only ones where I can see the
| items bought on my credit card statement. Although it's
| possible that some banks are not reporting that information on
| the statement, but I couldn't find any more data on the
| subject, other than the fact that smaller businesses are not
| sending this information.
| morelandjs wrote:
| I'm going to guess that the drug store sold your transaction
| information. Who they sell it to varies from chain to chain, but
| it's common practice. For example, CVS in the states sells your
| purchase data.
|
| If you want to avoid being tracked, use cash.
| zupreme wrote:
| Are you sure that you have not done some online research
| regarding Voltaren, either before or after purchase?
|
| Did you email anyone about it or receive any emails about it?
|
| If so...
| cma wrote:
| If you mentioned it to anyone and they Googled or browsed to it
| where a Google embed or tracking pixel was present, Google could
| potentially infer your interest.
| luke2m wrote:
| Maybe you researched it beforehand?
| furypt wrote:
| I've heard stories like this multiple times. Both on Android and
| iPhone. I don't believe it's a coincidence. The chemist is
| probably sharing the time of purchase along with items bought
| with Google, FB (probably indirectly but data gets there). These
| services probably have access to your location, either via your
| phone or via network provider. They try to match. If the
| likelihood is high enough (e.g. chemist had few customers at that
| time), show ad.
|
| It's possible they match using location but they might have other
| data that increases the matching like payment provider which has
| a lot of your personal data as well as knows your purchased
| something from that store at that time.
| beagle3 wrote:
| Did you get a receipt by mail to your gmail, by any chance?
|
| Google analyzes receipts. When I still used gmail, it would
| automatically add flights to my calendar based exclusively on the
| receipt sent to my gmail account.
| albertshin wrote:
| this is also why Amazon started dropping the item names in the
| email order confirmations
| weinzierl wrote:
| I see Voltaren ads _a lot_ and I mean really _a ton_ since about
| two or three months. I purge my browser sessions daily and I
| notice that they reliably come after watching fitness videos
| (Training Pal and similar). I guess they target people with
| sports injuries.
| morsch wrote:
| I'm also getting loads of Voltaren ads on YouTube. Apparently
| watching retro computing and cooking fucked videos is also
| linked to sprained ankles. I think Voltaren is just spending a
| lot of money and advertising with shotgun accuracy.
|
| The ad copy is funny - Voltaren, not just for accelerated
| healing, or something to that extent. Everyone I know uses it
| (or, more likely, cheaper generics) for pain relief, without
| any particular expectation that the injury will heal faster. So
| that's the claim they hone in on, as opposed to the thing
| everybody knows. Standard ad stuff, I'm sure, but it's
| interesting when you notice it.
| halotrope wrote:
| It might be that you are just noticing the ads now that you
| bought the product. I read about similar observations recently.
| Might be a cousin of frequency illusion
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfti1
| StavrosK wrote:
| It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about
| some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts
| seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too,
| but it's happened too many times for comfort.
|
| I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't
| explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or
| saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and got
| ads about it a few minutes to hours later.
| rkachowski wrote:
| You don't notice all the times you talk about something and
| you don't see relevant advertisements. After talking about it
| you're primed to notice it more. Additionally this isn't
| isolated - you could be talking about it indirectly due to
| advertisments being out there (e.g. someone else sees an ad,
| posts / talks / youtubes about it, you talk about it and then
| see the ad).
|
| Ads are getting more targeted and getting closer to the kind
| of things you would talk about based on your interests and
| data that networks have collected about you, but we are still
| pretty far from continuous ad surveillance.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't
| explain it either.
|
| How do you know?
| mrweasel wrote:
| It seems like one of those things that are simply to hard
| to keep secret. Implementation would require way to many
| people to keep it secret. I'm also not sure if it make
| finacial sense to implement, given the large number of more
| easily metrics available.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Network traffic and battery usage monitoring.
| reader_mode wrote:
| > It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife
| about some new product (physically, in the room) and she
| starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the
| explanation too, but it's happened too many times for
| comfort.
|
| The wierdest instance of this is I told my wife her father
| should consider geting those fixed bridge dentures, next day
| I start seeing all-on-4 ads on the phone. I asked her if she
| looked it up (to rule out IP tracking) and she said she
| hasn't. It's a very random thing to advertise to me, I'm not
| the target group, I didn't look it up.
|
| A lot of it is IP tracking - I'll start browsing for guitars
| or some other random stuff my wife has no interest in -
| she'll start seeing ads for it.
| ngngngng wrote:
| You could certainly test this, just have a conversation
| every day about something random. Pick a snack food,
| something with a heavy advertising budget, and near your
| phone start saying things "man I really want some (snack
| food) right now."
|
| If it's listening, you'll start getting ads specific to
| that snack food, best to try it with a bunch of different
| products to try and find a pattern.
| paulcole wrote:
| I work in dental marketing and you 100% are in the target
| demo for All-on-4. It's a very popular/trendy service and
| is being advertised heavily now because it's profitable,
| (relatively) easy to do, etc.
|
| Good target markets are: Grown adults with $$$ who either
| don't have teeth or know someone who doesn't have teeth
| (likely parents/grandparents/in-laws). This is basically
| every upper-middle class adult. More people than you think
| are missing their teeth.
| durnygbur wrote:
| Jesus. I see dental protesis ads around the time when I
| see my parents. I don't have the time to set up the
| things for them so I'm sure their cheap Android
| smartphones are surveillance blackholes.
| paulcole wrote:
| What other ads do you see when you're around them?
| chillacy wrote:
| Another possibility: switching the cause and effect, e.g.
| maybe you received ads for fixed bridge dentures and didn't
| notice consciously (how many ads do we gloss over each day
| "not paying attention"), but later brought it up because
| the mind assimilates ads subliminally (arguably the whole
| point of advertising).
|
| This is perhaps even more creepy than just "phones
| listening in", but it's not an explanation I hear very
| often.
| reader_mode wrote:
| It's possible - but this was in relation to a discussion
| she started, and why show those ads to me in the first
| place ?
| pc86 wrote:
| This is a documented effect but I forget the exact name
| of it so I'm having trouble finding a scholarly article
| about it. But it's basically how advertising is
| "supposed" to work from the advertisers' perspective:
| they get their products/brand to the top of your mind for
| a given subject.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Yeah but neither of us had searched for that or anything,
| and I use DDG and uBO so it's not likely it'd be tracked.
| strogonoff wrote:
| A friend demonstrated me this with her Google Pixel. We
| talked for a bit about a very conspicuous topic in
| presence of the phone, and the Google app (which shows a
| news feed when you open it) started showing articles
| relevant to the topic within a few minutes. At that point
| I believed her that her phone is listening, though I
| didn't make a big deal of it because she did not make an
| effort to configure her phone not to.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I doubt they have such a good recognition model for
| Greek, plus my DNS blocks Google at that level, and I
| have a Xiaomi phone. Not that it's impossible, but it's
| less likely, plus the battery would die quickly.
| strogonoff wrote:
| I see. We talked in English, and there was no blocking.
| im3w1l wrote:
| There are many sources of errors that people have described
| in other comments. The proper way to deal with this is a
| blinded experiment.
|
| Preparation:
|
| 1. Get two identical phones, one that you use, and one that
| has a dead battery.
|
| 2. Fix a set of product-categories.
|
| Experiment:
|
| Every week,
|
| 1. Label the phones A and B. Use a coinflip to decide
| whether the working one is A or B. Record which it was.
|
| 2. Hand the phone to someone else. They exchange the labels
| for 1 and 2. If heads A=1, if tails A=2, and record the
| coinflip.
|
| 3. Get the phone labelled 1 back. Neither of you know
| whether it is working or not.
|
| 4. Randomly pick a topic from the pre-fixed list and talk
| about the topic near the phone.
|
| 5. Let the other person remove the labels.
|
| 6. Pick out the working phone and go about your day.
|
| 7. Write down whether you see ads relating to the topic,
| yes or no.
|
| Analysis:
|
| Join the records, to see which weeks you used a working
| phone, and if those corresponded to seeing ads.
| geocrasher wrote:
| It might not be your mobile devices listening. Alexa? Smart
| TV?
|
| I've seen examples of this too, and it's downright creepy. At
| the same time, I love my Google Assistant. Yes, I know. I'm
| the product.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can 't
| explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or
| saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and
| got ads about it a few minutes to hours later._
|
| It's probably statistical to a certain extent: people of your
| specific demographic are interested in a certain thing, and
| you are talking about it the same as all of your peers are,
| and a statistically significant amount of your peers did
| Google for it such that now Google assumes that anyone in
| your demographic will be interested.
|
| Of course that only metas the problem up one level, which is
| that Google knows enough about you to do this kind of
| analysis a) on your cohort and b) on you.
| vcavallo wrote:
| > Google knows enough about you [to not even have to bother
| listening]
|
| Right. This was is actually much more alarming to me.
|
| Whenever this topic comes up in conversation I point out
| that the fact that the most attractive-seeming explanation
| is "they're listening", but they actually _aren't_, should
| have one even more concerned.
| rapnie wrote:
| > I know my devices are (probably) not listening
|
| Not thinking this is happening either. But just to speculate
| on a fictitious scenario..
|
| Given a shady company, maybe even outright involved in
| illegal practices, where employees employ _any_ surveillance
| tech they can lay their hands on. All in order to collect as
| much personal information as possible, from as many people as
| possible. As such, they won 't shy away from breaking &
| listening in and do subsequent speech-to-text information
| gathering (e.g. via some Ad-obtained Windows malware, or a
| malicious mobile app).
|
| They trade the collected info on the data markets, selling to
| anyone who'd pay. Wouldn't it be likely that this data then
| indirectly ends up at Google, so they can indeed target - in
| this case Voltaren - ads to you?
|
| Also: If any illegally obtained information enters the data
| markets.. won't it be 'whitewashed' automatically as it is
| trading hands?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Sure, but I don't think they're listening from a technical
| standpoint, because the battery consumption is much less
| than an active network adapter would consume.
| mysterydip wrote:
| They could always either compress the audio or do a
| speech to text (looking for keywords rather than caring
| about getting the whole context correct), and batch
| upload the results on an interval (like when checking for
| email or app/system updates).
| StavrosK wrote:
| That would still absolutely kill the battery.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Id reckon you can boil the model down to a very small one
| to extract some keywords and thatll be pretty good
| already. Just having the ability to hear if someone is
| talking would take very little battery, to consequently
| turn on the top-10000 word model would still be barely
| noticeable on these powerhouses of phones we got, I
| think. Haven't tested it, though.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Once a minute (or five, ten, whatever), turn on the
| microphone for one second. If voice detected, record a
| bit and process. Doesn't need to be always on, and as a
| feature missing keywords sometimes adds to the doubt that
| it exists ("I said 'pfizer' and got ads, you said
| 'pfizer' and didn't, must be something else).
| fsflover wrote:
| Doesn't your phone sometimes stay on charging for some
| time?
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Don't the latest designs, ARMv9, make provision for
| battery-efficient speech-recognition models "at the
| edge"? If it's not here yet it will be soon.
| graderjs wrote:
| _Gaslighting in the Information Age: You just imagined that ad
| started following you around._
| pc86 wrote:
| Oh come on. It's a documented effect. It's the same thing as
| when you buy a new car you suddenly see the same or similar
| vehicles everywhere.
|
| Not every instance of someone providing an explanation for
| something you don't understand is "gaslighting."
| graderjs wrote:
| Well someone doesn't enjoy a good joke. Especially one
| that's true
| sam_goody wrote:
| I doubt Voltaren is advertised commonly enough that he got ads
| before.
|
| I no longer have a Android phone, but too frequently I would
| buy something offline and have the item follow me - including
| impulse buys and things that I definitely didn't look for
| online.
|
| It happened with things I would talk about as well on occasion.
| I joked in front of my phone about visiting Greece, and a few
| minutes later auto-suggest in Google offered me "How much.. [is
| plane tickets to Greece]"
| im3w1l wrote:
| Keep in mind that he is some guy on the internet. There are
| lots of people on the internet. While it's unlikely for it to
| happen to him in particular, it's not that unlikely that
| there is someone on the whole internet that it happened to.
| Now I'm not saying that it _is_ a coincidence, merely that as
| far as I can tell it _could_ be.
| FredPret wrote:
| I had the same experience with my prevous phone - a Samsung.
| Talked about a product that would normally be the furthest
| thing from my mind with a friend who took an interest in it.
|
| Next day, voila, the whole internet is plastered with ads for
| this product.
|
| I switched to an iPhone.
| mam2 wrote:
| Did you day the word voltaren close to your phone ? That happened
| to me for real estate investment discussion over the phone with
| my mom.
| ericlewis wrote:
| My guess would be you searched to find the chemist to buy it from
| or searched for it in some way.
| foxhop wrote:
| Are there credit card companies which do not sell transaction
| data?
| durnygbur wrote:
| In Europe, are there any other credit and debit card companies
| which are not VISA, MasterCard, or Maestro?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Maestro is MasterCard btw
| dehrmann wrote:
| > How does google know I bought Voltaren?
|
| > Is my bank purchase history shared with google somehow?
|
| Google buys Mastercard (if not more) transactions and ties them
| to your Android location history.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...
| beervirus wrote:
| Presumably that data would include time, amount, and vendor...
| but not item-level details. Right?
|
| There's something else going on here.
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's in level 3 data.
|
| https://www08.wellsfargomedia.com/assets/pdf/small-
| business/...
| otterley wrote:
| "For Level III data, only Mastercard(r) and Visa(r)
| corporate, purchasing, and fleet cards can qualify."
|
| So consumer credit cards can't get this.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'm not an expert on this, but I suspect merchants
| supporting level 3 data send it to the processor for all
| transactions, not just for corporate cards (if they even
| know it's a corporate card), but they only get the fee
| discount if it's a corporate card. Your credit card
| statement might not expose the data (or even get it), but
| the network can still sell it.
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| Drugs often cost a very specific amount of money (When I buy
| drugs it's always something like 4.86e or whatever, not neat
| 4.99) so I assume it's easy to de-anonymize
| hansel_der wrote:
| > neat 4.99
|
| i get what you are saying, but calling a price ending in
| .99 "neat" feels very wrong
| rchaud wrote:
| Did you pay with Google Pay?
| durnygbur wrote:
| I say "<product>" (turquoise skirt, hand truck) with iphone
| laying in radius 3m. Later on while browsing the internet with
| Safari on the device I see ads selling this product. Other than
| this, Whatsapp is scanning the conversations for keywords and
| brand names - there is no doubt even.
| matthewleehess wrote:
| A few years back, I saw an online rumor, that I decided to try
| for myself.
|
| I left my (locked) iPhone 6 in front of a TV overnight, that
| was left on a Spanish channel.
|
| The next day, ALL of my Facebook ads, across all devices, were
| in Spanish -- along with about 20% of the ads that I came
| across during regular web browsing. Took about a month for them
| to revert back to English.
|
| I do not speak Spanish. At the time, I lived in a rural New
| England area, where census data reported very low Hispanic
| population. Zero reason for me to get targeted with alternative
| language advertisements.
|
| I'm not a Luddite of any kind. Several decades of tech industry
| experience, specifically with ecommerce software engineering.
| Hold all available certifications for Google marketing,
| Facebook marketing, Hubspot marketing, along with many more.
| Know quite a bit more about this topic than the average Joe,
| and it concerns the hell out of me.
|
| Since that day, Facebook's apps haven't been allowed on any of
| my devices, and their services only get used by me for work
| purposes.
| azornathogron wrote:
| Was it a smart TV? Is it possible that it's actually the TV
| that was snitching on you and not your iPhone (of course, it
| could be both of them!)
| dilippkumar wrote:
| Slightly related fun story from 2014:
|
| [1] http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-
| pranking-...
|
| Discussed on HN earlier:
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| The surveillance economy is too profitable for this to change any
| time soon.
|
| Walmart is rolling out facial recognition across all their
| stores. Doesn't matter if you pay cash. Pay with a card once and
| you're identified.
|
| I consulted for Axciom and the best way to avoid their reach is
| to move to a country with good privacy laws or to a country
| that's too poor for these big companies to care about.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| Even if you don't pay by card... if they have facial
| recognition and someone has upload your photo on facebook, or
| you uploaded your photo on facebook 10 years ago when you were
| 14, then they already know who you are, probably better than
| yourself, even if you deleted that photo when you were 18.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Target has had facial recognition for the better part of the
| last decade. Not sure if they've integrated with their non-
| security oriented systems, but I'd be surprised if they hadn't.
| outsider7 wrote:
| Everything you don't want to share with the Gaffas: Shutdown your
| cell, pay in cash.
| polack wrote:
| I have no sources at all, but my memory tells me that I've read
| that Visa, Mastercard and similar sell "anonymous" transaction
| info and that Google is their customer. I've been living under
| the assumption that Google could de-anonymize practically all
| that transaction info when they match it up to all their other
| info they track us with. Maybe I'm wrong?
| duncanfwalker wrote:
| Some payment providers, like WorldPay, have both online and
| real-world payment systems so you can imagine they could be
| passing back that type of targeting info.
| soared wrote:
| Visa's audiences are merchant level, spend/frequency level. Ie
| "users in the top 10% of spenders at jewelry stores". "Users
| who've bought train tickets in the past month".
|
| Visa has very strict rules about audience size, and all the
| audiences are modeled. (Your criteria can't target something
| like less than 20k users, and then they model that up to a few
| million users).
|
| In this case either the store, the pos/crm, or bank used his
| purchase data.
| sct202 wrote:
| In America, some stores seem to share rewards member information
| to product companies so they can target their ads on other
| platforms. For example, I paid for a very specific candy from CVS
| using my credit card, but used my partner's CVS rewards member
| number and they got ads on facebook for that candy while I
| haven't seen a thing.
| pftburger wrote:
| ANY bonus card is basically paying you to be tracked.
|
| It's the core mechanic.
|
| Even here in privacy conscious Germany the largest bonus card,
| payback Punkte, is simply giving you a 1% back just to get you
| to log your own purchase.
|
| Why else would they do it? Because they like you?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This feels like it should be illegal if it isn't already.
| pc86 wrote:
| Why?
|
| I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm actually inclined to agree.
| But this hand-wavy "this should be illegal!" type of comment
| is _extremely_ common on these threads and is completely
| unhelpful.
| bordercases wrote:
| It is like your are being spied upon, specifically to
| influence your behavior without your knowing.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| All uninformed data sales feel icky to me, but data sales
| that involve actual payment history even more so. There's
| incredible amounts of personal information int he stuff you
| buy for your day to day life, ranging from religious items
| to medicine, and coupled with an account from a party like
| Google or Facebook, this pretty much completely
| deanonimises the otherwise anonimisable internet profile.
|
| You can get a new internet provider and a new Gmail
| account, but your purchasing habits won't change and are
| easily mined. A real-life connection between an online
| account and the stuff you buy in physical stores crosses a
| boundary that I think should not be crossed
| duckfang wrote:
| Whenever places wantba phone number for ad and/or discount
| stuff, use:
|
| (Local area code) 867-5309
|
| There's always an account, and it's a 100% gamble if this
| purchase you get something.
| zaptrem wrote:
| What's the significance of this number?
| klyrs wrote:
| It's a popular song wherein the artist doxed some gal named
| Jenny. Just google that number
| mvonballmo wrote:
| It's Jenny's.
| nottorp wrote:
| It could be worse. You could concievably buy Voltaren again soon.
|
| Usually you make a 5-10 year purchase, like a TV or a large
| kitchen appliance, and they keep showing you ads for the exact
| same model.
| duncanfwalker wrote:
| I think that usually these things are actually just a symptom of
| the fact we see hundreds of ads every day. Most of the time you
| don't consciously notice them but then, when they trigger some
| recognition, you do and it feels like a big coincidence - which I
| find almost as disturbing as the idea that they were somehow
| watching.
|
| The eerie feeling compounded by the fact that we are sometimes
| correctly targeted and there's no way to distinguish the two.
| Zeynep Tufekci writes a lot about the this type of thing if
| you're interested in it.
| techrat wrote:
| Also known as the frequency illusion. Like when you learn about
| a word for first time and then suddenly it seems like it's
| popping up everywhere.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Or when you start looking into buying a particular car model
| and suddenly it's the most popular car and you see it
| everywhere :)
| [deleted]
| christophilus wrote:
| I use cash when I want anonymity. Despite what anyone says, it is
| still king.
| tchalla wrote:
| What phone do you use?
| InvOfSmallC wrote:
| My guess is called Cruxification. Especially if you are not in EU
| there isn't much you can do (besides usual adblock, firefox,
| pihole etc...)
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