So, Google sells my info to FB?

[John Ranalletta]

Search using Chrome last night for a very specific item.  Today, FB presents an add for the very item.

 

Hello, Duck Duck Go and goodbye Chrome and FB.

[Rougarou]

You can also explore the Opera browser. And Startpage as your search engine. 

[sardineone]

Just the tip of the iceberg.  Watch PBS Frontline 'In the Age of Ai'.  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/in-the-age-of-ai/ 

[Skywagon]

I hear your pain...no matter what I search for with any browser I see it show up in my email in minutes; not only the item, but a subject, a location, a person, basically everything.  I have Norton 360 and a spyware program.  Nothing seems to work.  I run virus scan EVERYTIME I log off in addition to it being active on my PC.

[Rougarou]

2 hours ago, Skywagon said:

I hear your pain...no matter what I search for with any browser I see it show up in my email in minutes; not only the item, but a subject, a location, a person, basically everything.  I have Norton 360 and a spyware program.  Nothing seems to work.  I run virus scan EVERYTIME I log off in addition to it being active on my PC.

 

Wow!  that seems overkill.

 

My personal email gets zero spam.  I have a gmail and yahoo email account, both linked to Outlook on my personal machine and zero spam and I go to some "off color" sites as well as use the onion router without a VPN.  We use McAfee and I don't ever run a scan, just let it play in the background.

[realshelby]

Worse yet, I can be searching for something and then on my wifes computer she gets the same directed advertising for that something I am looking at. I assume it is using an IP address for that?

 

Not a good thing at Christmas time. 

[John Ranalletta]

Just now, realshelby said:

Worse yet, I can be searching for something and then on my wifes computer she gets the same directed advertising for that something I am looking at. I assume it is using an IP address for that?

 

Not a good thing at Christmas time. 

 

 

VPN

[chrisolson]

 

Its amazing how much goes on in the background  ... many popular sites have 50 or more separate tracker programs from hundreds of different vendors that load for each page you visit and also track what you see on those pages.  So its not necessarily Google/Chrome, its the sites themselves gaining revenue by selling the info they collect directly.  Here's just a small sample  (4 of 79 ... yes, 79 separate trackers)  that are loaded when visiting Fox

 . 

 

BMWST has NO trackers

 

 

1 hour ago, John Ranalletta said:

VPN

 

Tried that but Netflix has issues ... like not working .... with VPN .  (or at least the VPN service I had .  Not so much a problem if using a single computer connection, but I had it configured through my router so all devices, including mobile on WiFi and the Television went through the VPN)

 

 

Ghostery , as a free alternative to VPN, works well for me ....  it blocks the advertising and trackers from the browser.  The only downside is some sites have features that are also blocked and this can be annoying .... however its totally offset by being not being relentlessly bombarded with advertising.   

 

 I always have a "clean" additional browser like Firefox handy and just switch if needed.