I dunno what they're actually called, but they're the people who 'moniter' what you type on the world wide web and then attempt to advertise you stuff... I'm not really sure if they are real people or computers I guess Paul will have a better idea on what I'm talking about since I imagine him as being well knowledged when it comes to stuff like this.. but They're so scary! I was helping Alabastair(sp) with her insomnia problem and then the next thing I know I'm getting advertisements on Myspace for insomnia remedies... then I refresh the page, and I get John Mulaney ringtones.. wtf? Does John Mulaney even have ringtones? They got that off my 'about me' on myspace even though I didn't type anything relating to him in a search box/comment box/w/e. I remember I was looking up Brandon Flowers because I love him, and then.. like a day later I get flooded with Brandon Flowers advertisements on every page I went to. Anyways.. do you guys notice this? Does it ever freak you out? Generally, I don't really care that what I do on the internet is tracked because I feel like I'm just a name and number on a list of millions of people. Really, as long as I'm in a collective system I don't feel like my privacy is being invaded.. what do you guys think? I just got spooked.. XD btw, I just remembered, I'm so glad those gay advertisements went away XD Back when I was looking for help and stuff I kept getting gay advertisements on my myspace and I felt weird when people would do stuff on my computer. They also apparently found out I was a vegetarian since I got adds for that too.
I think it's called Data Mining. And yeah I do notice when I get ads on MySpace for Powderfinger ringtones, and when facebook ads contain links to gay dating sites lol I never pay much attention to, let alone click, ads on the internet... so it doesn't really bother me that much.
I love the myspace ones. The only ads I get are "Meet hot gay guys in your area!" Apparently, they're smart enough to read "Orientation: Gay" but not smart enough to read "Status: Partnered". Lex
I think they may have got me wrong. I keep getting ads to meet beautiful women on my facebook pages and I have my orientation set to "Interested in Men." It really doesn't bother me at all. It's just a way so they can try to advertise something that you might actually be interesting. For me it seems to be pretty inaccurate. Amazon is the one exception. They track every little thing you search for and purchase and I'll occasionally get emails from them when a new book in a series is released or a new album from some band I listen too. A lot of times it peaks my interest and the odd time I might even buy! I know I'm naughty for buying stuff through their email spam but it's pretty good at knowing what my interests are.
I don't use MySpace, so I don't have any specific comments, and I use the Adblock Plus plugin for Firefox so I rarely see ads anyways. However something that does concern me is if I'm logged into Gmail, then Google can track my search history better than any cookie or IP cross reference can, and that's kind of scary. Something else I find funny is the auto search suggestions in the Firefox search box. I was at school looking to download a TightVNC client. I typed in "tight" and one of the first suggestions was "Tight foreskin" Curious I typed in "loose" and one of the first suggestions is "loose women". Other than google searches I've rarely seen very good targeted advertising, but I also frequently clear out my browser's cookies.
I get the same thing on Neopets. I was telling a friend one day that I got proactive. Then I get advertisements wanting me to order it. XD
