Online Profiling
If you are looking to protect yourself from online profiling, there are some simple things you can do. These steps will not completely solve profiling issues; however, they are a step in the right direction. Today we will show three different methods on how to block advertisers from targeting you with ads. First, we will cover a couple common questions.
How did they know!?
You may or may not realize but advertisements are everywhere! How did the advertisers know you liked cars or clothes–or anything else for that matter? In short, whenever you go to a website a cookie is stored on your computer. Advertisers are now looking at your cookies to create a profile based on what sites you go to, what you search for, etc. As they build this profile about you, they start targeting ads based off what they know you like. This, in theory, helps bring you advertisements of products/services you would more likely purchase.
So what’s the big deal?
They know what I like but what does it matter? I enjoy the different ads. Well, all of this information is being collected about you and all the other millions of people all over the world. This information is being used to create individual profiles for each person. There is also evidence that suggests this information can be used to stalk people and make identity theft easier. If someone gets their hands on information about different things you search for and sites you visit, they can predict other things about you. For instance, if John Smith found that you were looking up sports scores frequently, John Smith could send you two sports tickets. He could also make it look like they came from a local place in town that selected you as a winner. Now this sounds cool at first but where did John Smith find your address? It could possibly be that you searched Google Maps and John Smith found a cookie on your system that had your home address set to whatever your address is.
So now that John Smith has your address and knows you’re going to a sports game tonight at 7PM, what is stopping him from breaking into your home? Well let’s blitz through the information he knows about you. Based on various things you searched for, your profile indicates that you are probably a single guy living by yourself, a huge fan of the Detroit Tigers. He also knows that you will probably have a date that night since he sent you two tickets. Besides that, you were searching for dinner places around Comerica Park. By knowing this information, John Smith now can reasonably assume that you will be going to dinner before the 7PM game. That means, you will probably be away from your home from approximately 5PM until 11PM, give or take.
All this information could be easily found on a typical person’s computer. This article is not meant to scare you, rather, inform you. I think it is very important to make people aware of privacy issues before they become a problem. Many times, there are simple things that can be done to protect you online.
Below you will see three different search providers that target-market (profile) you. I have included steps that allow you to remove the ad targeting if you have these various accounts. You can click through the pages below or select: Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft.
