Image By: Gerd Altmann
Advertising
When it comes to advertisements you probably don’t realize just how much data they are getting from you. It can be as simple as what did you click and who did you go visit online. We have seen advertisers keep databases of information about what people do and where they go on the web. They use what we refer to as cookies, and I’m not talking something in a cookie jar but on the web. They put a little bit of information on your system as you browse the web whether it be which sites you visit to which ads you clicked. Advertisers are very specific and know what browser you are using to maybe even your age by which websites you are visiting. Advertisers can even keep track of you by unique identifiers that your web browser broadcasts to sites even when you least expect it. There isn’t much you can do about it other than preventing these cookies that they use when visiting websites because if you disable them, you probably wouldn’t have good experiences on the websites. Most websites use cookies to remember who you are for login cookies and if you’d have to login constantly if you disabled cookies all the way. They make browsing the web just a little better because we skip the repetitive nature of usernames and passwords.
Drive by Clicks
Having said all this about advertising , you’d probably wouldn’t expect them to use that to drive their ads towards a certain group of people. This is why they collect this data so they can try to know who will want the ads that they are showing. They don’t want to show ads to people who won’t click their products. They will gather what they know about you and know which ads you are more likely to click and what ads you will most likely not click for example Facebook. If we use Facebook as an example they will know way more than you would like them to know about you because they have an intimate relationship with you, after all you have to use their service to talk to friends and family and they know a lot about you from your race, religion, work, school, even marital status. They can use this to drive traffic your way so they can get even more money from advertisers to show their ads and make money by showing ads in Facebook, you might not realise that. They call them sponsor ads but they still show them to you in one way or another and thus, you are driving their business even more when you click on one of their ads.
Technology today
We really can’t do much to prevent our privacy from being gathered in today’s technological era due to the fact we use computers at work, school, and even home to buy and sell, or even browse the web. It’s a real slippery slope when it comes to advertisements and what you would prefer them not to know about you. We can try to hide our presence on the web but they will always come up with ways to figure out as much information as they to gather that data to be able to show those ads that you will more than likely click on to drive business to websites who want that income. When it comes to this, we can only see that it is bound to get more invasive because advertisers want you to see their ads because they want to be able to make money off of you and maybe even make you a loyal customer. We really don’t have any more privacy and their isn’t anything we can do about.
