Ever get the feeling you are being watched?

There isn’t any. You put yourself out there every time you go online. That is what cookies are, they record what you look at and that is why this happens. If you don’t want it, don’t go online and don’t use SM.

Such a lot of our information is collected and shared through loyalty cards, subscriptions and our every on line purchase its no surprise that we are targeted with advertising.

Have you ever tried simply discussing a product or country and then watching the adverts you get on your smart phone?

Targeted advertising. You are not anonymous at all online.

my adverts seem to think i want to buy a bar for the garden

I once made an online enquiry about paints but left off the i and despite quickly correcting I then for a few days got adverts for pants.

When you open up Google, if you click on the 3 little dots top right one of the menu items is 'New incognito window'. If you open this up and use this to search this stops a lot of the tracking and also those annoying cookies and should stop the adverts. You might be prevented from navigating to some parts of the websites though.

It is targeted algorithms- I remember being on Facebook around my 50th birthday (a long time ago) and being inundated with things for over-50s. I then removed my birthdate from my profile,
I also never 'like' anything for same reasons. Your 'likes' send a message to the advertisers, just as when you on-line shop.
The thing to remember is you are still in control, you do not have to look and you do not have to buy.

I am aware of it all but still find it unnerving.
A couple of years ago just walking through a shop that stocked a a certain label that I’d never seen before, and all I did was browse...touch and look at a few items. Sure enough this brand kept popping up on my smart phone....as if I’d been having thought transference ?

It’s scary, my plumber, my daughter and I were standing in the kitchen discussing a very specialised valve, within minutes an advert for one had popped up on my phone.

You can use Duck Duck Go. British search engine, stops all tracking.

If you turn off Siri on an iPhone it will stop conversations being heard. Go to settings, choose ‘Siri and search’ and toggle everything off.

There will be a similar setting on Android phones - is it Google?

JaneJudge
You searched for garden bars and put up a link about them.
That’s why you are ‘targeted’
This makes me look nerdy, I’m not ? It’s just that I’ve been interested in the subject for years.

It's not electronic voyuerism that bothers me quite as much as the jerk that lives two doors away from me. Whenever I'm in my front garden or checking the levels on my car engine he is standing in his own front garden watching me!

I’ve tried duck duck but it doesn’t work very well here. I also have a cookie blocker but they still manage to get through. Not on gransnet,though I am pleased to say.

How do people manage to have an affair? If my husband looks at anything, something pops up in my Facebook account. He took a few photos on his phone yesterday and they popped up on my phone.

Hehe, I never thought of that Liz46. They would be able to use blackmail wouldn’t they ?

If you share an email account, your devices share all info, photos etc.

All websites must now give you an opportunity to refuse to co-operate with targetted advertising etc. You select choices when the privacy page comes up the first time you look at the page, and you get the cookies you choose. If you don't bother to do that, you get 'em all! It is your decision, or it was when you looked at the page.

The other thing you can do is to set your device to delete all cookies on closing the browser (selecting certain sites as exceptions if you want to keep them) Then it won't remember to show you stuff from one session to the next.

Liz46

How do people manage to have an affair? If my husband looks at anything, something pops up in my Facebook account. He took a few photos on his phone yesterday and they popped up on my phone.

They have another phone that can’t be linked to yours. Simples
?

What I cannot understand with ebay, is that you BUY an item, say a lawnmower or carpet and you are immediately inundated by adverts for - lawnmowers and carpet -. Surely they realise that some items are of the 'bought now no longer interested' variety.

I've often thought that, M0nica. You go away for the weekend and then get a million ads for the same city and the same hotel. Surely most people would go somewhere different, and anyway, you have the details of the hotel.

Similarly, when you have just bought a household appliance, you don't want another one immediately afterwards.

If there have to be ads I would rather they were tailored to me rather than just random.

MerylStreep

Liz46

How do people manage to have an affair? If my husband looks at anything, something pops up in my Facebook account. He took a few photos on his phone yesterday and they popped up on my phone.

They have another phone that can’t be linked to yours. Simples
?

I must be very innocent because I didn’t think of that!