Saturday, 9 October 2010

Is Google Tracking Us?

As if it wasn't enough that Google is invading privacy by taking photos of people in places that the public would not normally see (e.g. back gardens), the company now appears to be tracking internet use.

A bit of background info: On various webpages, Google adverts are displayed. These are usually put their by whoever runs the website, or whoever owns the website. The adverts display information based on what is written on an individual webpage. So if a webpage mentions dogs, adverts about dogs may appear. Ironically, if a vegetarian website mentions meat on one of its webpages, adverts for meat products may appear!

However, the adverts are always either based on one or more words on the page, or are non-profit or charity adverts (or rarely adverts about Google products).

Yet this happened: I searched for cat tracking devices on Google and looked at various websites. A lot later, I went onto a forum that had nothing to do with cats, and the specific page I was looking at had nothing about cats mentioned. Yet on the page was a very large advert for a cat tracking device.

The only reason for this has to be that Google is using some sort of tracking software to follow my internet locations (follow me to different websites), and then displaying adverts based on what I've previously searched for on Google. I've now deleted what I could from the Internt Options on my computer, but the fact that staff at Google are having a nosey at whatever websites you happen to visit is pretty fucking sinister.

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