While we wait for Steve’s return, I wanted to put up a post about something that a lot of people bitch about: ads. There’s not much to do about ads in general – they’re going to be with us in some form or other for the foreseeable future. But a lot of you complain about the creeper factor, since Google pushes out ads based on your browsing behavior.
If that bothers you, here’s a link that will let you opt out of targeted ads, and here’s Google’s explanation of the process.
Open thread.
Suffern ACE
I like the ones I’ve been getting lately with the buff old guy and the formerly wimpy Sikh who are hated by Hollywood. I too want to be hated by Hollywood for becoming lean mound of middle-aged man meat. I might sign up.
M. Bouffant
AdBlock!!
The Dangerman
Curiously, I’m getting ads about shaving cat’s butts* and sushi bars in Pullman (thanks, Yats).
*I’m sure Steve will return after exploring whatever it is he’s exploring.
jeffreyw
Google can’t explain this!
WereBear
Yes, it’s weird when I look at ottomans on Overstock.com and they chase me around for the next three days. I made the mistake of looking up Fifty Shades on Amazon to figure out what all the fuss was about and they acted like they knew what I wanted! (I had no idea Amazon sold that kind of thing.)
Still, people can take precautions if they really want to… but they don’t want to. Either do something about it or not, but you don’t get to complain and do nothing.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Gee, I don’t know. At one point or another you must have wondered what kind of strange person would be interested in those things. I think these weird ads paint a kind of alternate-universe portrait of our interests — and by extension, of us.
patrick II
I made the mistake of reading an article about Bill Gates foundation’s efforts to invent an inexpensive waterless toilet for use in poor countries. I had toilet ads for a week. You would be amazed at what they put on toilets nowadays. I partly solved my problem by visiting Victoria’s Secret occasionally. They seem to have a large advertising budget so I get their ads for a while afterwards. It certainly beats the fungal toenail ads I was seeing here at one time.
Yatsuno
@The Dangerman: Heh. It’s not my fault you Googled it.
I’ve been getting this Foodler ad everywhere. Haven’t used them because they defer a lot to third party servicers & that gets expensive quick.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: I didn’t know Fifty Shades of Gray was a badly written novel about BDSM. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I think it was a testament to what I usually buy from Amazon that whole swathes of their inventory were news to me :)
But I have found cool things with inquiries that were much more in tune with my own tastes; I know that’s what Amazon does. It’s part of shopping there, and there’s good sides to it, too.
JoyceH
Sigh – my sister sends me a link with the note “think I’ll buy this lamp” or something similar – and then it’s lamps for days.
WereBear
@patrick II: The thing that keeps me from using Google ads on my own site is the way their algorithm seems to delight in contradicting whatever the site is saying. I’m a nutrition site and the ads are full of junk food, etc.
If I put them on my own site I’ll look like a hypocrite. This site can be hip and ironic with that kind of thing. Not me.
The Pale Scot
I think it’s easier to use a cookie manager and just save the cookies that are useful, like BJ’s, and delete the rest every day or so. Use different browsers for different chores too. Apparently my floors need cleaning, that’s about as generic as it gets. I don’t use ad blocker and I haven’t got an auto play or slide in ad yet.
Speaking of ads, I’m watching the the Giants game online and the feed is from Texas. The political ads are interesting, Cotton’s getting hammered for his past position on vouchers for medicare. but the prize goes to the Koch Co. insisting they aren’t the assholes everyone say they are.
Oy!, NRA ad for Cotton
So glad I don’t watch TV except for sports, the commercials are driving me nuts, but the Giants offense is finally clicking so I gots ta watch.
shelley
One visit to Overstock.com and you’ll be cyber-stalked for weeks.
Oy, those things are sheer nightmare material
*********************************
Another Holocene Human
I blocked Google ads because of their autoplay videos. If they were still text only, I’d be laughing along with their silly adwords placements.
I’m thoroughly tired of those stupid referrer ads on every blog with horrid photos and tabloid-y ledes. I made the mistake of clicking on one of those in the past and it doesn’t even take you to an article, just to another site with more links … wtf and who is getting paid for that? Seriously.
Another Holocene Human
I wish they would serve me ads that are relevant to my interests …
I am getting served Charlie Crist ads about how much Rick Scott sucks on Youtube. I don’t want to deplete Crist’s warchest on me b/c there’s no question how i’m voting. Hmm.
Amir Khalid
@patrick II:
I still kind of regret that I was using Adblock then and never got to see them befungused toenail pictures.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: Everybody stop talking about it!
Would you look in a mirror and say “Candyman?”
Bill E Pilgrim
@The Pale Scot: I’ve managed to use Chrome’s cookie management features pretty happily for some time now. Sort of awkwardly designed, but once I got in the habit and know how to do it, it works.
1) Go to: Settings > Content Settings > Clear Browsing Data
2) There, wipe out all cookies from “the beginning of time”
3) Settings > Content Settings > Manage Exceptions
4) Add any sites you want to accept cookies from by typing [*.]balloon-juice.com (for example) and with the drop-down set to “allow”, hit “return” to save the entry.
That’s a wildcard, followed by the site name, just whatever is immediately before the “.com” or “.org”, The tricky (and badly designed) part is getting that you have to enter it with “allow” set, then just hit enter, and it will disappear into your list. (If it’s a long one).
Then you just add any sites as you need, bank, etc. It seems like a lot of fuss but once it’s set up, it’s done, I don’t have to do anything to maintain it as frequently as every few days, just once in a while.
I save the list in case I want to wipe it all out and start over. The trick is to never, ever, set it to “accept all cookies” even for a brief period, it will amaze you how many get deposited there in just a few clicks. If that happens though, you can just delete all the ones you didn’t accept on purpose.
Then I just use Firefox set on “Delete all cookies when I close the browser” for anything that requires cookies, but that I don’t need to store, i.e. just one-time use of the site, then it deletes any cookies deposited when I close it.
Bobby B.
Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about the husband who wants dessert and the wife who can only offer him cake with “some rat”. As far as corporate ads on the net is concerned, “the troops live under/The cannon’s thunder.” Sorry I’m too mellow right now to be coherent :)
Iowa Old Lady
@patrick II: If those ads come back, I am blaming you. Also Obama.
WereBear
@Bobby B.: It’s not got much spam in it!
There’s also opening an Incognito Tab, as it’s known in Google (I’m sure other browsers have similar options.) This disables cookies, won’t save or remember passwords, won’t put things in history, etc.
When my husband needed to borrow my laptop this week while his computer was down, I’d hand it to him with a Incognito Browser window, so he wouldn’t be thrown by my settings, could get into his own accounts instead of mine, etc.
The Pale Scot
@Bill E Pilgrim: (edit)
That sounds a bit laborious, I use Cocoa Cookies for Safari, and a Cookie Manager add-on for Firefox. Pop down menu, check off the sites you want to have a history on, clear them every couple of days. I use the private setting and turn off Javascript often also.
I have a hard time believing Chrome isn’t chatting with google all day long.
grammypat
I’ve blocked a lot of “sites” (e,g, doubleclick, yieldmanager, adinterax, addthis, etc) with my internet security software, TrendMicro.
I also use NoScript (free download, contribution requested) that blocks scripts unless I specifically allow them (temp or perm).
If those don’t catch the offending stuff, then I right click on the image (such as the Hosting Matters gif on the front page), choose “View Image Info”, then tick the box for “Block Images from hostmatters.com.”
Viola! I see no ads.
On Amazon I’ve turned off my browsing history and chosen the “Do Not Personalize Ads from Amazon for this Internet Browser” in my account settings. I get no “suggestions” from them.
If you’re desperate, you can opt-out of most personalized advertising at either: here or here.
Burnspbesq
Speaking of unscrupulous web actors, surely no one is surprised by this:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11563455/ray-rice-argue-videotape-assaulting-fiancee-was-edited
So, this creates a non-trivial risk that Rice’s enhanced suspension won’t be upheld on appeal.
ProTip: if you want to impose a just and well-deserved punishment on someone for a heinous act, don’t cut corners or otherwise fuck with the established process, and especially don’t try to railroad said person using doctored evidence.
shelley
We better get a Steve update soon or I”LL start getting crazy. C’mon you damn cat!
Bill E Pilgrim
@The Pale Scot: Yes who knows about that. As I say though, if you’re doing any maintenance at all “every couple of days” that’s far more laborious than what I have to do, IMHO anyway. Day to day browsing requires doing nothing at all, often for weeks and weeks, except for once in a great while when some site won’t let me search with cookies turned off. It’s actually amazing how many of them don’t even inform you, they just return to the blank search form- can’t be bothered to have a “cookies must be enabled to use our site” warning or etc, but so when I see that behavior, the blank return, I just switch to Firefox, but that’s not a lot of work.
WaterGirl
@The Pale Scot: I tried to download Cocoa Cookies just now and I got this error message:
But the error message doesn’t provide any clues about whether these are security preferences in settings for the computer or if it’s a safari setting. Any suggestions of where to look?
Another Holocene Human
I bleached my drains and put out fruit fly traps but the buggers refuse to die. Any suggestions? I think the holes I poked are too small but they escape from bigger holes. Can’t figure out how to make it a one-way trip.
Gene108
I keep getting Harry’s Shave Club ads.
They will mail me a razor, blades and shave cream in a tube, but no shave brush to put the tube shave cream on.
That just seems bad packaging to me, as I have never used shave cream from a tube that would lather well sans brush.
WaterGirl
@The Pale Scot: I answered my own question and got Cocoa Cookies installed, but what you do next is not at all apparent.
It appears to run as a standalone app and it isn’t part of Safari. That makes no sense to me.
John Weiss
There’s a handy little program, Ghostery, at the Chrome store.
“Ghostery sees the “invisible” web, detecting trackers, web bugs, pixels, and beacons placed on web pages by Facebook, Google, and thousands of other companies interested in your activity.”
And it does more. I use it and I’m quite happy with a web that doesn’t serve me garbage at every turn.
Schlemazel
I don’t complain about the ads. I assume JC would not be able to keep the doors open without them & at the moment I don’t have spare change to drop in the bucket. I hate the ads on TV also but understand they are the price of admission. At least in the case of this place I feel like I am getting my money’s worth. Thats not true on TV.
Suffern ACE
@Another Holocene Human: mason jar with cider vinegar and ivory soap works for me as long as I remember to agitate it each mornings.
shelley
@Gene108: Ahhhh, I’m plagued with those buggers too. Did the bleach and the vinegar traps to no avail. Where are some spiders when you need them?
WaterGirl
@John Weiss: Ghostery saved me from buying a new laptop. My laptop would heat up and my fan would spin and my laptop would get loud. With ghostery, I just disabled all the crap that was causing that and no my activity monitor confirms that my laptop is happy – running gin green instead of yellow/red when all that website crap would load.
beth
@shelley: Worst fruit fly eradication advice I ever saw on the net was to put a piece of rotten fruit in the microwave, leave door open, wait till you get a bunch of flies on the fruit, slam door and zap them. Gross! Who would do that and want to clean up that mess? Or cook anything in that oven ever again?
I just use bowls with cider vinegar and dish soap. Takes a while but eventually they all drown.
patrick II
@Another Holocene Human:
I get seriously p’o’d at ads that point to servers that don’t work or old ads that no longer functional. The whole page hangs waiting for an ad.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@patrick II: This. It’s annoying.
I just run Spybot Search & Destroy every few weeks on my Winders boxes to clear out cookies and other stuff I don’t want. It’s not perfect, but works good-enough. That, coupled with AdBlock Plus and FlashBlock (on FF, rough equivalents on Chrome), seems to take care of most of the annoying ad issues (though some HTML5 ones get through on occasion).
I open an Incognito / Private Browsing tab at the NY Times when I want to see what they’re covering and to read Krugman. I’d get a subscription if it were < $50 a year, but I'm not paying a mountain of money for an occasional article.
Cheers,
Scott.
Iowa Old Lady
As long as the ads keep quiet, I usually don’t mind. Once in a while there’s one sort of wiggling side to side that makes me queasy.
Randy P
Occasionally I get Spanish-language ads. While I do occasionally take a stab at reading Spanish content, it’s not closely connected with when I see the Spanish ads. They’ll just suddenly come in a cluster.
And even more strangely, lately I’m seeing this German ad:
http://www.handelsblatt.com/digital-pass/
(the TV Spot on that page).
I’m not even sure what it’s selling. Internet access I think.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@WaterGirl: Thanks for the reminder. Ghostery is something I’ve been meaning to check out over the years but hadn’t until just now. So far, it looks quite useful.
Cheers,
Scott.
Violet
@WaterGirl: I’ve been running Ghostery as well. It’s good but sometimes it seems to hang on some pages. I’ve had to put a few things in their white list just to be able to read them.
The other day during the Scotland vote I wanted to follow The Guardian liveblog. Ghostery wouldn’t allow the page to auto-reload. I fiddled with the Ghostery settings but nothing seemed to work. Finally I had to white list that page. Then it worked fine.
My laptop was overheating too. I decided to shut it down, take out the battery and use compressed air to clean it. I guess it had been awhile since I’d done that, judging by the dust that came out! When I turned it back on, it ran fine. I guess it was the dust blocking the fan that was causing the overheating problem.
Mnemosyne
I generally do just fine having Click2Flash installed on Safari — it prevents Flash ads from annoying me and hogging all of my memory, but I can still see non-Flash ads. They’re usually for stuff I use, so I’ll click on them occasionally to toss a few dimes Cole’s way.
Ruviana
I just keep refreshing and refreshing waiting for Steve to be back. And a shout out to Randy P. I’m now getting Spanish-language Target ads!
TheMightyTrowel
Hello from Copenhagen! I’m onto country 3 of my four-countries-in-three-weeks blitz. Denmark was supposed to be a mini holiday – my flight was reasonably early AM and I was going to have all sunday to visit old haunts in the city and drink some beer before getting a good night’s sleep adn then hauling over to Sweden in the morning. Sadly my fucking flight was over 6 hours delayed and I didn’t end up getting into the city until after dark. I’m very sad because it means I can’t say hi to my favourite archaeological artefact ever ever ever (it’s a flint dagger. don’t ask.). :( :( :(
Iowa Old Lady
@TheMightyTrowel: Oh man. Flying is miserable these days.
Jasmine Bleach
Yeah, AdBlock, Ghostery, and Click2Flash keep my web browsing fairly private.
Ghostery blocks the tracking done by numerous behind the scenes trackers–including those Facebook, Google, and Twitter icons that appear on 70% of web pages nowadays. Those are used to build huge profiles on you (well, at least your IP address) to target you ads, and Ghostery is probably one of the best things you can do to avoid ad tracking.
Click2Flash eliminates Flash Cookies and allows you to play Flash content outside of a Flash environment. Flash Cookies are those “permanent cookies” that actually re-spawn normal cookies after you delete them. I made a “Kill Flash” script to delete them from the area they are stored in your system, and I used to run that every day or so to get rid of them. But with Click2Flash, they just never show up at all, which is much easier (although playing Flash content takes an extra click–trade-offs!)
Because my browser is so old, I have never been able to get NoScript to work on it.
I do need to look into a script/extension to manage my normal cookies more effectively. Currently, I just delete all cookies at the end of each session (or after using a Google search or Youtube page).
Also, don’t search via Google or Bing or Yahoo. Use DuckDuckGo instead. Nothing to track there, and it’s getting close enough to Google’s capabilities I almost never miss Google (maybe once a month now).
iOS devices desperately need extensions in Safari to allow some of this stuff. That’s why I do the vast majority of my web browsing on my desktop and laptop computers–much more control.
Amir Khalid
@Randy P:
Not internet access. Online subscription to a business news site. Handelsblatt is offering the Digitalpass for an introductory price of 14.99 euros (US$19 and change) a month. It gives you access to the news site itself, story archive, premium content, their LiveApp 24/7 exclusive channel and all that cool shit. If you need a daily dose of German business news, go for it.
Randy P
@Iowa Old Lady: Flights themselves I’m not minding, as long as some obnoxious asshole doesn’t put their seat all the way back for an entire transatlantic flight, preventing me from eating or seeing the movie. (As some 20 somethings did to my wife and I on one return from Europe).
It seems to be changing flights in airports that’s the worst part of flying these days. At least for me. They ALWAYS involve lines and a change of terminals and never seem to take less than an hour and a half. When the airline has allotted you perhaps an hour and 35 to accomplish the change.
cckids
@efgoldman:
Made me crazy last Christmas, we share a computer & I could easily tell what mrKids was planning to get for me because of the ads, ads, ads everywhere (though I love my Le Creuset, thx honey!!) I’ve gone to using the “private browsing” windows so he & my kids won’t find the same.
WaterGirl
@Violet: My overheating was ONLY on certain websites, and it disappeared the second I used Ghostery to disable crap I didn’t need. So yay (!) for Ghostery, which I installed after someone here made a reference to it.
I have not had any pages hang at all, but it sounds like maybe you had disabled something that handled the auto reload.
Another Holocene Human
@Suffern ACE: what’s the soap for?
henqiguai
@Another Holocene Human (#52):
Um, break the surface tension? Float a needle in a bowl of water (due to water’s surface tension); add a drop of dish soap and the needle sinks. But I’m guessing as to the soap addition. So the little buggers actually sink in and drown.
Villago Delenda Est
I note that douchecanoe Snyder’s “We’re being respectful by having ‘Washington Yids” as our team mascot” team is losing to the Iggles atm.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@patrick II: I read you comment, opened up a new tab, and googled Victoria’s Secret’s site. When I returned to Balloon Juice there are half naked lady ads everywhere. Good tip. : )
Another Holocene Human
@WaterGirl: yup, the crap does a number on your computer. I don’t frigging understand why the owners of these websites think this shit is a good idea. This has been going on for years, and the more corporate the website, the worse the nonsense.
Any COMPETENT programmer could turn content into html (plus css now, of course that has its own list of processor issues because shitty browser implementations + web designers who don’t care what disabled/elderly/mobile users need, it would hurt their “vision”), feed that to the web server(s), and just have the server dish it up.
Of course that means no third party content, hand off the keys to some other companies … any ads you serve you’d have to solicit direct. Commenting? Ditto. So I guess it will never happen.
I had my issues with discussion forums but even at their most drama llama I can’t say they’re anything like Yahoo News comments or the other Usenet alt.* (thanks to the commenter who pointed that out a couple of weeks ago) style bilge on news sites comments.
ETA: I forgot to add, Boston.com (the Boston Globe) was one of the first and worst in terms of having so much garbage loading and running that the fucking site would crash before you could even click on an article
Suffern ACE
@Another Holocene Human: the soapy film prevents them from flying away. Fruit flies aren’t the most powerful fliers.
Elmo
John just tweeted – Steve is home
Suffern ACE
@Elmo: hip hip hooray!
Ruviana
@Elmo: Lock that kiddo up and get some screens! I can’t stand the stress!
patrick II
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
The next time you need lady’s lingerie, make sure to start off one of the adds here at Balloon Juice so John gets the credit.
Chat Noir
@Elmo: yay!! Thanks for telling us. I’ve been checking Balloon Juice all afternoon to get an update. So glad it’s a positive outcome.
Elmo
@Ruviana: I know right? I have my own animals to stress about!
WereBear
@Elmo: YAY!
different-church-lady
Thanks Mr. If it weren’t for links like that I’d never be able to find all the deliberately shifting opt-out switches. (For example: I had already opted out of ads “across the web” but had never before seen the switch to opt out “on Google”. I’m sure a year from now there will be a third option that’s defaulted to on.)
Violet
@WaterGirl: I just did the recommended settings–I hadn’t changed anything. I went into the settings and turned various things off one by one and reloaded to see if it would work. It didn’t. When I white listed the page it worked fine. Had to be something Ghostery was doing but I couldn’t figure out what.
WaterGirl
@Violet: I do like the “pause blocking” that you can use to make it immediately clear if ghostery is causing an issue with a page.
The Pale Scot
@WaterGirl:
WaterGirl, when the CC screen opens, you may need to check or uncheck the “RegEx” box for your cookies to be listed, once you see the list scroll down the list and put a checkmark next to the websites you want to keep a cookie for;
Then click “Remove All”, and all of the other cookies will be deleted, once you have it set up, just hit “Remove All”, that’s it, takes 20 seconds.
PS I recommend keeping your security setting to “Mac App Store”only, you will have to change it when you update Flash or install 3rd party like Adobe or a game, but it prevents anything getting installed surreptitiously.
And, go into Safari’s preferences and enable the developer menu in the toolbar, from there you can turn off Javascript, which will shut off the eye candy and video but saves a lot CPU cycles. Do this and turn on the private mode, and paywalls like the NYT don’t function.
For shopping I use Firefox with AdBlock and FlashBlock, Ghostery is good also.
Edited for linkage.
The Pale Scot
My MBP’s fan only speeds up when I’m editing video, from what I’ve read it’s the JavaScripts harvesting and correlating data, partly from the cookies, that bogs down pages (edit), so I think I don’t have your problem because there’s no relevant data to correlate.
It’s just a theory, My theory, which belongs to me. That is the theory that I have, and which is mine, and what it is too.
Check out smcFanControl to ahh, control your fan
WaterGirl
@The Pale Scot: Well, shit. I checked the box and suddenly I could see all my cookies – yay for that.
Then I checked the ones I wanted to delete – and it deleted all the ones I wanted to keep. That’s the “shit” part. I see that’s what you said to do, but it’s counterintuitive so I screwed myself.
Now I can’t get it to delete the ones that are left – the ones I thought I was marking to DELETE.
oh well.
WaterGirl
@The Pale Scot: @WaterGirl: I won’t let me edit my comment. For good or for bad, all cookies are deleted. Let’s hope I can remember my login name for sites I actually want to get to. :-)
Edit: I’m probably still ahead of the game, even though I lost cookies I wanted to keep. Thanks!
henqiguai
@WaterGirl (#72):
Wait; you mean you don’t keep a little notebook on your desk with all your various and sundry logins?!? Is it just me?
WaterGirl
@henqiguai: No notebook, sorry!
NotMax
There are ads on the Internet? Who knew?
Last time I saw an ad was last century.
The Pale Scot
@WaterGirl: If you using a mac and safari your passwords are kept by the keychain app located in the utilities folder.