It doesn't just get rid of the cookies that you thought you didn't agree to, it also erases everything the site put into local storage, the browser cache and all the other ways unscrupulous surveillance economy companies use to track you from site to site.
Every time I visit google sites, they think they have never seen me before. Amazon is another story, but I let them set cookies because their targetting is so utterly fucked up, it gives ma a great laugh every time!
Aug 18, 2023·edited Aug 18, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
Hmm,I just installed it but I may well remove it very soon. I can't see any idiot's guide to what it does or how to configure it. e.g. It tells me there are 7 cookies, but doesn't show me what they are, so how am I to tell if I want them deleted?
Hmm most online adds are useless, I can’t remember the last time one has shown something I really wanted to buy (if ever). Amazon recommended products have just got weirder recently, i.e. look at spanner’s and get adverts for kitchen utensils and as for there frequently bought together lists well all I can say is there are people out there with very diverse interests.
Now if you bought a set of screwdrivers, then maybe you might be interested in buying screws but no they want to sell you more screwdrivers.
Fortunately I have never come across the advert changing but I have heard of people making a phone call and mentioning product x on the call and then getting adverts for said product….
I don't want to upset the thinking, but at a rough count, I have 16 screwdrivers, not including the 2 electric versions with their multi-bit sets of adaptors.
A quick review has increased this number to 24. None are duplicates.
I must also state that I have never received an ad for screwdrivers. This might be a reflection the date of their purchase......
Aug 21, 2023·edited Aug 21, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
Yes, a few weeks ago I looked for a replacement smoke detector on behalf of a friend. The same afternoon he went to a local supplier and bought one.
HE is not the person who has been bombarded with ads for that particular model of smoke detector for weeks now.
At least it seems to have killed off the ads for reels of solder having purchased about 5 years' supply in June.
I have discovered a purchase method which Google have not yet found a way to intercept. My local auction house lets you bid online, and there's no obvious method of connecting you with purchases, because there's just a "bidder number" involved. Turn up the following morning and hand over actual cash. Everyone happy! You can pick up real bargains too. I was looking at fresh laptops and got 2 decent Fujitsu ones without drives for 120 quid. One is still in warranty!
Oh Hesus! Triggered. I backpacked around South America (20) years ago and it was Mandarinas and Andean Pipe players all the way down to Ushuaia. As for “targeted” cookie advertising, I’m not sure I want say, so instead I will just say; women’s volleyball, pacific islands, classic Italian cars/women/food, Beatrice Dalle and (hope) and see what happens….
It does seem crazy all these "targeted" ads are so off target - surely the advertisers must be thinking "why are'nt we selling more stuff? - we are supposedly getting it targeted at the right people"....Maybe the cost is so little the vendors don't care.
I have a relative who has links in the marketing business. When I expressed ridicule regarding the information gleaned from cookies, they responded that the data was very much worth the expense and effort.
My rejection of everything regarding cookies was considered an anomaly and not reflected in the majority. I just hope this is not true.
Aug 20, 2023·edited Aug 20, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
For businesses that need to make ends meet while paying writers, developers and clouds ads are often the only way to do it. How many different subscriptions are customers really willing to sign up for and pay?
For those that sell things getting the world out and worms into people's heads will always be of value. And spray and pray works but targeting is more economically efficient.
On the user side we have become used to moving around the internet quickly without having to pay for anything other than data access. We are not the customers here; we are the product, and ad blockers get us what we want but screw over those who have to pay the piper in the end.
Having been either directly involved in the tech side of this world or adjacent to it my entire career. I really thought the streaming subscription model was the most ethical way to go. Then seeing the fallout with the current writers' strike, I am not so sure.
All internet sites are merely file servers sending content in response to requests from anywhere/everywhere. The fact that some Sysops try to burden that same content with extraneous messages in a bid to pay themselves handsome salaries doesn't impress me in the slightest. There are e-mail spam servers spewing out hundreds of millions of emails a day because the cost is negligible: same too with any other internet content. I filter mercilessly: I don't care to hear the sales pitches so I never do.
...That's not to say I'm always an insufferable freeloader. Sure, I borrow all the CDs and DVDs I want from the public library and remorselessly copy everything that strikes my fancy. But at the same time, did I not pay $13.99 per hundred salvage CDs just to find some obscure random stuff (Andean hillbilly music included)?? Basically $98 for a huge box of 700 random CDs of all-sorts, not 4 years ago, and I'm still finding weird stuff in there.
I know what you mean about the interminable lists of ad-sharing cookies. I once tried to turn off the list provided by the Dilbert website. There were over 300 different organisations who were being sold my data. Only 2/3 of them would actually accept a decline request.
I stopped looking at Dilbert. Probably just as well, because it was rapidly turning into an "I love Donald Trump and everything he does" site.
What gets me these days are the number of "Cookie Assent" popups where the defaults are set to "Objected" in line with GDPR, but there is a sneaky faint button or tab marked "Legitimate Use". Click there and you find that you have magically agreed to EXACTLY what you objected to. Their "legitimate" is not the same as my "legitimate".
I'm sure that there may be the occasional site where the value of "SELL_THIS_PERSONS_SOUL" is set to a logical OR of the two lists, but I bet for the convenience of the WebDevs the majority have "SELL_THIS_PERSONS_SOUL=TRUE".
I'm pretty sure that album is the Patagonian buskers from The Fast Show.
I've mentioned this before on El Reg, but I used to buy coffee beans and filters for things like my V60 or Aeropress from Amazon. Never a recommendation for other brands, or even the same brands, of consumable items you are going to want at least semi-regularly. Once bought a paint roller set, Amazon assumes I am a professional decorator and must require brushes, rollers, paint and everything else a decorator might want.
Aug 21, 2023·edited Aug 21, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
Lots of companies make that mistake without the help of Amazon.
When my parents were re-doing their bathroom, they bought a few items from a supplier about 25 miles from home. Unfortunately the place insisted on email to announce when the goods could be collected. I'm the one who looks at email, so my inbox was used.
For two years afterwards, I received 3 emails a week trying to convince me to buy whole bathroomsful of stuff.
Eventually they went bust, and the emails stopped.
I buy car-related stuff occasionally another supplier only half a mile from there, They send me emails about once a fortnight with offers, including interesting tips and stories. If I buy more stuff, they do NOT add me to their database again; they know I am a returning customer. I am happy to buy from them again.
I tried to share this wonderful piece using the intended button at the end of the email, just to have the function definitively broken by the Substack cookie banner. When you think you’re the king of cynicism, some random StoopDApp ups the game.
This might explain that. https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/11/chrome_extension_developer_pressure/
Can I introduce you to "Cookie Auto Delete"?
It doesn't just get rid of the cookies that you thought you didn't agree to, it also erases everything the site put into local storage, the browser cache and all the other ways unscrupulous surveillance economy companies use to track you from site to site.
Every time I visit google sites, they think they have never seen me before. Amazon is another story, but I let them set cookies because their targetting is so utterly fucked up, it gives ma a great laugh every time!
Hmm,I just installed it but I may well remove it very soon. I can't see any idiot's guide to what it does or how to configure it. e.g. It tells me there are 7 cookies, but doesn't show me what they are, so how am I to tell if I want them deleted?
Hmm most online adds are useless, I can’t remember the last time one has shown something I really wanted to buy (if ever). Amazon recommended products have just got weirder recently, i.e. look at spanner’s and get adverts for kitchen utensils and as for there frequently bought together lists well all I can say is there are people out there with very diverse interests.
Now if you bought a set of screwdrivers, then maybe you might be interested in buying screws but no they want to sell you more screwdrivers.
Fortunately I have never come across the advert changing but I have heard of people making a phone call and mentioning product x on the call and then getting adverts for said product….
I don't want to upset the thinking, but at a rough count, I have 16 screwdrivers, not including the 2 electric versions with their multi-bit sets of adaptors.
A quick review has increased this number to 24. None are duplicates.
I must also state that I have never received an ad for screwdrivers. This might be a reflection the date of their purchase......
Yes, a few weeks ago I looked for a replacement smoke detector on behalf of a friend. The same afternoon he went to a local supplier and bought one.
HE is not the person who has been bombarded with ads for that particular model of smoke detector for weeks now.
At least it seems to have killed off the ads for reels of solder having purchased about 5 years' supply in June.
I have discovered a purchase method which Google have not yet found a way to intercept. My local auction house lets you bid online, and there's no obvious method of connecting you with purchases, because there's just a "bidder number" involved. Turn up the following morning and hand over actual cash. Everyone happy! You can pick up real bargains too. I was looking at fresh laptops and got 2 decent Fujitsu ones without drives for 120 quid. One is still in warranty!
Oh Hesus! Triggered. I backpacked around South America (20) years ago and it was Mandarinas and Andean Pipe players all the way down to Ushuaia. As for “targeted” cookie advertising, I’m not sure I want say, so instead I will just say; women’s volleyball, pacific islands, classic Italian cars/women/food, Beatrice Dalle and (hope) and see what happens….
All my ads are luggage ads. Maybe that was the default ad? Well it was up until a moment ago. It's Wanko Soba noodles since reading this column.
It does seem crazy all these "targeted" ads are so off target - surely the advertisers must be thinking "why are'nt we selling more stuff? - we are supposedly getting it targeted at the right people"....Maybe the cost is so little the vendors don't care.
I have a relative who has links in the marketing business. When I expressed ridicule regarding the information gleaned from cookies, they responded that the data was very much worth the expense and effort.
My rejection of everything regarding cookies was considered an anomaly and not reflected in the majority. I just hope this is not true.
For businesses that need to make ends meet while paying writers, developers and clouds ads are often the only way to do it. How many different subscriptions are customers really willing to sign up for and pay?
For those that sell things getting the world out and worms into people's heads will always be of value. And spray and pray works but targeting is more economically efficient.
On the user side we have become used to moving around the internet quickly without having to pay for anything other than data access. We are not the customers here; we are the product, and ad blockers get us what we want but screw over those who have to pay the piper in the end.
Having been either directly involved in the tech side of this world or adjacent to it my entire career. I really thought the streaming subscription model was the most ethical way to go. Then seeing the fallout with the current writers' strike, I am not so sure.
All internet sites are merely file servers sending content in response to requests from anywhere/everywhere. The fact that some Sysops try to burden that same content with extraneous messages in a bid to pay themselves handsome salaries doesn't impress me in the slightest. There are e-mail spam servers spewing out hundreds of millions of emails a day because the cost is negligible: same too with any other internet content. I filter mercilessly: I don't care to hear the sales pitches so I never do.
...That's not to say I'm always an insufferable freeloader. Sure, I borrow all the CDs and DVDs I want from the public library and remorselessly copy everything that strikes my fancy. But at the same time, did I not pay $13.99 per hundred salvage CDs just to find some obscure random stuff (Andean hillbilly music included)?? Basically $98 for a huge box of 700 random CDs of all-sorts, not 4 years ago, and I'm still finding weird stuff in there.
I know what you mean about the interminable lists of ad-sharing cookies. I once tried to turn off the list provided by the Dilbert website. There were over 300 different organisations who were being sold my data. Only 2/3 of them would actually accept a decline request.
I stopped looking at Dilbert. Probably just as well, because it was rapidly turning into an "I love Donald Trump and everything he does" site.
What gets me these days are the number of "Cookie Assent" popups where the defaults are set to "Objected" in line with GDPR, but there is a sneaky faint button or tab marked "Legitimate Use". Click there and you find that you have magically agreed to EXACTLY what you objected to. Their "legitimate" is not the same as my "legitimate".
I'm sure that there may be the occasional site where the value of "SELL_THIS_PERSONS_SOUL" is set to a logical OR of the two lists, but I bet for the convenience of the WebDevs the majority have "SELL_THIS_PERSONS_SOUL=TRUE".
If you want a shocker, get a load of Scott Adams circa 1982.
(The "real" Scott Adams, not the Dilbert one.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer)
No social media accounts == No Ads
Brave browser == No Ads
No freebie email account == No Ads
Netflix & Amazon Prime Video == No Ads
Now if only I could get my email spam filter to work properly life would be virtually Ad free
The French made eating snails cool now their coming after the snakes.
I'm pretty sure that album is the Patagonian buskers from The Fast Show.
I've mentioned this before on El Reg, but I used to buy coffee beans and filters for things like my V60 or Aeropress from Amazon. Never a recommendation for other brands, or even the same brands, of consumable items you are going to want at least semi-regularly. Once bought a paint roller set, Amazon assumes I am a professional decorator and must require brushes, rollers, paint and everything else a decorator might want.
Lots of companies make that mistake without the help of Amazon.
When my parents were re-doing their bathroom, they bought a few items from a supplier about 25 miles from home. Unfortunately the place insisted on email to announce when the goods could be collected. I'm the one who looks at email, so my inbox was used.
For two years afterwards, I received 3 emails a week trying to convince me to buy whole bathroomsful of stuff.
Eventually they went bust, and the emails stopped.
I buy car-related stuff occasionally another supplier only half a mile from there, They send me emails about once a fortnight with offers, including interesting tips and stories. If I buy more stuff, they do NOT add me to their database again; they know I am a returning customer. I am happy to buy from them again.
I tried to share this wonderful piece using the intended button at the end of the email, just to have the function definitively broken by the Substack cookie banner. When you think you’re the king of cynicism, some random StoopDApp ups the game.