Facebook's New Ads Are Nosier Than Ever

[Guest]

Facebook will show you ads based on your non-Facebook online activity -- and will no longer honor 'Do not track' requests.

Facebook's New Ads Are Nosier Than Ever : Read more

 

[dstarr3]

Adblock.

 

[ShadyHamster]

Adblock.

Agreed, although i usually disable adblock if the site asks but only if the ads are non-intrusive.

 

[sykozis]

Adblock won't prevent you from being tracked, which is the issue most people have. I really don't care what ads they attempt to display. My issue is that Facebook wants to collect information that they have no right to collect and do so without my permission.

 

[skit75]

Myspace is making room for Facebook at the place where websites go to die.

 

[dstarr3]

Browsing the internet without any privacy measures set up is like talking really loudly on your cell phone in an elevator full of other people. You sorta can't get mad at them for listening.

Defending yourself from this kind of tracking doesn't have to be difficult. Have two browsers. One for e-mail and social media, and the other on permanent Incognito mode or what have you for your browsing that you don't want tracked. It might be inconvenient, but it'd be equally inconvenient going outside with the insistence that no one looks at you.

And also, Adblock. Adblock adblock adblock.

 

[razor512]

They need to think before they put ads on the site. often the ads contain false information and are ptetty much always misleading. I generally use adblock because the ads are obnoxious but when you try to give them a chance, e.g., I am currently looking for a Samsung 840 pro. don't show me ads for flowers or other crap as that is a waste of time and bandwidth. If you want to be useful, show me an ad for an 840 pro that is being sold for less than the sites that I searched are selling them.

The cheapest I found at a reputable store was $197, give me a better deal!

This is where the ads fail, even though they are tracking your web use enough to know what you are looking for, they only serve ads to shady websites selling unrelated products. I would not mind non annoying ads if they were actually helpful.

An example of a good ad will be "Hey we see you are searching for a 256GB Samsung 840 pro, the lowest price you saw was $197 but we have an offer here to get it for $175 including shipping" Or "Hey you were searching for X product but this product here benchmarks higher and cost the same or less"

Until ads stop looking like the same crap that ends up in your email spam folder, addons like adblock will continue to be the most popular.

A good example of a bad advertising is a website called tomshardware.com article text is turned into a minefield where random words will pop up unrelated ads that interest no one, and banner ads leading to sites that most people have never heard of, but charge much more for their products, or while knowing the audience of the site, will attempt to advertise an outrageously overpriced prebuilt gaming PC.

Overall for virtually all online advertising, the well has been poisoned because 99.9% of all ads are nefarious. For virtually all sites that use ad distribution services, and not negotiate CPM agreements for a specific product (and thus thoroughly vetting the product), you end up with ads where most of the content is crap that would end up in your spam folder if it were to be e-mailed to you.

If website onwers want to change the mindset of the people to better wolcome ads, they need to take more responsibility and ensure that only good ads are displayed where a user will find them helpful, at which point most people will not even mind tracking if it will end up making things better for them as well as saving money. (I have been using the internet since the early 90's, and I have never once seen an advertisement that directed me to a better deal for a product that I was searching for, or directed me to a product that would fit my needs, it is always something unrelated or a horrible deal from a shady looking site, or a misleading deal at a shady looking site)

 

[oj88]

No longer honor "Do not track" requests? How arrogant Facebook is! The lawmakers in Washington DC should make a law to force all the companies to honor the requests, so people's privacy can be protected.

 

[asterisx]

Too bad I can't check them out, I deleted my account a week back.

 

[cats_Paw]

Dont worry asterisx, your account is still safe and sound in the facebook servers .

Lucky for me I am so weird that even facebook dosent know what kind of ads to offer me.
I guess thats what ahppens when you dont have a specific personality and it keeps changeing from time to time.

 

[damianrobertjones]

Odd. For months, each time I log into facebook it presents me with ads for the Surface pro 2 so it's already been doing this for ages

 

[virtualban]

My solution: the Facebook account is logged in to one browser, along with other tracky-tracky accounts such as Youtube, and my actual internet activity goes on to another browser, where I am not logged in at all. Yes they can still probably track me, I know, but I am adding another layer to my privacy making it so they actively invade it instead of just collecting data. So far it is working fine.

 

[jldevoy]

So Facebook is now so big it can ignore the law?

 

[HEXiT]

this is why i use adblock (not adblock +) and ghostery on my opera browser... it blocks all this crapware.

 

[velocityg4]

Adblock won't prevent you from being tracked, which is the issue most people have. I really don't care what ads they attempt to display. My issue is that Facebook wants to collect information that they have no right to collect and do so without my permission.

So close your Facebook account. By accepting the user agreements to use Facebook you gave them your permission. I just don't get why people get so bent out of shape over Facebook and privacy. If you don't like it don't use it. I don't use Facebook simply because it is an idiotic waste of time.

 

[das_stig]

Simple solution, delete your account !

 

[Dr_Ron]

What happens if I open Facebook in its own browser (say, Safari), and do all of my internet surfing in another (say, Firefox)?

 

[haze4peace]

Ghostery's main focus is to not get tracked. I run it along with adblock and it works great.