Something weird that I've noticed

[kohl]

Well if you're searching for something and someone you hold close to you walks in, if oyu change the webpage or oyu do this at night, trying to go through a proxy server then you probably know you're doing something wrong.

[Silvermink]

Well if you're searching for something and someone you hold close to you walks in, if oyu change the webpage or oyu do this at night, trying to go through a proxy server then you probably know you're doing something wrong.

There are people who enjoy privacy for its own sake.

[Selkit]

What Silvermink said. Until society is completely free of sexual, political or racial prejudice, you do not want to exist as a wholly open book, uncaring of what you look for, or what you do. I've had co-workers who had nothing but scorn for "nerd" activities, and would have ribbed me for something as stupid-simple as having Make Magazine on a browser window.

[Crassadon]

Selkit, maybe you could explain more about editing the host file to block advertisers. . ? I'm kind of interested :3

[Silvermink]

Selkit, maybe you could explain more about editing the host file to block advertisers. . ? I'm kind of interested :3

It's pretty simple. The hosts file is at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts in 64-bit Windows - it shouldn't be too hard with a little Googling to figure out where it is in any other OS.

The idea is that you map hostnames you don't want to retrieve anything from (e.g., advertising networks) to 127.0.0.1, which is your localhost and which will generally just time out, or return 404s if for some reason you're running a web server on port 80.

All you have to do to, for example, map sleazy.adnetwork.com and sketchymarketing.net to 127.0.0.1 is add a line like this to the file:

127.0.0.1 sleazy.adnetwork.com sketchymarketing.net

As for real hostnames to block, you'll probably want to check Google as Selkit suggested.

Personally I'd probably only use it against really egregious crap like ads that take over your screen, things that make noise, networks that engage in really creepy tracking, etc. I do visit quite a few sites that I like and which have relatively unobtrusive ads, and I like to continue supporting those - blocking ads via a host file will result in it not registering a hit so the hosting website won't get any credit for it. But hey, sometimes that's what you want.

[Pat The Fox]

This type of advertising has existed well before Google brought it to the online sphere. For example, if any of you have a club card from a local store or a Credit Card, your purchasing histories are being tracked, packaged and sold to marketing firms and as statistics for merchandisers.

This isn't to say that it is a great thing, just to more bring to light that the practice isn't something that Google created, they just have capitalized on it due to their position.

[Xen Garden]

Your Facebook also tracks what you do online too. I don't see advertisements because I use Ad Block and Ad Block Plus. No pop-ups, no advertisements, nothing. So I don't really worry about advertisements. And what I do online would probably bore people for the most part, since most of my time is spent on Facebook, and Youtube anyways.

[Silvermink]

This type of advertising has existed well before Google brought it to the online sphere. For example, if any of you have a club card from a local store or a Credit Card, your purchasing histories are being tracked, packaged and sold to marketing firms and as statistics for merchandisers.

That reminded me of this, from back in 2002.

Also, Facebook's total disregard for privacy is creepy as hell, but I still feel semi-obligated to use it to keep up with some people. Meh.