I would wager that you have been dismayed to see an advertisement targeting you very shortly after you searched for similar products. Maybe the ads showed up in Facebook. Maybe they showed up on a completely unrelated website. This practice goes by several names: targeted advertising, targeted marketing, and remarketing to name a few. It has happened to me, of course. For instance, I was on a news website and saw ads for an amplifier that I had just looked at on sweetwater.com.
I got two messages today which nudged me to tell you how I got rid of all of the remarketing in my life. One friend wrote,
Targeted marketing resulting from data gathering of MANY types is so prolific that everyone is impacted. I have received targeted Facebook ads for items I was shopping for on-line within hours. It’s shocking at times.
Another wrote,
It’s amazing how Google Play store just decided to recommend privacy communication apps to me after your texts.
How did I block all of the targeted ads?
- I switched my web browser from Chrome to Firefox.
- I installed the Privacy Badger browser plugin.
- I switched from Google Search to DuckDuckGo.
That did it. Total cost: $0.00 and under an hour of my time.
Following are more details but that is the whole recipe.
Switch to Firefox
Google’s Chrome browser and Microsoft’s Edge browser each do phenomenally well at harvesting information about what you do on the web. Google and Microsoft make a lot of money selling that info about you to advertisers. Here is one example how it works.
- I visited sweetwater.com and looked at the product page for an amplifier.
- Sweetwater.com sent a message to Google that I was interested in that amplifier.
- I visited a news website. That website sent a query to Google for an ad to place on the page.
- Google married sweetwater.com’s message to the news site’s query, dived into the pool of ads that Sweetwater had purchased, and sent one touting the specific amp that I had seen just a little while earlier.
Switching browsers took about half an hour and was the most involved of the steps in my privacy recipe. I downloaded and installed Firefox on my computer. I also installed the Android version of Firefox from the Google Play Store on my phone.
I made Firefox the default browser on my computer. I also made it the default browser on my phone.
Within Firefox, I created a Mozilla account by clicking on the hamburger menu in the top right corner of a browser window. By having Firefox on my computer and Firefox on my phone both logged into the account, my bookmarks stay synchronized across both devices. I can also move tabs from my phone to my computer and vice versa.
Finally, I exported my bookmarks from Chrome and imported them into Firefox.
Install the Privacy Badger Plugin
The Privacy Badger website says it best:
Privacy Badger is a browser extension that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web. If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser. To the advertiser, it’s like you suddenly disappeared.
Among other things, Privacy Badger blocks the infamous Facebook pixels so Facebook no longer knows every site that you visit, even when you are not logged into Facebook.
Installing it was super quick.
I visited the Privacy Badger website and clicked the “Add to Firefox” button. It installed in seconds. There were no settings to set. It just worked.
Just for good measure, I opened Chrome and returned to the website and clicked the “Add to Chrome” button.
Switch to DuckDuckGo Search
It will not surprise you to know that Google tracks everything you type into Google Search (even if you do not hit Enter). It may surprise you to know that Google tracks everything you click within Google Search. On the other hand DuckDuckGo tracks nothing about you and reports nothing to anyone else. From DuckDuckGo’s website:
Searching the web with DuckDuckGo Search is completely anonymous; we simply never save or share any personal information that could tie you back to your searches, as explained in our strict privacy policy. For example, we don’t store IP addresses or any other unique identifiers in search logs. As a result, we don’t even have the ability to create search histories or data profiles for any individual. It’s privacy by design.
Switching on the computer was trivial. In Firefox’s settings, I clicked Search and changed the default search engine to DuckDuckGo. Easy peasy.
Switching on my phone was only slightly more involved. I installed the Android DuckDuckGo Private Browser from the Google Play Store. Then I added a DuckDuckGo search widget to my home screen. Now I use that search widget instead of Google’s widget.
That was it. I still see ads, of course, but they are generic ads and not targeted based on what I viewed on the web.
Thanks for the tips.
Have a Great Day.
dave
Fascinating history of the ads on the web. I had always wondered how right after searching for something or buying something, that same something appeared in an ad next to my email!!!!
I use NoScript rather than Privacy Badger. I can’t say for sure which one is better: both break certain websites I visit. I had even more trouble when I tried using them together.
I hope you don’t mind me asking you one of the tough questions. Your site has scripts that reference 7 other sites. Have you vetted them?
Fair question. Honestly, I have been waiting for several years for someone to ask me about that. 🙂 This site runs on WordPress and the theme is built from the Genesis framework. I use the HubSpot plugin to run the sign-up-for-my-mailing-list forms. I trust all of these to do what they should and not contain any nefarious code.
Years ago, I removed the Google Analytics tracking scripts and did not replace them with any other analytics.
To answer your question specifically, there are nine scripts on the home page:
– 1 script is part of WordPress and it displays emojis, served by my own server
– 1 script is a minimized version of JQuery, served by Google
– 1 script is a responsive menu, part of the theme and served by my own server
– 6 scripts come from HubSpot to run its form
You may occasionally find a page with additional scripts, like photo slideshows from SmugMug. I use SmugMug for my online photo gallery.
HubSpot does collect a lot of info and companies do use it for remarketing. I installed the plugin years ago when I was a HubSpot partner. I do not do anything with the information that it collects (names and email addresses, IP addresses, and details about the web browser). HubSpot feeds the names and email addresses into MailChimp (my mailing list provider). Neither company shares any of that info with any third parties since I do not deal with any advertisers.
One of these days, I need to remove HubSpot and replace it with something that does not collect as much information. I have just been lazy about it.
I was using these tools on my phone, but took the time today to set them up on my desktop. Thanks, Art, for the kick in the butt.
Ed