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Old 07-06-2012, 11:29 AM   #9
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
All the browsers and ISPs have tracking code in them to find out what websites an individual visits. This data is then provided to advertisers so they can target specific markets. So if you go to boating sites a lot you will get boating ads displayed on the forums and other sites you visit that use ads as an income generator. If you go to car sites you will get automotive ads and so forth. As it was explained to me by a co-worker's son who works for Google writing code for applications like this you can't really turn it off because it works outside your computer. While the settings on your own computer may or may not affect the display of ads, the tracking of what you visit and then the targeting of ad categories to match your visits occurs at the browser or ISP level, not at your computer's level.

So regardless of your computer's settings, the moment you visit a URL this data is noted at Google or Firefox or whoever and the ad targeting process is activated.

This is nothing new, it's just getting more sophisticated.
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