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Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

Well, in spite of the silliness of those commercials, lately I have been creeped out when I start getting blasted by adverts from all over the web based on something I recently searched on. Often times, I'll quickly look up something / fact check what I've read in an article (most recently was "longevity insurance" annuities and reverse mortgages), and now I'm getting a whole bunch of ads aimed at older / retired people on many sites that I visit. And these ads have nothing to do with me, except that I happened to fact-check something a couple times. Kind of makes me want to re-think any of my web searches, and do them in a private browsing window.

I can't really say why this bothers me -- maybe it is because I know that their ad matching algorithm gave inaccurate results (so it grates on my OCD, maybe?), or maybe it just feels like I'm being stalked by people trying to sell me something.

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I know what you mean. It's the retargeting ads that bother me, mostly because I get so many for something I actually bought, not just something I went to their site, considered, and then didn't buy. Leave me alone now! (I'm looking at you, zappos)

For google ads, at least, you can click the "ad choices" button on the ad and clear the things it guesses about you (you can obviously also just delete the doubleclick cookie). I actually don't mind doubleclick ads so much (don't burn me at the stake) since they can't combine it with your google account information and I have depended on them for my source of income in the past, so I do wish they had a button for "clear retargeting ads" but left all the other demographic info in place.

Lately, everytime I search for something on Amazon, it will appear on other websites as well. It is probably Amazon doing it but it is annoying, to the point where I know log into Amazon using private mode.

> lately I have been creeped out when I start getting blasted by adverts from all over the web based on something I recently searched on.

I was recently really confused as to why I was seeing so many ads for young women's clothing. I'm a 28 year old man. Then I realized I read an article on HN about Nasty Gal's great successes.

So very very creepy.

Is there a way to turn that off? I don't mind the adwords ads since they sometimes help me find what I am looking for. They are useless, though, if they display ads for things I've searched for in the past.

If you're on Chrome (in which case there will be no lasting victories, only small ones), there's this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iba-opt-out-by-goo...

This looks like it does the same thing for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/targeted-adve...

There may be IBA opt-out extensions for other browsers. AFAICT all they do is permanently block the DoubleClick and related cookies.

This, in combination with Adblock Plus, seems to do the job for me. There are a lot of people complaining that the extensions don't work, but they probably do not realize that these only block the collection of new data tied to your browsing history, and not the display of the ads themselves, which is what you need Adblock Plus for.

One of my friends now gets large numbers of ads for schizophrenia medication.

You have to wonder how these kinds of things happen. Or perhaps Google knows something we don't...

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