Who is tracking you?
June 9th, 2009 by John Dilbeck
I am not one of those people who is obsessed with privacy. In fact, my life is pretty much an open book since I started building websites and blogging.
Still, I was annoyed when I discovered some time back that Google was tracking my browsing on any site that had Adsense ads. That’s one reason I removed those ads from this blog, although not from all of my sites.
We talked about it here: I will not participate in Google’s interest-based advertising.
At the time, I didn’t want to be part of the problem. Later, I learned that Google Adsense ads would still leave cookies and maybe web beacons from any of their ads, whether or not I opted out of interest-based advertising.
Today, I read an interesting article on the New York Times…
Google Is Top Tracker of Surfers in Study
It seems that my decision to opt out of interest-based advertising on Adsense ads is more like tilting at windmills. It makes almost no difference in the grand scheme.
Sigh.
Act on your dream!
JD
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 8:03 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 9th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Hi John,
I actually believed that back when you wrote your first post, and yet I still decided to opt out, though I knew in the long run it would be fruitless.
However, something everyone can do is immediately delete all cookies after visiting Google. If you don’t use Google all that often, it’s not a big deal. However, if you do, and you like not having to put in passwords for all the other sites you visit again, just leave it alone.
Mitch´s last blog post..Smoke Not So Much
June 9th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Good morning, Mitch.
It looks like you were right.
I still believe that our individual efforts can make a difference, but I’m finding less evidence of that when we compare a few (hundred) (thousand) (million) individuals vs a globe spanning corporate giant.
I agree with you. For most people, if they don’t want to be tracked by Google and others, then deleting and/or blocking the cookies and web beacons is a good idea and probably won’t make much difference in their browsing experience.
However, for someone like me, who almost always has Google open in another tab and uses their webmaster tools, Adsense ads, and other things they offer, deleting Google cookies just is not a viable option.
BTW, I mentioned you in my latest blog post.
Act on your dream!
JD
June 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I’m the same as you, John. Now that I’m doing all this article writing, Google and I have become fast friends. So, I just deal with the cookies.
Mitch´s last blog post..SEO & Common Business Sense
June 12th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Have you ever visited the posts in my blog on privacy? I especially recommend those that have the most comments. Just click on Privacy under categories in the right sidebar.
Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Create a Successful Blog Based Business Part 1