Im starting to get worried.

[Taffimai]

I once found the personalised adds helpful. I wanted to know about prices for those metal garage/shed things that you buy in pieces and assemble in your garden, and did a search for them. Lo and behold, helpy addbot showered me with amazon and e-bay links for an entire week that had better deals for the same general product. I now have a good idea what I can expect to spend, and where to find it.

I like that a lot better than, for example, youtube adds for products I have no interest in whatsoever and that only apply to me because "you live in country X, this company sells there, so presto!" I wish I could fill out a survey that I could trust them to stick to. Nothing but Old Spice, '90s Diet Coke commercials and film previews, ahhh!

All kidding aside, I find myself becoming strangely compulsive about avoiding the adds. A single note and the volume goes down and I go to another tab. Even the ones that might interest me don't get a chance to play anymore. Which is a pity, because I don't watch tv, rarely listen to the radio, and get my news from add-free sites, so cultural events in my area, new books, films or promotions for products that I would actually like to be told about just don't have any way to enter my life other than the internet.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Which is a pity, because I don't watch tv, rarely listen to the radio, and get my news from add-free sites, so cultural events in my area, new books, films or promotions for products that I would actually like to be told about just don't have any way to enter my life other than the internet.

To be honest, I get most of my current events news from the random news-titled spam threads in the roleplaying games forum. And most of the rest I get from tumblr.

[Gadora]

Speaking of evil targeted spam, Yahoo is now delivering this straight to your inbox. They've had full-screen commercials on their login page for years, and banner ads for even longer, but now they're sending promotional emails to the top of the queue.

Worse yet, they're instantly updated to reflect your email activity. I don't even have to send an email; all I have to do is search my inbox for "Hazelwood"--the name of an NPC in my last campaign--and along with the search results I get a Yahoo-generated email offering to find colleges in Hazelwood, NC.

I really, really hate Yahoo. But they're all evil.

And not just "bad," but....

Spoiler

Show

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!!!!!!!

Isn't Google currently being sued for just that sort of thing?

Yes.

*waves*



It's not that I like Yahoo, I hate it. There's just nothing I can do about it right now.

That's your uncle talking.

[JustSomeGuy]

Kinda funny:

We bought a 2nd hand laptop a while back, and since then i am pretty much always going to get 'mature dating uk' ads, while she gets a variety along the lines of 'hot young guys in your area'. If we specifically google something, the ads will change to reflect that, but after a few days back they go.

I am 30, the wife is 28. I feel discriminated against (which the wife find hilarious).