Personalised adverts freaking me out

[Dragonfree]

So I'm watching Catch-up TV, a Channel 4 programme and it comes to the adverts. Suddenly I hear "Dragon, how would you like a personalised yogurt?"

WTAF????

That is seriously creepy. You can click on "Why am I seeing a personalised ad" and it explains that it's based on your profile and you can opt out of them (you bet I'm going to do that!!!).

ABIU to be freaked out by this? If this is where adverts are going I'm going to stop watching TV!

PS AIBU to be secretly excited that I actually have a topic for AIBU?

Me too

I haven't had that hank goodness but would not like it at all.

The way of the future. Facebook already tracks everything you do, it scares me shitless.

I also dislike the fact that there are cookies everywhere on your computer, so they start catering ads to your searches...

I've started using a private browser.

scared the shite out of me when i first heard it the other night as i was in the fridge getting milk for my millionth coffee

Eh? You don't have to accept cookies, that's why the EU made it so that sites have to place a massively irritating clearly visible warning on every site which asks you if you accept cookies or not. Just click no. Personally I downloaded a thing which automatically accepts them all because I do not give a shit that companies are tracking me, I don't find it sinister, it's interesting - I'd love to see what data they actually come up with.

But is this on channel 4's website or on some kind of set box TV thingy?

I don't mind the cookies and targeted ads either. I prefer to see ads for things that I might actually be interested in.

It's not magic. Why are you so freaked out!

Don't you have to register to access 4OD? So naturally they have your name. Nothing to be scared about.

It's all possible from cookies. I work in Ecommerce. We have incredibly vast volumes of data and information about users that we use to personalise and adapt messaging. The idea of it is to enhance a user experience and target audiences with content they are actually interested in. If something isn't performing; as in enough people don't like it (signalled by they don't click, interact etc) it will be turned off.

Something to also bear in mind is that we have massive volumes of data yet absolutely none of this could be used to trace an individual user. Data protection is paramount in most organisations.

You'll be tracked on 4od as you have given your name to sign up.

But if you say no to cookies you literally can do nothing on most website, they make it impossible.

When you register if you tell them your name is shitface is that how they would greet you!? misses point of thread

Then don't use the websites? I don't really understand this. You have no problem giving your name and address, and probably things like date of birth and phone number when you sign up to a service such as Sky or Hello Fresh or signing up to a gym or something.

Do you use a Tesco clubcard? Because they track what you buy too. And Tesco is broadly tracking trends of what sells and what doesn't sell whether you have a clubcard or not.

Of course websites are going to track what users do on them because they need to know what's working and what's not gathering much interest, the same as in a shop. If H&M was still selling clothes which were in fashion in the 90s, nobody would shop there. Businesses need to keep with the times. It just happens to be easier for websites to track the data of individuals. This is actually useful to you, because with this information they can make much more intelligent deductions about which parts of the site people use and how. For example, say that The Body Shop noticed that they are selling lots of their Strawberry scent but not much of their Lime or Mint scents. In a broad trends model, they might discontinue the lime and mint soaps and increase the strawberry line. But when tracking individual purchases linked to one person, they might find that people tend towards either liking sharp, fresh scents like lime and mint, or sweet sickly scents like strawberry. This would enable them to broaden their range to blueberry and cupcake scents alongside strawberry, while branching out the sharp/fresh line in that direction too.

If you don't like being tracked as an individual, then clear your site cookies regularly or use private browsing, or don't use websites. But you can't expect everything to just be provided as a free service without them collecting information on you, it doesn't work like that, and their service wouldn't be as good if they didn't track those things.

Mission, of course. What else would they call you if you've said that's your name. It's all automated.

KarateKitten Hackers could have sooooo much fun with this and a home made "change of details" program