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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

It works, and it's awful. I was looking for a present for my girlfriend, and she started seeing ads for the things I was looking at. About a week later, she was excited to show me her new purchase... and I'm scrambling to find a new gift idea. And now I'm paranoid -- it seems that the only way to stop this is to make a cash purchase in meatspace.

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Use Firefox and install uBlock Origin.

Your credit card company will still sell you out - but that does take a little more time, and will only include one item (rather than your entire browsing history) - meatspace cash is likely to help with that, but that’s much less of a problem in your context, I think.

I guess what really baffles me here is that a CC issuer is allowed to sell that data at all. Just. Wow.

I’m not trying to show off my European high horse, it’s not like we don’t have our own problems.

I use uBlock Origin and have an iphone. Unfortunately getting an adblocker is not as trivial, so inertia took over and I see ads on youtube app and I see ads when generally browsing the web on the iphone.

I notice that over the course of the last year either some really sophisticated newer algos are being put to use, or the collaboration and sharing of information between ad networks has been streamlined or increased in some manner because I'm being served ads that are creepily relevant. But in any case, the clues and data you leave behind, they're aplenty and quite suspect to being compromised and pounced on by ad networks. I think at this point if you wanna play tango, don't only just play defense (ad block), go on the offense as well and use adnauseam to pollute the profiles they've built of you.

I want to articulate as well the annoyance I feel when being served targeted ads: an ad, if it's related to my interests, even tangentially, it does grab me, and no doubt it probably compels me to make some decision one way or the other. Particularly, what gets me, I believe, is both the mental overload of being served ads of "relevant" things which will attract my attention too much and clutter my mind and distract me, and the sheer arrogance of pushing things it believes are relevant to my interests.

Adguard on iPhone works alright, hooks into the Safari blocker API. It's not as effective as a proper blocker on Android but it does improve the experience.

I also run my iOS devices over Wireguard when out and about to my home network which runs a pihole DNS server. Works surprisingly well and also catches ads in apps that way.

I took a picture of a friend's headphones on Snapchat that they had left in my car. In the next week I started seeing ads for that exact model, and they were distinctly identical. Not a fun user experience.

I have an iPhone with AdBlock Pro and I use NextDNS on all my devices. I almost never have any ad with NextDNS (paid version) so for me it works really well.

Sometimes it’s « annoying » because I click on links from articles and emails and they are blocked so I can choose to give up or disable NextDNS for this time but it’s my choice to be tracked

> have an iphone.

Well. I would postulate, that targeting iphone users would be numero uno priority at any self-respecting adtech company, since its a strong signal that marketing does in fact appeal to you more strongly and you likely have a lot of "spare change"...

Magic Lasso works well on iPhone/iPad, and so does Firefox Focus ; I have both installed, not sure how they divide the work, but I hardly ever see an ad in Safari or Firefox on iOS.

(They don’t stop YouTube from showing ads)

That won’t help with IP tracking. Buying presents from work sounds like a better option. Assuming we ever go back to work.

Ublock presumably will block the tracking code, if it's a third-party tracker.

Don't forget, a VPN, a new email account and a new phone number for "2fa". Also, where is it getting shipped? I can't receive packages at work. The "convenience" of shopping online is a legend from my youth

And by meatspace cash, it has to be pieces of paper and metal. If you use a debit card, the payment network knows anyway. And that might not even be good enough, if you carry your phone, they have your location at that time, so if someone really wanted to, it's probably not even hard to correlate the relatively rare cash purchase at that exact time and place and know it was you anyway.

Will Firefox and uBlock Origin prevent my IP address from being discovered? Sibling posts indicate this was probably accomplished via IP address targeting.

It will block all the 3rd parties that have to do anything with retargeting like Facebook, google, Adnexus, etc.

It’s unusual for sites to conspire directly and share data about IP (but that may change)

You could just buy a generic giftcard (like Amex one) and use it to make the actual purchase.

From the AmEx giftcard holders agreement:

> We also use Cardholder Information for marketing purposes and to conduct research and analysis. We may provide certain Cardholder Information to companies, including our affiliated companies that perform business operations or services, including marketing services, on our behalf. We may provide certain Cardholder Information to others outside of American Express as permitted by law, such as to government entities or other third parties in response to subpoenas. We may develop marketing programs and send you offer for products and services. We do not share customer addresses with other companies for them to market their own products and services.

https://assets.ctfassets.net/2x5vcnvffh4i/7it0e2T8WQ8fl4DmkL...

True. But if I buy a gift card with my regular CC, my CC record would have a line that says "purchased a gift card", but I don't think the actual gift card number would be there? And on the GC data there would be whatever I bought, but there's nothing linking the GC number to me, is it?

Yeah, I guess it depends on the level of data sharing and how good AmEx is at identifying its users based on other data points. Either way they are explicitly stating they're gathering data and passing it on in a much more standardized and defined form than they're willing to share with the consumer. Entities buying the data are probably throwing a lot of capital into joining datasets on a macro level.

Another comment mentions privacy.com as a solution. I've actually thought of creating a little terminal program to leverage it because it's a neat product and super cool they're maintaining a well-defined API for it.

All this ultimately bums me out though. Jumping through so many hoops to avoid this intrusive (and increasingly default) behavior can't be good for mental health. Plus where do you draw the line? When it's so widespread and largely unaccountable while everyone is saying it's up to the individual to avoid it, it really starts to feel rather quixotic trying to take measures to protect yourself.

You should suggest her to install uBlock Origin. Not just for that problem, in general it's good practice.

She's the IT expert of the house. I don't tell her what to install, or how to manage our network. If anything, I should put a pihole on my wishlist -- but even that wouldn't solve the problem that all of our metadata is correlated, and nothing blocks first-party tracking

> but even that wouldn't solve the problem that all of our metadata is correlated, and nothing blocks first-party tracking

That's true – nothing stops Google from knowing what you were looking for – but if your girlfriend was seeing ads, she wasn't using uBlock: because it blocks all first-party ads, too.

I think a much bigger problem here is that almost nobody uses Firefox for Mobile. Also, uBlock doesn't block ads across native apps (for instance, YouTube).

The solution is to use something like NextDNS as your DNS provider at OS or router level. At least on Android 9+ and most latest Linux distributions (via systemd-resolved) no additional software is required for it to work.

I don't see much of a difference between recommendations and ads, personally. And in this context, the distinction is moot. Ublock doesn't hide amazon recommendations, does it?

That's a good point. But in such a case, it's neither cross-site tracking, nor ads. It's just Amazon's recommendations based on a shared IP address.

uBlock can be used to block both, "Sponsored" products, and Amazon's recommendations. But it won't help when using Amazon's native apps – which many people probably do.

You either have to use a VPN to hide your IP address (Mullvad seems to be trusted even by Mozilla), or at least switch to your mobile 4G/5G connection when doing anything more privacy sensitive.

What stops Amazon from purchasing my data from my credit card company and other data brokers? Those recommendations are advertisements for products, and they are almost certainly informed by third-party data. You can't block cross-site tracking by any technological means when you're giving out your name, phone number, credit card, and home address -- you'd need to generate a whole new identity every time.

I agree that ublock, VPN, browser compartmentalization, etc are all really good practices. But they don't stop a first party from sharing everything they know about you, or embedding content derived from third-party brokers

> Those recommendations are advertisements for products, and they are almost certainly informed by third-party data.

The initial example you gave was almost certainly informed by your browsing behaviour, because that's when those product recommendations started.

I agree, that it has become impossible to completely avoid being tracked, but there are many tools that can significantly reduce the data leakage.

In case of credit cards, that's what virtual disposable debit cards, such as from Privacy.com, are for. I personally never use my physical credit card for online purchases.

Reminds me when I was getting relentlessly retargeted ads to purchase something. So when I did, I paid cash to keep the ads coming and mitigate any attempts at offline attribution.

I’m guessing the present wasn’t a PiHole or VPN?

Yet another reason why ad blocking is ethical.

How does purchasing in a physical store prevents them from using your tracked online activities to target you and others ?

It doesn't, as you ask, prevent tracking of my online behavior. That's a lost cause. Cash allows me to hide select purchases, as long as I don't do any comparison shopping online. And that prevents disclosure of gift purchases to my housemates.

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