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Comment by droz | Hacker News Reader

Couple years back, I spent a few weeks looking through different jewelry sites for a necklace for my girlfriend.

During this time, I let my girlfriend borrow my laptop one night. Each site that she visited was riddled with ads for engagement rings.

Next thing I know, she's giving me the twenty questions about why I'm looking at engagement rings.

Some things need to be kept private even if they are benign.

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Yea, that's going to continue to be the case until someone (cough us, cough) figures out that what you look at or buy on one occasion might not actually be something you're interested in. Specifically speaking of //items//, this is really a huge issue that is so huge that it's almost become laughable in the sense that nearly all the recommendations via "machine learning" (Collaborative Filtering, Trust Systems, etc) nowadays end up being so tainted that they are worthless - to you, and to the companies spitting them out. I call it "Recommendation Blindness" (copyright 2008...20% on usage...etc...etc..sue you..etc.....I'm just kidding of course).

That's why the FSM gave us private browsing modes

And lo, the FSM didst claim it wasn't just for teh pronz. And the people did laugh. And wink. And nudge each other.

Until it was too late. Until your spam filter thought it wasn't spam. And on that day, the privacy geeks didth retort: "told ya so."

So, did you get engaged :)?

oh shit. You make a good point sir.

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