Search engine 'leakage'

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Boac
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Search engine 'leakage'

#1 Post by Boac » Tue Jan 28, 2020 8:42 am

I am fascinated by the way things like advertising and Quora pick up on my internet searches. What is the mechanism? The same thing happens when you search for a 'local' electrician using a location - loads of 'hits' from NATIONAL agencies that pick up on the stated location and 'pretend' to be there. Clever!

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#2 Post by Pontius Navigator » Tue Jan 28, 2020 8:53 am

Same with TOP. No sooner do you think of contributing to a thread do appropriate ad pop up. Obviously via cookies but WTF are these cookies? If you refuse cookies you are often refused access to sites.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#3 Post by Boac » Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:05 am

That's a bit different - that is 'selling on' your activity. I do not think search engines actually do this (ok, I'm naive..) - I think it is some way of leeching the search data - and I wish I knew how! Very useful for SEO.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#4 Post by Slasher » Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:10 am

Put your smartphone in standby/locked. Speak near it saying a few things you wouldn’t normally talk about (eg cooking snails, the life cycle of the periwinkle, gay clubs etc). Then go online using the phone. See what you get even in the Youtube app.

I just avoid the Google element in everything wherever I can.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#5 Post by Pontius Navigator » Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:53 am

Quack quack went maybe better? 😀

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#6 Post by Boac » Tue Jan 28, 2020 10:04 am

"Put your smartphone in standby/locked. Speak near it saying a few things you wouldn’t normally talk about (eg cooking snails, the life cycle of the periwinkle, gay clubs etc). Then go online using the phone. See what you get even in the Youtube app."

Sounds as if you have some major problem with your phone, Slasher. Have you run a virus scan lately? How do you "go online" and are you saying that Google is involved?

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#7 Post by G-CPTN » Tue Jan 28, 2020 12:08 pm

My 'problem' is receiving emails from known contacts (that genuinely exist on my email address list) but are phishing invitations to open malicious scripts (I presume).

Actually it is only the names that are genuine, the sending addresses vary but are not the genuine ones.

All are intercepted as spam, but, seeing the names of the apparent senders (who are not regular communicants) is tempting (though I resist the temptation) to click and see what's 'news'.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#8 Post by Alisoncc » Tue Jan 28, 2020 10:40 pm

Sorry folks, but HTML v5.0 introduced a range of local storage options that added significantly to the old style cookies. These being localStorage and IndexedDB objects. I use the following to clean up

cookies.jpg

PS. HTML 5.0 are the "instructions" that are downloaded to your browser everytime you access a site page.

The options for above allow for a whitelist of sites on which it is not activated.
Rev Mother Bene Gesserit.

Sent from my PDP11/05 running RSX-11D via an ASR33 (TTY)

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#9 Post by Slasher » Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:42 am

Boac wrote:
Tue Jan 28, 2020 10:04 am
Sounds as if you have some major problem with your phone, Slasher. Have you run a virus scan lately? How do you "go online" and are you saying that Google is involved?
Nope no problem with my phone. I never use anything Google and have Adblock active anyway. I tried the experiment once and found ads exactly matching what i was yacking about. My search engine since is DDG in combo with Brave and VPN. Easier than the alternative of turning off the microphone and turning it back on when needed.

Since I use iPhone I originally thought it was an Apple thing, but in fact it was Google. Very invasive and insidious IMHO. You can draw your own conclusions sir.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#10 Post by Undried Plum » Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:58 am

A near neighbour invited me round to admire his new telly. It's huge and very clever. One of its tricks is that you can search YouChoob or NetFlix or BBC iPlayer or whatever by speaking into the remote control handset. You press the top-central tit and say whatever it is that you want to watch. It types a text subtitle at the bottom of the screen of whatever words you speak into the thing.

On the first evening we noticed that even if the button was not pressed, it sometimes texted the words it overheard in conversation. Even removing the batteries did not stop it from earwigging. Creepy.

He found that it has another microphone, hidden under the base of the telly and it transmits everything back to its server via the internet.

Next day he took it back to Curry's and got a full refund.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#11 Post by llondel » Wed Jan 29, 2020 3:23 am

This is why I have a dumb TV, although it's probably not possible to buy a large screen TV that isn't "smart" now.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#12 Post by Boac » Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:16 am

Slasher - you presumably have 24/7 internet and some communications app/apps on your phone. One or more of the apps must be constantly 'live' and feeding your mic into the internet. That is 'a problem', Sir.

My suggestion would be to turn off the comms apps one by one and find the leak. A simple trial. I would not want my conversations being broadcast to anyone that wanted to snoop!

You describe 'going on line' using the phone'. Is this a conscious act of switching on mobile or wireless data? If you just mean using the browser, the bad news is you are probably already 'on line' all the time.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#13 Post by Pontius Navigator » Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:26 am

G-CPTN wrote:
Tue Jan 28, 2020 12:08 pm
My 'problem' is receiving emails from known contacts (that genuinely exist on my email address list) but are phishing invitations to open malicious scripts (I presume).

Actually it is only the names that are genuine, the sending addresses vary but are not the genuine ones.

All are intercepted as spam, but, seeing the names of the apparent senders (who are not regular communicants) is tempting (though I resist the temptation) to click and see what's 'news'.
Worse than that were email from my address. That seems to have still now.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#14 Post by Pontius Navigator » Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:33 am

llondel wrote:
Wed Jan 29, 2020 3:23 am
This is why I have a dumb TV, although it's probably not possible to buy a large screen TV that isn't "smart" now.
Probably disconnect its internet access except when you use it.

Son in Law, always a sucker for the latest, bought a wide screen TV, huge it was, about 36 inch 20 years ago.

Then it was bigger with gesture control. If it is listening AND watching that is scary. Now he just has a picture TV. It displays art work if you are not watching a programme. It switches off when you leave the room (allegedly 😀)

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#15 Post by Boac » Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:39 am

This 'email' thing is ages old. It relies on one of your previous addressees (or even you!) admitting some sort of virus which transmits your address book to others. Simplest thing in the world then to 'forge' an email from that person to try and sucker you in.

When I have a spare few minutes I am going to experiment with my 'smart' TV, open a browser on it and utter some naughty words in its vicinity and see what happens..... AFAIK it does not have any form of mic on it. I'll also do the same with my 'smart' mobile phone.

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#16 Post by Pontius Navigator » Wed Jan 29, 2020 10:11 am

BOAC, try hand bags, perfume, ladies shoes

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#17 Post by Boac » Wed Jan 29, 2020 10:15 am

Whatever turns you on, PN.....

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#18 Post by unifoxos » Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:51 am

I think the whole idea of selling this way is a waste of time - you search for something, buy one, then get bombarded for ads for the thing you have just bought. The software doesn't seem to realise that I only want ONE immersion heater element, and when I've bought that its pointless advertising more, just a waste of bandwidth when there are other things they could be trying to sell me.

Even the bloody PVR is at it - set a programme to record and it starts asking me if I want to watch other "similar" programmes, often with no connection, and usually of no interest whatsoever.

Mind you, it's quite fun asking Alexa how to make a nuclear bomb or some such.
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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#19 Post by Slasher » Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:55 am

Boac wrote:
Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:16 am
Ok thanks mate. I’ll have a look. 👍🏻

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Re: Search engine 'leakage'

#20 Post by Pontius Navigator » Wed Jan 29, 2020 2:35 pm

Unifox, Amazon is the worst for that, and ' . . . bought this also bought . . . '

As you say, if you want it you'll look for it.

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