Are you being tracked?

Gene Howe · Post by **Gene Howe** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 10:58 am

Just installed a little gadget called "Do Not Track Plus" It stops tracking on all web sites. It also shows how many different tracking devices are stopped and who they are.
On every site I visit, there are at least 3 devices tracking me. Some have as many as 10. Shopsmith Forums has NONE!
I'm not at all computer savvy, but it seems that someone running this site is. Thank you, whomever you are!

JPG · Post by **JPG** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 11:11 am

Gene Howe wrote:Just installed a little gadget called "Do Not Track Plus" It stops tracking on all web sites. It also shows how many different tracking devices are stopped and who they are.
On every site I visit, there are at least 3 devices tracking me. Some have as many as 10. Shopsmith Forums has NONE!
I'm not at all computer savvy, but it seems that someone running this site is. Thank you, whomever you are!

Nice to see another dinosaur who knows that word.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 11:13 am

I don't think so. I have the "Do-Not-Track" option activated in Firefox.

Ed in Tampa · Post by **Ed in Tampa** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:01 pm

Do I care if someone is tracking where I go? What can they do with the info? Do they track me if I go to a notty site? Can they use it to blackmail me? What happens if I visit the Nazi's in America site do I get placed on a watch list? I would like to know what all this tracking does.

I mean if they follow everyone on the internet to every site during an average day they would probably have more info than they could sift through in a year.

Maybe the best thing is to go to pervert site, a terrorist site, a bomb making site, a Christian site, a sexual abuse awareness site, peace site, a greenpeace site and straight site and gay site, all on the same day. They will simple label you a schizophrenic and ignore everything else you do.

JPG · Post by **JPG** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:24 pm

Ed in Tampa wrote:Do I care if someone is tracking where I go? What can they do with the info? Do they track me if I go to a notty site? Can they use it to blackmail me? What happens if I visit the Nazi's in America site do I get placed on a watch list? I would like to know what all this tracking does.

I mean if they follow everyone on the internet to every site during an average day they would probably have more info than they could sift through in a year.

Maybe the best thing is to go to pervert site, a terrorist site, a bomb making site, a Christian site, a sexual abuse awareness site, peace site, a greenpeace site and straight site and gay site, all on the same day. They will simple label you a schizophrenic and ignore everything else you do.

'They' do not keep track. 'Their' servers do. You shall receive input as a result of de info harvested.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:37 pm

Ed in Tampa wrote:Do I care if someone is tracking where I go? What can they do with the info? Do they track me if I go to a notty site? Can they use it to blackmail me? What happens if I visit the Nazi's in America site do I get placed on a watch list? I would like to know what all this tracking does.

I mean if they follow everyone on the internet to every site during an average day they would probably have more info than they could sift through in a year.

Maybe the best thing is to go to pervert site, a terrorist site, a bomb making site, a Christian site, a sexual abuse awareness site, peace site, a greenpeace site and straight site and gay site, all on the same day. They will simple label you a schizophrenic and ignore everything else you do.

Knock your self out, Ed. Let it be known that I had concluded that you of all people on the forum would be bothered by the idea of being tracked. I guess I was dead wrong.

However, to answer your question, if you will pay attention to the advertisements that pop up on/along side of the web pages (while you are browsing) you will notice that they are related to products/companies that you have recently viewed.

That is what they are used for.

Ed in Tampa · Post by **Ed in Tampa** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 2:34 pm

dusty wrote:Knock your self out, Ed. Let it me known that I had concluded that you of all people on the forum would be bothered by the idea of being tracked. I guess I was dead wrong.

However, to answer your question, if you will pay attention to the advertisements that pop up on/along side of the web pages (while you are browsing) you will notice that they are related to products/companies that you have recently viewed.

That is what they are used for.

Ah That's why I have never known or thought about this. I don't go to sites that have ads connected to them. If I go to a site that has a bunch of junk I consider the site a bunch of junk. I figure any site that is worth while won't have to use advertising to stay alive. It is like Yahoo I just don't go there and you know what, there is still life without it.

But now I have a great idea I will visit lots of hunting and sites dealing with meat and then go to Peta site and see how much turmoil advertising trophy hunting on a Peta site can cause.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 2:39 pm

Ed in Tampa wrote:Ah That's why I have never known or thought about this. I don't go to sites that have ads connected to them. If I go to a site that has a bunch of junk I consider the site a bunch of junk. I figure any site that is worth while won't have to use advertising to stay alive. It is like Yahoo I just don't go there and you know what, there is still life without it.

But now I have a great idea I will visit lots of hunting and sites dealing with meat and then go to Peta site and see how much turmoil advertising trophy hunting on a Peta site can cause.

Like I said, Ed, knock your self out. I don't think it works that way. The advertising folks in conjunction with their IT folks are much to smart for that maneuver.

fredsheldon · Post by **fredsheldon** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 2:56 pm

I signed on to facebook yesterday and an ad popped up from amazon.com for a mandrel saver just like the one I was looking at the day before on the Penn State site. That's why they are tracking where you go. There's a ton of money to be made with targeted marketing I suspect.

heathicus · Post by **heathicus** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:13 pm

What sites do you go to that don't have advertising??

But it's not just advertising. It's analytics. The most popular being google-analytics. And yes, Shopsmith.com uses it too. This collects data on web users - what operating system you have (and what version of it), what browser you are using (and what version of it), if you have Java or Flash installed, what page you entered the website at (the main home page, or another page buried deeper in the site), all the pages you visited and how long you spent on each one, how you got to the web site (did you follow a link from another web site, and what web site was that, or did you use a search engine and what search terms did you use to find the site, or did you not seem to come from anywhere meaning you have the site bookmarked or typed the address in manually), what country you are in, and your IP address, etc.

For web developers, knowing this kind of information about your visitors is priceless and aids them greatly in how they develop and maintain a web site.

The issue I have with this is that all the data is collected by Google. Google may not link the data to me personally, but maybe they do. Do they cross-reference users across all the sites they collect analytic information for? If I'm logged in to my Gmail account, is all this analytic data they collect about me from all the web sites I go to being linked to my Google account and therefore me personally? Maybe Google is just using this to tailor advertising to my interests, but... what if they could do more than that? I don't know. And because I don't really know, because I didn't explicitly tell them what information about me they could have and I don't have control over it once they get it, I block google-analytics and other such services. I do this with the "NoScript" plugin for Firefox.