The advertising here is scaring me big time!

[jsanders]

I have been shopping for furniture in my home. I looked on overstock, and amazon for a closet organizer by John Louis Home, and a platform bed with drawers that are under the mattress. I was looking at a kitchen table with one of the chairs specifically shaped to fit in the corner of a room.

The Satellite guys advertising is now advertising all these exact products (same model numbers even), along with a specific frozen pizza that I buy which I have *never* bought online.

This is not even anonymous advertising. They seem to know who I am personally, what I buy at the grocery store, and what I buy online.

So, I've tried to figure this one out and I can't. I am hoping someone here can help.

The first and obvious thing I tried was to delete all of my doubleclick.com cookies, and then I went to doubleclick.com and got an opt-out cookie installed. I have opted out of double-click in the past, I was just making sure it was still opted out.

I deleted all of the overstock.com cookies.
I deleted all of the amazon.com cookies.
I deleted all of the Satellite Guys cookies.
I deleted all of the cookies that had "ad" in the name.

i set my Safari browser settings to not accept cookies from 3rd parties, but only for sites I visit directly.

I am still getting these very specifically targeted ads with Satellite Guys. In fact, there is one in the Sponsored Links right now.

Nothing I do will get rid of this behavior. I went on another computer, deleted all cookies, and went to Overstock.com just to see if there were any cookies left behind that I missed. I didn't miss any. I successfully deleted all of the overstock cookies.

Yet, I still am getting these advertisements which are way to specific to be for anyone but me.

I am aware that surfing behavior is being monitored for marketing, but the marketeers have to know that doing this will freak out their audience such that I will never buy any of these links, and it will only make me want to stop their monitoring.

I have no problem with them doing that, but only if I understand how they do it and how to opt out of it. I don't understand how to stop it.

How do I stop it? This is too much! "They" have gone too far with this.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I don't know how they work, but check out this link from our Privacy Policy which lets you Opt Out of those behavioral ads.

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

 

[mike123abc]

It is big business on the internet to cross reference sites you visit with cookies. Companies like Google pay places like here to place ads, but they also pay other sites you visit for information. They do it anonymously by giving your computer a cookie identifier.

The ability to match ads to a viewer is what makes Google the real money. Advertisers advertise with Google because they know that it is more likely their ad is being shown to someone that is interested in what they are selling.