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 Home > FAQs, Tips & Tricks > You'd be amazed what they know |
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As you surf around the miriad of sites on the 'Net, information about your
location, your machine, your ISP and much more is known. Sometimes,
this isn't such a bad thing, and most sites use this information to provide you
with a better browsing experience.
Sites can take that Browser String and determine some key information from it:
Other values exposed by your browser include:
Update: Shortly after writing this, I started to see my first batch of 'pop-under' adverts. These are basically ads that appear in a separate window from the main browser window, however they are launched in such a way that the new window does not jump up on front; rather they appear behind. What this means is, you often don't realise the advert has appeared until you close the browser window, when you suddenly find an advert on your desktop. Further Update: I saw an interesting link in today's Lockergnome  about
a site that collects links to the "Opt-out" pages of the more annoying banner advert
companies, specifically those who serve up Pop-up ads. You can find the page here .
However, the reason I mention banners in this 'article' is that the companies that serve up these adverts are the people who probably know the most about you... Have you ever noticed how banner are often advertising goods in your local currency? They know where you live. Notice how they promote hardware relevant to your machine (i.e. PC users don't get bombarded with Mac adverts)? They know what you're running. How? You can see from the information retrieved at the top of this article, most of this information is very easy to obtain. Each time you visit a site that contains banners, a request is sent from your machine to the banner advertisers servers to pull down an advert. They use the information above to tailor an advert that's relevant to you. This isn't such a bad thing; I personally don't want to see adverts in dollars if the same product is available here in the U.K. in Sterling. However, the scary bit is that they also seem to keep track of which site you were visting when the advert was requested. The companies that serve up these adverts write cookies on your machine, and therefore can identify you each time they get a chance to show you another banner. For example, let's say you want to buy a new PC and so you visit a load of manufacturer's sites. If those manufacturers all have banner ads (from the same ad company), the ad company will 'see' you visiting "Hardware Vendor 1", "Hardware Vendor 2", "Hardware Review Site 1", etc. and see a pattern in your browsing habit. They will then start to serve up ads from PC manufacturers - targeting you based on your browsing habits. Update: With the release of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft added some cookie management features to the browser. By default, the level of security they set means that cookies can only be accepted from servers with the same URL as the page you're viewing. What this means is, if you go to www.hardwarevendor1.com, the banner companies attempts to update their cookie will fail, because it originates from ads.intrusiveadverts.com. You'll still see the advert, but they won't be able to maintain their profile of your habits. Kudos to Microsoft, I think. Now, there's a rare phrase...
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