Personalization Bad?

[Entice]

I'm referring specifically to customized advertisements and searches. A lot of the advertisements I see online now are geared towards my hobbies. That would be okay, but usually the products advertised are gimmicky or obviously crap quality. They look like they're designed to fool newcomers to the hobby and misinformed people. Where it makes sense I've also seen things endorsed by the bands that I listen to. While this makes sense from a marketing perspective I hate it personally. I've yet to see an ad that I'd actually want to click on. Like I said, they all seem designed to prey on the gullible.

Besides advertisements, I'm sure that you've all seen how searching for things on Google on your account vs. someone else's results in drastically different results. A few times I've used a library computer and found somethings that I'd never seen on mine even though I searched on that subject for literally hours.

I really wish that this bullshit would go away. I know that there's alternative search engines but what else can I do to stop this for myself? What are your thoughts?

[Lintire]

You can either have crappy advertisements that pathetically try to appeal to you or crappy advertisements that just don't give a shit. Personalization doesn't change the approach all that much.

[PIED3]

DuckDuckGo + Ghostery + Managing your cookies = A bit of anonymity.

Lazy mode: AdBlockPlus

[Otto]

At 11/5/12 08:32 PM, PIED3 wrote: DuckDuckGo + Ghostery + Managing your cookies = A bit of anonymity.

Lazy mode: AdBlockPlus

Yeah might have to start using these. Any time I type anything in I just get the Guardian webpage results.