Gotta love Facebook
Technical Article Contributor
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 10,511
Likes: 10
From: Under the flightpath of old ORD 22R
I certainly don't question that you wouldn't sell someone who owes you. The statement I made refers to internet providers. It costs a considerable amount of money to operate a web site that has a large amount of traffic. To assume that a site with the traffic that FB has, the amount of disk storage that is required, the processing power that is required, would be provided at no cost to the users, simply because they're "nice people" is naive to extreme! You must ask yourself why they would do it....<snip>...
You are correct, you are the product being sold.
Just like watching broadcast TV, the show is there to sell you something, infomercials are just blatant about it where 30 Rock is trying to hide it behind some jokes and a "And then comedy ensued" story line.
Why does a store give you a customer card to give you a discount ?
So they know what you are buying and can sell that data to advertisers, be it for mail campaigns or the coupons that are paid to be printed by the competing products to what you just bought.
FB sells ad space just like google or yahoo ( they have other revenue streams, that is why FB's revenue is a rounding error to Google ).
FB made something like 3.n B, with a profit of 1.n B, last reporting I saw on CNBC.
Piece had to do with the pending IPO and the valuation of the company based upon making 1.n B in profits ( PE was some stupid 90's pre dot com implosion 100:1 valuation ).
The continuation of the piece was on the privacy and how the data is being used for more directed advertising.
The same way the 4 major networks put shows over free airwaves, they sell ads is how FB makes money.
The ad space cost is starting to invert, where broadcast TV is getting money that has a general demographic that watches a given show, FB, Google, Yahoo ( and any others ) get paid to present 1 ad to one person, and the more accurate the demographic is, the more it is worth.
Adblock does nothing to help with hiding you from advertisers, it hides the ads from you.
Setting your browser to clear all data ( history, cookies, login info, etc ) each time you close it helps with reducing the accurate demographic info, but in the end there are other ways to track what you are doing on the internet, it is just a bit harder for those selling ad space to get to when it is done from a tracking where the IP address has been. Joe went on to to tell the urban legend about the dad surfing the net and getting diaper ads from some store, and he complained about it, found out it was his teen daughter that was surfing on another computer in the house using IP address sharing that caused it.
This is just what I have cobbled together from various pieces and articles on the topic, to form an opinion. When it comes down to it, unless you are living in the middle of Montana and don't have internet access to read this, you are being tracked much more than you think. Even if you are paying for access.
As for FB, I always had the thought that I am not a 12 year old, so I have no business being on there. This was an opinion that I developed at the start of FB, myspace and the other sites when old men on the service were only up to no good. It has changed drastically, but I have not changed my actions to follow it. The people I want to talk to have my number....
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Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 10,730
Likes: 42
From: Concord, NC
Look up Google Ad preferences manager.
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 43,530
Likes: 817
From: Joplin MO
By looking at your IP address, I know where you live.
Senior Member
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 253
Likes: 0
From: Big Sky Country, Montana
Hey Sscully, Look at my sig. I live in the middle of Montana, and they still track me! Well, maybe not quite the middle, more like South East Montana, but then... Of course I obviously do have Internet access. 
I certainly don't question that you wouldn't sell someone who owes you. The statement I made refers to internet providers. It costs a considerable amount of money to operate a web site that has a large amount of traffic. To assume that a site with the traffic that FB has, the amount of disk storage that is required, the processing power that is required, would be provided at no cost to the users, simply because they're "nice people" is naive to extreme! You must ask yourself why they would do it.
Selling your information is why. Tracking your every move so that companies that want to sell you something can figure out what you would buy is the primary thrust of this racket. That in itself would not be a problem. We are bombarded every day with ads. Why not target them to our likes? This tracking though, eventually leads to a pile of data that can provide a pretty complete picture of a person. By looking at your IP address, I know where you live. By watching everything you do, I could figure out your sex, age group, interests, and many other factors. When you make an online purchase, I have your complete shipping address, billing address, CC number and so on. I also have all the comments you made on my web site (FB). I know, you're going to say your financial transactions are encrypted, and you're right! But... Your information is shared with other companies by the companies involved with your transaction (including the banks). All I have to do is put it all together
I could go on, but I won't. I did some work for a company that did data mining. We took huge piles of computerized data and looked for patterns in it. To amuse ourselves while the computers were sorting and grouping, we would vie with each other to see how much personal information we could get on some poor random person. It was scary even for me!
What to do?
Close your account with FB. (see the link further up)
NEVER click on the "like" button! On ANY web site!
Avoid using Google for your searches. Use Startpage.com instead.
Stop using Internet Explorer. Install and use Firefox and add Ghostry and Adblocker to it.
Don't follow every link you see! Especially the ones that don't show where you're actually going. Like "Click here to see something cool!
Get rid of your gmail and/or Yahoo email accounts!
Don't reply to or send email to anyone who has gmail or yahoo accounts.
Backup your personal data and do a format and fresh install of your operating system to get rid of the (usually) huge bunch of tracking stuff on your machine.
There are other things but, unless you're as paranoid as I am, you can't disappear completely.
One more thing, unless you've done something really, really stupid, don't lose any sleep over it. You're just one person out of millions who are be watched.
Selling your information is why. Tracking your every move so that companies that want to sell you something can figure out what you would buy is the primary thrust of this racket. That in itself would not be a problem. We are bombarded every day with ads. Why not target them to our likes? This tracking though, eventually leads to a pile of data that can provide a pretty complete picture of a person. By looking at your IP address, I know where you live. By watching everything you do, I could figure out your sex, age group, interests, and many other factors. When you make an online purchase, I have your complete shipping address, billing address, CC number and so on. I also have all the comments you made on my web site (FB). I know, you're going to say your financial transactions are encrypted, and you're right! But... Your information is shared with other companies by the companies involved with your transaction (including the banks). All I have to do is put it all together
I could go on, but I won't. I did some work for a company that did data mining. We took huge piles of computerized data and looked for patterns in it. To amuse ourselves while the computers were sorting and grouping, we would vie with each other to see how much personal information we could get on some poor random person. It was scary even for me!
What to do?
Close your account with FB. (see the link further up)
NEVER click on the "like" button! On ANY web site!
Avoid using Google for your searches. Use Startpage.com instead.
Stop using Internet Explorer. Install and use Firefox and add Ghostry and Adblocker to it.
Don't follow every link you see! Especially the ones that don't show where you're actually going. Like "Click here to see something cool!
Get rid of your gmail and/or Yahoo email accounts!
Don't reply to or send email to anyone who has gmail or yahoo accounts.
Backup your personal data and do a format and fresh install of your operating system to get rid of the (usually) huge bunch of tracking stuff on your machine.
There are other things but, unless you're as paranoid as I am, you can't disappear completely.
One more thing, unless you've done something really, really stupid, don't lose any sleep over it. You're just one person out of millions who are be watched.
And IPs are not a way of tracking. Its just your ISPs gateway. I just looked up my IP and it has me in Atlanta, GA. MAC addresses are surefire ways to get tracked.
Technical Article Contributor
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 10,511
Likes: 10
From: Under the flightpath of old ORD 22R
Does not matter physically where your IP address is, it is the IP address that is being used to target ads. Same IP address doing surfing for XYZ product will produce ads for similar to XYZ or what companies use as ad criteria.
MAC addresses are ID's for the local segment, the moment you take 1 router hop, your MAC address is not in the datagram anymore.
Last edited by SSCULLY; Apr 10, 2012 at 06:51 PM. Reason: Type, no T in produce dummy