I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

--
Michael Chare

On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:44:01 +0100, "Michael Chare"
wrote:

I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

Its just targetted adverts set off by a cookie in your machine.
Useyour hosts file to ground them completely.

On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:44:01 +0100, "Michael Chare"
wrote:

I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

I've noticed the same with Screwfix - even flashing up ads for
particular items, such as flux, that I'd been looking at.

--
Frank Erskine

"Ericp" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:44:01 +0100, "Michael Chare"
wrote:

I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

Its just targetted adverts set off by a cookie in your machine.
Useyour hosts file to ground them completely.


Maplin also now offer me the 'opportunity' to recommend via Facebook and
they have correctly found my profile.

Peter

In article , Michael
Chare writes
I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

Change to a browser that can be set to deletes cookies on closing:
Maxthon, Opera, Firefox (I think).
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

On 21 Oct, 01:44, "Michael Chare"
wrote:
I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

....and the millions of other sites that use the 'Google Display
Network'.

It's been in operation since March 2009 so I am surprised you've only
just spotted it now. What happens is that any site that purchases or
shows Google ads becomes a part of this network such that your
browsing habits can be tracked by Google between sites using a Google
cookie (i.e. not a cookie from the site you visited). Analysis of
these habits allow them (Google) to target ads at you on any site you
subsequently visit that is a part of their network.

Mathew

On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:39:53 +0100, fred wrote:

Change to a browser that can be set to deletes cookies on closing:
Maxthon, Opera, Firefox (I think).

IE can as well, at least that is what SWMBO'd says she has her
version of IE set to, along with history and I think cached files.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"fred" wrote in message ...
In article , Michael
Chare writes
I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

Change to a browser that can be set to deletes cookies on closing:
Maxthon, Opera, Firefox (I think).

That's a bit of a PITA if you then have to manually enter your username and
password into every online forum that you subscribe to

tim


--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

In article o.uk, Dave
Liquorice writes
On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:39:53 +0100, fred wrote:

Change to a browser that can be set to deletes cookies on closing:
Maxthon, Opera, Firefox (I think).

IE can as well, at least that is what SWMBO'd says she has her
version of IE set to, along with history and I think cached files.

Ah, I'm out of date, my version doesn't do that.

Latest version is on a machine I look after and seems slow and bloated.

Maxthon never seems as slow but is (was?) an IE shell.

Anyway, principle is the same, lose the cookies, lose the tracking.
Well, maybe not the Flash .sol files but that's another story.
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

fred wrote:


Anyway, principle is the same, lose the cookies, lose the tracking.
Well, maybe not the Flash .sol files but that's another story.

Easily fixed in Firefox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/

In article , tim....
writes

"fred" wrote in message ...
In article ,
Michael
Chare writes
I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

Change to a browser that can be set to deletes cookies on closing:
Maxthon, Opera, Firefox (I think).

That's a bit of a PITA if you then have to manually enter your username and
password into every online forum that you subscribe to

For me it's a price worth paying, and fred's a nice short name ;-)
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

"Mathew Newton" wrote in message
...
On 21 Oct, 01:44, "Michael Chare"
wrote:
I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!

...and the millions of other sites that use the 'Google Display
Network'.

It's been in operation since March 2009 so I am surprised you've only
just spotted it now. What happens is that any site that purchases or
shows Google ads becomes a part of this network such that your
browsing habits can be tracked by Google between sites using a Google
cookie (i.e. not a cookie from the site you visited). Analysis of
these habits allow them (Google) to target ads at you on any site you
subsequently visit that is a part of their network.

Thank you, I was thinking that perhaps Halfords had set the cookie when I
visited their site.

FWIW I actually bought these items from a site called www.toolstoday.co.uk
which, on the particular items I wanted to buy, were offering very
competitive prices.


--
Michael Chare

In article , Dave Osborne
writes
fred wrote:


Anyway, principle is the same, lose the cookies, lose the tracking.
Well, maybe not the Flash .sol files but that's another story.

Easily fixed in Firefox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/

Thanks.

If anyone still knows how to create a batch file and copy it to their
startup, this should do the job too:

RMDIR /S /Q "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application
Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects"
RMDIR /S /Q "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application
Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys"

--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

On 21 Oct, 11:53, "Michael Chare"
wrote:

Thank you, I was thinking that perhaps Halfords had set the cookie when I
visited their site.

They effectively are insofar that they are acting as the vehicle for
Google to do it. In return they get their ads featured on other sites.

Mathew

On 21/10/2010 02:44, Michael Chare wrote:
I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!


If you don't like internet adverts just use the Firefox browser with the
AdBlock add-on. Kills 99.9% of adverts dead. It is very rare I see any
adverts on the internet - unless I happen to use Internet Explorer then
it is full of annoying crap. The choice is yours. Personally I don't
like to see ads and I prefer my browsing to be fast by not slowed down
by downloading all these extra unwanted advert graphics.

--
David in Normandy.
To e-mail you must include the password FROG on the
subject line, or it will be automatically deleted
by a filter and not reach my inbox.

In article , Huge
writes
On 2010-10-21, David in Normandy wrote:
On 21/10/2010 02:44, Michael Chare wrote:
I looked at the Halfords web site to see the price of trolley jacks and
torque wrenches.

Twice now when I have visited other web sites, which carry advertising,
adverts for these two products have appeared.

It strikes me that the chances of this happening by random are somewhat
small.

I must remember to avoid the Halfords website!


If you don't like internet adverts just use the Firefox browser with the
AdBlock add-on. Kills 99.9% of adverts dead.

What he said.

If you add "BetterPrivacy" to deleted LSO Cookies, plus Flashblock so
you can choose whether to run Flash animations, that helps, too. Oh,
and set the Firefox option not to run animated GIFs.

I used to run NoScript as well, but so much stuff didn't work, I gave
up with that one.

I would use Firefox as my default if it didn't phone home every time it
starts up. It may be just "checking for updates" but I want to control
exactly what apps on my machine are allowed to do and when, and there is
no option to disable this behaviour..

Of course, none of this helps in the face of this;

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

That's useful, thank you.
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

In article , says...

I would use Firefox as my default if it didn't phone home every time
it
starts up. It may be just "checking for updates" but I want to control
exactly what apps on my machine are allowed to do and when, and there is
no option to disable this behaviour..


In Firefox, go to Tools/Options/Updates

Untick all the boxes under 'Automatically check for updates to:'
(Firefox; Add-ons; Search Engines)

Are you suggesting that this doesn't work?

--

Terry

In article , Terry Casey
writes
In article , says...

I would use Firefox as my default if it didn't phone home every time
it
starts up. It may be just "checking for updates" but I want to control
exactly what apps on my machine are allowed to do and when, and there is
no option to disable this behaviour..


In Firefox, go to Tools/Options/Updates

Untick all the boxes under 'Automatically check for updates to:'
(Firefox; Add-ons; Search Engines)

All these are unticked.

Are you suggesting that this doesn't work?

I don't know if the comms are an update check but it certainly still
tries to access the internet at startup.

It's been a while but I recall having sniffed the packets sent at
startup in the past and they went to a mozilla server. I didn't go any
deeper than that.
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********