Tracking my internet usage

[moonshadow]

No matter what website I go to.... over the last several months, all of the ads are trying to sell me dresses and skirts.....


Hummm.........

I have to admit, some of them are pretty cool.... I've been known to actually click a couple....

Anyone have any tries with Rose-gal? I've browsed their selection, lots of cool styles in skirts. Watch for Asian sizes, but some of them are larger.

[skirted_in_SF]

No matter what website I go to.... over the last several months, all of the ads are trying to sell me dresses and skirts.....

Moon - you are in desperate need of a good ad blocker.

I've been known to actually click a couple....

That was your first mistake.
I must admit GMail's paid promotions on my promotions tab are about skid steer loaders, other tractors & accessories just because I've talked a few times with my brother about his New Holland tractor. I also get some paid promotions for women's clothing probably based on the invited promotions and order receipts I receive.

[moonshadow]

That was your first mistake.

Maybe, but I don't think it's malware. But if it is, the only thing they're learning about me is I like to wear skirts.... so I'm not sure what they hope to accomplish.

And I'd never place an order off an internet ad.

[skirtingtoday]

I have noticed the preponderance of skirts on ads - but I think it is just "cookies" downloaded onto your hard drive when trawling the Internet. Like you I don't think it is malware but if you do wish to check that, you could try running malwarebytes (at https://www.malwarebytes.org/ ). It''s free though they will persist and try and get you to buy their premier version (which runs scans and updates automatically).

Another way is simply to remove the ads could be to delete the cookie folder on your hard drive (they aren't required as they are just flags for particular outlets so they know you have visited their sites - and how often)

[skirtyscot]

I don't mind all the ads for skirts. They might show me something I would like to buy.

[moonshadow]

I don't mind all the ads for skirts. They might show me something I would like to buy.

That's kind of the way I feel. What can I say... the ads work. It makes me want to buy a dress!

[crfriend]

What can I say... the ads work. It makes me want to buy a dress!

Ads and spam work -- and make money for those who deploy them. If everybody ignored adverts the problem would go away.

I am openly honest about not just being advertising-hostile, but if having a "message" shoved in my face often enough I can also get hostile to the entity deploying such tactics. This is why I tend to run my browsers with cookies turned off, frequently purge my browsing history, and go so far as to maintain a custom DNS at home that actively blocks many advertising source-sites and sites of outright evil like doubleclick.net and its affiliates.

I am a strong believer in voting with one's wallet, and if an organisation torques me off with its behaviour I have no problem at all going to the competition.

[moonshadow]

Ads and spam work -- and make money for those who deploy them. If everybody ignored adverts the problem would go away.

I am openly honest about not just being advertising-hostile, but if having a "message" shoved in my face often enough I can also get hostile to the entity deploying such tactics. This is why I tend to run my browsers with cookies turned off, frequently purge my browsing history, and go so far as to maintain a custom DNS at home that actively blocks many advertising source-sites and sites of outright evil like doubleclick.net and its affiliates.

Well, I agree that I don't like very aggressive or annoying advertising, and I believe that an advertiser has to be careful as to not run ads to have the exact effect you described, that being running everyone off. A prime example of this is the proliferation of the "pop up" ad that got REALLY annoying a while back. So much so that browsers finally came built in with pop up blockers, and now these days, most websites do not run pop up ads because they realize nobody will see them anyway.

Flash, while a really cool plug in, that has made the use of the internet VERY interactive, has also had the side effect of making advertisement's VERY annoying. Gone are the days of the simple html pop up that you could simply close out. I occasionally get a flash ad, that you have to hunt the X button to close the stupid thing. The topix website is really bad for annoying ads, almost to the point of being unviewable on my computer. Simply put, it slows my browser to a crawl, and at the end of the day, has resulted in me outright avoiding the site. Which is a shame because I do enjoy reading the post there.

But annoying ads aside, a modest amount of advertising I believe is acceptable, especially when viewing "free" content. Such as the case with over the air free broadcasting TV and radio stations. On that note, my daughter and I had a discussion about television advertising the other day. I recalled how I had Zito Media cable at our house last year for about a week and called and canceled because each channel ran a 4 minute advertising block for every 3 minutes of programming. I found it VERY annoying, called, canceled the service, and told them "I'm not paying $100 per month to watch the same advertisements over and over again." To this day, our TV get's NO television reception, save for the one low power Christian TV station out of Abingdon (lucky me right?), and we just watch DVD's and netflix all of the time now.

But anyway, my discussion with her brought me to cable and satellite companies making money hand over fist because they charge for the subscription, but you still have to contend with advertisements on their channels. I refuse to do business with either. I don't like cable companies because they feel like they can charge what ever they want because in a community, you are basically stuck with one choice (you can't call up another cable company). You CAN call the satellite company, and I remember the cable company trying to block satellite companies from carrying local channels about 20 years ago, as it would bust up their monopoly. To this day, cable companies have left a sour taste in my mouth. For the longest time, satellite companies were where my heart were. But now you can't even buy the equipment any more. It seems they too have you by the balls. All plans require a 2 year service agreement, with only one year of price lock, it runs well over $100 per month for anything decent, and it too is loaded with advertising.

They can keep it all.

I've got news for the cable and satellite companies out there... they're not running essential utilities. They think they are, they think we can't live without their services... but they are not the electric, or water company.... I can assure then that YES we CAN live without their services, and I am living proof of that.

[Big and Bashful]

I tend to be very hostile to adverts, I am a BSkyB customer and pay something like £50 per month for the privilege. On the Sky channels the breaks seem to be mostly 3.5 to 4 minutes long, a "1 hour" programme is typically 44 minutes so that they can fill the rest with commercials and promos. As I am a Sky+ user I just record programmes so that I can skip the ad breaks, or watch On demand content where the breaks are cut out.
Out of our terrestial channels, I just don't watch anything from ITV, commercials and constant quizzes and soup operas. It is telly for the hard of thinking (Sun readers?) and I don't want any of it.
On line I use Chrome with ABP to block adverts and FBP to clean the dross out of Facebook. It works brilliantly, if it wasn't for FBP and ABP I wouldn't be on Facebook and would probably give Youtube a miss as well.
Commercials do affect my buying habits though, if an advert annoys me enough (you can't dodge 'em all!) it puts me off trying the product completely. One of my favourite apps (The Daily Mash) hit me with 2 full screen adverts inside 2 minutes, that's that one gone for good now!
I understand that for the internet to deliver free content it needs to find a way, I happily pay a bit more for an app to get it advert free and sometimes tolerate a small banner on screen if the app is genuinely useful, but I have a low tolerance for anything which tries to interuppt my viewing pleasure.

This has been brought to you by...........

[dillon]

I guess I'd rather have them reminding me they are tracking me than to be doing it when I have a false sense of security.

[moonshadow]

Now somehow, perhaps it was due to my sheer curiosity of browsing expensive skirts and dresses, but now the ads are started to suggest more "high end" stuff...

Not wanting to actually "click" the ad, I googled the business instead and just went directly to their website (as I did rather like the look of the dress in question)

Wish I never did.... lots of REALLY COOL styles... but son of a beotch!!! That stuff's EXPENSIVE!

https://www.stylewe.com/category/midi-dresses-59_92

But boy I'm really diggin this one though:
https://www.stylewe.com/product/cotton- ... 16150.html

$80 isn't too bad. It's not like I've never spent that on a skirt before. I'd just want to know for sure if it would fit.

As for skirts... this one is cool:
https://www.stylewe.com/product/pleated ... 24736.html
But $106?!?!.... eeeehhh... I don't know..... Really trying to get away from spending big bucks on clothes.

But still fun to look at....

[skirtyscot]

Best not to look if you know they'll be too dear, moonshadow. You may be tempted into a purchase you can't really afford. I did this for a while but eventually went back to Ebay! And if you're patient, there's a chance that the upmarket stuff will turn up there a year or two down the line.

[moonshadow]

Best not to look if you know they'll be too dear, moonshadow. You may be tempted into a purchase you can't really afford. I did this for a while but eventually went back to Ebay! And if you're patient, there's a chance that the upmarket stuff will turn up there a year or two down the line.

Fortunately, I'm not much of a mail order guy. The skirts I've mail ordered, such as Macabi, Mouseworks, and Skirtcraft I ordered, and paid well for them because there was nothing else like them in actual stores. It's those real life stores that are my weakness. Every time I go into a store with the intent of just spending a certain amount, it seems I always blow the budget about 4 times. It's not just with skirts, it applies to virtually everything I buy, from skirts, DVD's, groceries, etc.

Such as my recent shopping spree, where I snagged 100 cans of a variety of peas, green beans, and corn for 49 cents each.

Honestly, I seem to be waning off the dress thing a bit. It would be one thing if they actually made dresses more fitting to the male structure then that would be different. It's also difficult to find a dress with the wide spread (flare) at the bottom that I desire. It seems most are of the more pencil shape. Most of the dresses that have the desired shape on the bottom have a bodice that's made for enormous breast.

I may snag one here and there, but it's not something I'm actively looking for. Woman Within is blowing every mail box I have up, email and snail mail. Unfortunately, at this juncture my biggest interest is in skirts, and they just don't have a lot of selection in that department. Pretty much everything I see in the skirt page I can find at a thrift shop for a few dollars.

[Sinned]

I have two laptops running Win7 and for a while I have been getting popups inviting me to install Windows 10 which I keep refusing. An icon has been placed on my task bar presumably by one of the many automatic updates. Now on one of the laptops the application has become much more aggressive and actually installed itself on the laptop. A message enabled us to decline the invitation to make it permanent so it reinstalled Win7. y problem is that the aggression still continues and messages appear saying the it will automatically install again in a certain period. I have had to switch the computer off. What I am asking is where is the application and can I/how can I disable or get rid of it. I don't really want Win10 as it is so different to Win7. I am quite happy with what I have so why is Microshafting so aggressive and devious/ I fear the answer may be that I can do nothing and I will google it but any help will be appreciated from those who are more conversant than I.

[Uncle Al]

First - go to control panel, Windows Update.
Switch the Automatic Updates - OFF.

You'll need to Google Search the rest. I haven't
done this yet, but I NEED TO I'm bloody tired
of the "FREE Upgrade" pop-ups.

There are a couple of files that Auto-Update installed
which need to be removed. The Google Search will
identify them and tell you how to remove them.

This info also comes from a friend of mine who is
a programmer at T.I. (Texas Instruments).

This info should be of some help
(I hope....)

Uncle Al