Things mentioned on the forum I never saw before, but I see online.

[SwampDonkey]

I just received an add from a vendor I recently bought an item from. No one  linked to the forum however. In this add, one of many things is a 60" wide pine straw rake for ATV and another thing that popped up is different pond weed rakes. These are all items mentioned on the forestry forum and I have never seen them. I'm sure Google has something to do with them being there on my screen. ;)

I had to post about it because the forum is far reaching, even if in an indirect way. I got a kick out of seeing those items and being reminded about them on the forum.

This vendor is in British Columbia. If your curious what I bought, it's a tomato milling machine for making sauce. ;)

[Erik A]

Wow, what size are bands for that mill?   :D
They do try and track everything you do on line! I have typed in a car part search and immediately get adds for car parts! The one I wasn't impressed with was my niece looking up some baby things! :-\

[btulloh]

Use DuckDuckGo.com instead of google and you won't be tracked. 

[Ianab]

Use DuckDuckGo.com instead of google and you won't be tracked.

You won't be tracked, Quite as much. 
Any site you happen to visit that uses Google adverts is tracking you, and that lets them build up a profile of your interests. They then use that info to send you adverts that they hope are more relevant, and get more "click through", which means they can charge the advertiser more $$.
The FF doesn't  use Google adverts, but a visit here will still be in your browser history that's stored by Google / MS or Apple (depending on your browser).  Google  then has a full search of the public facing areas of this site, so they can get some approximation of what you have been viewing. The algorithm then decides it might get a better hit rate sending you ads for chainsaws, as opposed to women's perfume

[SwampDonkey]

DuckDuck.Go was exposed a long time ago for doing stuff, thus lying. ;)

The forum used Google analytics, I'll bet something is built into that. They like to change stuff and never say what they change. ;)

But I'm not worried about Google, they must be pretty bored following me around pushing pine straw rakes. I've never had such ads inspire me to purchase the item. I must be an odd ball. :D

[Ianab]

What I find is Google is very good at showing you adds for something you just purchased. 

They are good at knowing you searched and viewed a certain item, but no way to tell if you actually went through with a purchase. So you get adverts for something that's actually sitting on your desk.  :D

[Don P]

There ya go, they count on more window shopping time over purchases than I engage in. I needed a 5 horse motor, found and purchased it weeks ago, I'm still getting ads.

Google is "helping" LEO solve crimes by handing over metadata. Who googled the address of the house that was just arsoned, etc. Its a brave new world.

[SwampDonkey]

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