I switched my house answering machine to Spanish. Within 24 hours my ads on Google switched to Spanish as well. I generally use Duckduckgo because it blocks very well.
Although that is suspicious, it may still be coincidence; I am not multilingual, but since last year I do get occasional french and less frequently some Spanish ads. I have never searched in those languages, visited a website in those languages, nothing. No reason for the languages to start appearing for me; doesn't bother me, makes it easier to ignore the ad.
I don't think the objectionable ad was related to search history - it had a "rabbit ears" tag that seemed pretty self-explanatory, as all the ads, at least that I saw, were rabbit and animal-care related.
I think everyone knows that we're being monitored electronically. When it's as simple as receiving ads for things we've searched for, that's not surprising or offensive any more than receiving an ad mailer from a store where you registered an appliance or signed up for a loyalty card; you volunteered that information. It's very different, though, when the companies' "research" goes beyond that. Now, simply using the internet or Google puts you at risk for some creepy and potentially dangerous violations of privacy.
My husband and I were sitting together early one morning while all the little ones were still asleep (it was like a date
). We were talking quietly, and the idea of getting a wood lathe came up. Later that morning when I went back to turn the computer on (the only one in the house, which together with his work cell phone, was in the far back bedroom), the first thing that appeared when I opened the internet were ads for lathes. Neither one of us had ever searched for a lathe (we would never buy one online or retail, anyway). That's when we switched to DuckDuckGo.
That improved things, but this kind of thing happens way too often to be coincidence. Seeing an ad for a lathe does not bother me, but the invasion of my privacy surely does. I avoid Google like the plague, but it's sneaky and sometimes doesn't declare itself. It does feel like living in 1984. ...Actually, I lived in the
real 1984 - oh, for the good ol' days of privacy!
