Breaking news: Water is wet, study finds

[ApK]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Are you considering an article comparing vegetarian and meat eating children to be a hit against the topic of vegan Italian food?

I would accept that. In and of itself, I can see such an add being triggered by "vegan" as a keyword. No one said these algorithms were geniuses.

[Quoth]

Actually Google, Meta/facebook, Amazon, ebay, twitter etc are rubbish at targeted adverts. It's fake snake oil to take advertiser spend from billboards, magazines, papers, TV and radio.

I mean you bought a cooker or a toilet seat or an electric drill. How many more will you buy before it breaks?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by ApK

I would accept that. In and of itself, I can see such an add being triggered by "vegan" as a keyword. No one said these algorithms were geniuses.

It is certainly possible but there are other equally likely possibilities. Perhaps his browsing history has made him a target for ads from liberal news sources.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

This just showed up.

Originally Posted by jhowell

Are you considering an article comparing vegetarian and meat eating children to be a hit against the topic of vegan Italian food?

I got that exact same article in my feed today without ever saying a word about vegan food (Italian or otherwise).

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ApK

...your VPN* provider...

*Just an aside, here's a good introductory vid for anyone relying on commercial VPNs for privacy protection:

Just so things don't get confused, I (again) am not worried about protecting my privacy. I don't care a whit or I wouldn't have the six speakers mentioned. I am not angry or paranoid about Google's snooping. I'm just saying that they do it.

The VPN is an enforced part of work from home and is just an unstable pain in the ass if you want the truth. Google randomly thinks I'm in New Jersey or sometimes Copenhagen.

Just pointing out that your anecdotal evidence is far from proof.

Of course anything any user posts here is anecdotal evidence. The first words in my first post on this were: It's only anecdotal, but...

None of us are heading a major research project or working for a news organization.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I got that exact same article in my feed today without ever saying a word about vegan food (Italian or otherwise).

Google thinks my conversations are more interesting than yours

[ApK]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

The VPN is an enforced part of work from home and is just an unstable pain in the ass if you want the truth. Google randomly thinks I'm in New Jersey or sometimes Copenhagen.

Enterprise VPN? You're doing this on your work network? tsk tsk...Guess you don't care about privacy OR misuse of company resources.
I just mentioned the vid for the general readership on the subject of privacy. It's got some good info.

or working for a news organization.

I consider the anonymous strangers on this forum more reliable than most of those these days.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Just so things don't get confused, I (again) am not worried about protecting my privacy. I don't care a whit or I wouldn't have the six speakers mentioned. I am not angry or paranoid about Google's snooping. I'm just saying that they do it.

I believe you when you say you're not worried about it, but then I have to wonder about the earlier ...

So Google is tracking me from Firefox on a work computer routed through a VPN showing me in New Jersey

... comment. It seems unlikely to me that your employer would require the rest of the internet to believe you're located in New Jersey, but I guess it's not impossible. If they do, can you share what their reasoning is? Same question if you're the one using the VPN. The only non-privacy-related uses for using VPNs I've seen are for getting around geo-restrictions when buying things, or for getting around media blackouts for sporting events in one's home region.

Just saw your comment on this. Still not sure why an employer would require a location-spoofing VPN for working from home. It's quite simple to VPN to work servers without the added location-spoofing. But I understand it's not your doing, so I'll drop it.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ApK

Enterprise VPN? You're doing this on your work network? tsk tsk...Guess you don't care about privacy OR misuse of company resources.

Did I mention that I also just finished a required course on IT security?

Mr. Møller may be wondering why he's being served all the vegan Italian recommendations

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Just saw your comment on this. Still not sure why an employer would require a location-spoofing VPN for working from home. It's quite simple to VPN to work servers without the added location-spoofing. But I understand it's not your doing, so I'll drop it.

I don't think they are purposely spoofing our location. At the office, we use wired internet connections (though even there, it's not unheard of for Google to return Danish results when asking about local things. It's where the company is headquartered and has many of their servers). When working from home, we connect to our home WiFi which is then run through one of a few VPN clusters. The US one shows me as in New Jersey. The EU cluster shows me as in Copenhagen, there's a few others. The US is the one I connect through, with EU as a back-up. The others are too slow.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Just saw your comment on this. Still not sure why an employer would require a location-spoofing VPN for working from home. It's quite simple to VPN to work servers without the added location-spoofing. But I understand it's not your doing, so I'll drop it.

When I'm connected to my company's VPN, I appear to be in Omaha. It's not 'spoofing,' it's just connecting to an enterprise network who's public IP addresses geolocate to where the company headquarters are.

It is a bit odd to see all the targeted ads that mention Omaha...it kind of breaks the illusion.

Of course, I don't do a lot of personal browsing from that network...

[DiapDealer]

As one who has set up many a VPN (both from the client and server hardware sides) over the years, I'm still a bit confused (though I'm guessing your employer outsources their VPN needs). But then I don't have to get it. It's mostly irrelevant to the discussion.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

As one who has set up many a VPN (both from the client and server hardware sides) over the years, I'm still a bit confused (though I'm guessing your employer outsources their VPN needs). But then I don't have to get it. It's mostly irrelevant to the discussion.

In many of the cases I am aware of, geolocation for the VPN shows the address of the point where you exit the VPN tunnel.

As an example, one company I do some work with is located in San Diego. When I connect to their VPN, my outbound to the Internet IP address belongs to their firewall at the location where the VPN tunnel terminates. My experience says that this is pretty standard unless split tunnelling is in use. Most of my experience has been that split tunneling is an avoidable security risk so avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

But you don't address the follow up experiments. Why?

You weren't addressing me, but just for the heck of it:

1. I'm not going to take the word, or experimentation abilities, of that article's author on faith. It's a pop news article, not a scientific paper.

2. The article is talking about specific apps like Facebook abusing it's mic permissions, nothing was claimed about the hardware or operating system vendors. I actually have an easier time believing evil of Facebook than of Amazon. At least for now.

3. The article quotes a Dr. Peter Henway as stating that audio gets sent back, but provides no evidence, and no footnotes pointing to any. Also a Google search of that person returns primarily a bunch of copycat articles, all of which only reference the same quote from the same article you linked. At least one of those copycat articles had the journalistic integrity to say Dr. Henway "offers a theory" as to what might be happening, rather than presenting it as fact with out evidence.

I have a contact request out to the cited cyber-security company (Asterisk, now CyberCX) for corroboration and more info. If I hear back, I'll let you know.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by DNSB

In many of the cases I am aware of, geolocation for the VPN shows the address of the point where you exit the VPN tunnel.

As an example, one company I do some work with is located in San Diego. When I connect to their VPN, my outbound to the Internet IP address belongs to their firewall at the location where the VPN tunnel terminates.

So San Deigo, right? If so, I get that. But I got the distinct impression ZW and ApK's outbound IPs were locations other than the location of the firewalls at their companies' various datacenters.

I'm probably just showing my age.