[N54Yankee]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

When I was in college for computer science back in the stone ages, we were always vigilant of our surroundings in case Teddy dropped one of his "care packages" at our school.

Thirty five years later, my house is a cabin in the woods, I have a safe full of firearms, and denounce Farcebook as evil whenever I can. Talk about irony!!!!!

Lol. Irony indeed. It’s all good as long as your shopping list doesn’t include Pyrodex, ball bearings, nails, surgeons gloves and stamps.

[cooolone2]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Wifey and I were discussing increasing our support of the local food bank tonight. Strictly a verbal conversation between us just an hour or so ago. Now she's getting FB ads for "Feed America." That f**king FB app on her phone is listening to us. I hate FB. As I've said in an another thread, I really need to dump FB. I'll have to do some serious 'splaining to friends and family first, though. And Wifey is less likely to give it up, so it'll still be on her phone listening to us.

Hey Zuckerberg! F**k you!!!

This is a very common occurrence... And yet people still feed the troll (Zuck)... Simply amazing.

Well, if you want to "limit" exposure, there are ways ...

First is having a phone (unlocked) not supplied by your carrier that's preloaded with garbage you cannot delete from the phone.

Second, get a VPN...

Third, make sure FB app is not installed as it has a few programs always running. You can surmise then what they're doing by your experiences already.

Fourth, access FB only through a web browser, one that has some ability to control your online interactions, such as cookie delete, or even ad blocking and the ability to load add_ons or extensions. This will allow even more control. Not sure which is the best, you'll have to see which you prefer.

Lastly, make sure you go into the settings deeply on FB and turn all tracking, advertising, etc., "OFF"...

Good luck lol...

[floridaorange]

[cooolone2]

Adding a decent article/link...

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/faceboo...o-make-it-stop

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by N54Yankee

Lol. Irony indeed. It’s all good as long as your shopping list doesn’t include Pyrodex, ball bearings, nails, surgeons gloves and stamps.

Have you been browsing my Amazon wish list?????

[King Rudi]

Originally Posted by cooolone2

This is a very common occurrence... And yet people still feed the troll (Zuck)... Simply amazing.

Well, if you want to "limit" exposure, there are ways ...

First is having a phone (unlocked) not supplied by your carrier that's preloaded with garbage you cannot delete from the phone.

Second, get a VPN...

Third, make sure FB app is not installed as it has a few programs always running. You can surmise then what they're doing by your experiences already.

Fourth, access FB only through a web browser, one that has some ability to control your online interactions, such as cookie delete, or even ad blocking and the ability to load add_ons or extensions. This will allow even more control. Not sure which is the best, you'll have to see which you prefer.

Lastly, make sure you go into the settings deeply on FB and turn all tracking, advertising, etc., "OFF"...

Good luck lol...

So much effort for so little reward. Just seems like so many hoops to jump through to see the same meme's and shared content over and over, followed by people bitching about their mundane lives that no one gives a shit about.

[M_Six]

About an hour ago I got an email in my university account, which I access through the Outlook client, from a vendor called Kanopy. They offer video streaming services to universities. One of their offerings is a series called The Great Courses. I forwarded the email to my wife's university account. Then we briefly discussed it and she mentioned that The Great Courses series was very popular.

Five minutes later I open Facebook and see this add staring at me.

[M_Six]

So either Facebook can somehow read my email even though I use Outlook and not web-based email, or one (or both) of our phones is listening to our conversations.

[gjm120]

I am about absolutely sure my phone heard a tv show I was watching. After watching something relatively obscure, when I opened a youtube video afterwards, lo and behold the suggested videos on the right side of the page showed something related to the tv show.

Problem is you have to give so many permission to use any app.

[M_Six]

I have no Facebook app loaded anywhere, although Wifey has the Facebook app, but not Messenger on her iPhone.

The Facebook webpage only showed me what it knows. It had to get that info from some other source. So it comes down to Outlook (or some Outlook file) being readable by FB, or our conversation contained a keyword that FB picked up through some app on one of the iPhones. It's just weird that she has the iPhone app installed, yet the ad showed up on my FB page within 5 minutes of our discussion about it.

[Bunnny]

My husband and I start laughing and shouting words that have nothing to do with our lives, when we notice our phones' ad's tailored to our conversations. We found it quite comical because we're getting to an age where even the vacuum is listening. That being said, I used to work for a very large telecom company and can say that privacy is not a priority. Its a privilege for those who have the means of accessing it, and unfortunately its a commodity that can be sold to others.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by M_Six

The Facebook webpage only showed me what it knows. It had to get that info from some other source. So it comes down to Outlook (or some Outlook file) being readable by FB, or our conversation contained a keyword that FB picked up through some app on one of the iPhones.

I assume that:

1) Your Farcebook account contains your work email address

2) You have a Kanopy account that was created using your work email address

From the HTML of the main Kanopy page:

<p class="body transition hidden">Getting started is easy! <a href="/signup">Click here</a> to find your library and enter your library card information or university login when prompted. Follow the simple instructions to create your Kanopy account using your email address or Farcebook/Google login and then start watching.</p>

The missing link is probably a remote image in the Kanopy email, showing that you opened it so that Kanopy can report it to FB for further ad-targeting. Remember the DotCom adage that if you can't figure out what they are selling to make money, then YOU are their product.

Regarding the video series suggestion, they are probably advertising their most popular offering trying to draw in more victims, er, I mean customers.

If you want my $0.02, ditch Farcebook, install a Pi-Hole on your home network to block traffic to *every* social media CDN, and disable automatic image download in your email client software.....

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

I assume that:

1) Your Farcebook account contains your work email address

2) You have a Kanopy account that was created using your work email address

From the HTML of the main Kanopy page:

<p class="body transition hidden">Getting started is easy! <a href="/signup">Click here</a> to find your library and enter your library card information or university login when prompted. Follow the simple instructions to create your Kanopy account using your email address or Farcebook/Google login and then start watching.</p>

The missing link is probably a remote image in the Kanopy email, showing that you opened it so that Kanopy can report it to FB for further ad-targeting. Remember the DotCom adage that if you can't figure out what they are selling to make money, then YOU are their product.

Regarding the video series suggestion, they are probably advertising their most popular offering trying to draw in more victims, er, I mean customers.

If you want my $0.02, ditch Farcebook, install a Pi-Hole on your home network to block traffic to *every* social media CDN, and disable automatic image download in your email client software.....

My FB account does not include my place of employment and the email account I used to set it up is my trash account that I rarely check. However, I do have several FB friends from the university, including Wifey who does list her employer, so it's pretty obvious that I work there. And truth be told, if it was all a cookie thing I'd be ok with it. I'm not as concerned about cookies as I am about the phones listening in on us.


Oddly enough, I do not have a Kanopy account. The librarian (not Wifey) who set up the Kanopy account years ago gave them my university email address as one of the contacts, so I get these update and advertising emails even though I have no access to Kanopy itself.

I do run a Pi-Hole, although it doesn't block social media (Wifey would shoot me). My browsers all run Facebook Container and my FB account is as locked down as I can make it. It's the connection between the Outlook client (in which I do block auto-loading of images, plus I read all my mail in plain text) and FB that I don't get. I accessed the Kanopy email and forwarded it to Wifey from my iMac. Then a few minutes later I fired up the laptop and went to FB and saw that ad. Outlook on my laptop hadn't been opened at the time.

[vreihen16]

I must have done a better job training our Librarians, because they know better than to upload an email list to an outside "vendor" for ANY reason. Their Kanopy announcements are to an in-house announcement group and are 100% self-written, with a basic link to the Kanopy main page to sign up.....

[m4dbimmer]

Never used FB for this reason. Nothing is free and Terms of use allow them to collect and use your data.

Stop using their service, and bre sure to block the mic on your apps, and set others to only use when the App is open. Android has these settings.

Tell people you know you can be reached the old fashion way, phone txt email.

Think its hilarious that people use free third party apps to send messages and only get concerned about their privacy when relevant ads show up... again, nothing is free.

Lastly, always logout of google on your web browsers.. it collect browser activity and more so if you're using Chrome.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

I must have done a better job training our Librarians, because they know better than to upload an email list to an outside "vendor" for ANY reason. Their Kanopy announcements are to an in-house announcement group and are 100% self-written, with a basic link to the Kanopy main page to sign up.....

The putz that gave them my contact info somehow thought he was doing me a favor.

[vreihen16]

Try opting out of their emails if you don't want them. I'm curious if they honor unsubscribes, or if the link even works for that matter.....

[UncleWede]

Originally Posted by M_Six

except that mic is what you need to make calls.

Phone calls, on a phone???


Dogs and cats, living together.

[ItsGary]

The spookiest thing that happened was when we were in our head office on standby due to some strike, every single item the PIs discussed mainly school supply items all showed up on an Amazon FB ad. It was scary because they were all in the order as discussed.