I have had targeted ads on YouTube from the Mo/LDS church. Kind of annoying since the only church related site I ever visit is the fantastic recovery board here. Has anyone else have the same happen?

As a side note I find it interesting how the ads now ALL point to the church as being Christ ventured, a bait and switch in my opinion. Not how the church I grew up in was (Joseph Smith was prime, not Christ.... he was a sidenote)

complained about it.

As others have stated, what happened to "I am a mormon."

Sometimes you can flag an ad for being personally offensive. It might be worth a try.

I have noticed that new categories of ads which appear on my screen often follow my Google searches.

Since I Google often, sometimes the ads (especially when they are related to something I am NOT interested in, or that I find actively abhorrent) seem bizarre.

Sometimes I will purposefully google things like, "hotel in Bali" because it will improve my ads for the next couple of weeks. lol

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sometimes I will purposefully google things like,
> "hotel in Bali" because it will improve my ads for
> the next couple of weeks. lol

:D

Tevai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have noticed that new categories of ads which
> appear on my screen often follow my Google
> searches.
>
> Since I Google often, sometimes the ads
> (especially when they are related to something I
> am NOT interested in, or that I find actively
> abhorrent) seem bizarre.


I get these too. The internet has become a sinister place and we're all forced to be involved in it at some level now.

I look up many things I don't agree with or am not interested in as a supporter, but the internet doesn't see it that way.

I am getting them too... and I don't go near anything MORmON on the web... I do flag em MO NO NO... they are still popping up from time to time...

The internet has been a surveillance tool for a good long while now. Not just for government agencies but for the companies which are friendly with them. Our telephones too have gone from tools of communication to tools of monitoring. It's a very dangerous time.

I get this all the time. I think some of these web browsers, particularly Google Chrome, monitor emails and postings for keywords.

It seems a bit backwards though, since the people on Mormon-related websites (this one included) don't need to have the church advertized to them. But the people taking the advertizing agency are probably laughing all the way to the bank.

A few months back, I kept getting Instagram ads for Mormon travel, like Middle East tours and IIRC one for Peru? I don't think they were church sponsored, but they want you to assume that they are church approved.

Haven't seen any lately.

What browser do you use? If you use Internet Explorer or Google Chrome and don't clear your settings regularly, you will get targeted ads based on your Google history and websites visited. If you need help, let me know. It take 5 minutes and you no longer get those annoying ads.

Thanks for the offer stillanon, I use so many different systems here (removable drives/virtual machines) with Windows and Linux that I really haven't gone and installed any blocks/add ons.

Thx for the help offer, I've just learned to live with the tracking.... no online banking/shopping on these systems.

Yeah, some of those add blockers can slow down your computer. All I do is clear my browser history every evening. It takes less than 30 seconds on Google Chrome and about a minute on Internet Explorer. They are both tools that are provided in the browser, no downloads needed. Just point and click. I hardly ever receive targeted ads with that action.

Apparently many organizations exist to make money and will take advantage of any medium that allows them to present notice of their wares or services to as many people as possible!!!

I have an ad blocker for YouTube installed, so I don't see anyone's ads.

I added privacy tracker: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

It seems to work well. It tells you how many items on a web page are trying to track you and disables the tracking. It is a safe to add this to Chrome. Exmormon.org has 0 methods of tracking for example. A public stock market page I just looked at had 25.

Here is an explanation of it versus an ad blocker.
https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq#What-is-a-third-party-tracker



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2019 12:57PM by Eric K.

Get an ad blocker, such as adblocker plus - free, and then you get almost no ads. (You still get occasional ads, but only once, and you can right-click on your adblocker icon and block that ad source for the future.)

Guess what? I got one of these ads on Youtube last night. It was actually very vague and and the only giveaway it was LDS was the "Come unto Christ" URL.

It's also very annoying if you look up "Book of Mormon" on Youtube, nearly all of the main entries are about the musical. I wonder if Parker and Stone pay Google (the owners of Youtube) to put their trashy show at the top of the list. I wouldn't put it past them

Why do you think the ”trashy” Book of Mormon is able to trick so many people into liking it?

And has ”liking-the-book-of-mormon-play” served as an effective means for separating out the wheat from the tares?

And am I stupidly playing into your penchant for generating click-bait?

There are probably 200,000,000 humans in America being tracked via their internet activity. There are probably less than 100,000 people who, in real time, look at the data we generate as we live life. So the odds of you being ”noticed” are very slim.

Just don't do anything to stand out from the crowd and you should be fine. Probably three-quarters of the ’watchers’ are Looking for terrorists. Nobody cares what 99% of us are doing.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are probably 200,000,000 humans in America
> being tracked via their internet activity. There
> are probably less than 100,000 people who, in real
> time, look at the data we generate as we live
> life. So the odds of you being ”noticed” are
> very slim.

It's not people who do the work but computers. And they crunch data pretty efficiently. Nothing ever goes away, even if it's a misunderstanding.

> Just don't do anything to stand out from the crowd
> and you should be fine. Probably three-quarters of
> the ’watchers’ are Looking for terrorists.
> Nobody cares what 99% of us are doing.

Everyone is a potential terrorist.

It may be from cookies on your computer tracking your activity here. The word Mormon comes up often here enough, that it picks it up elsewhere and 'voila!' it crops up on YouTube and other places because now your computer has cookies with "Mormon" in them.

You can refresh your computer settings by deleting your cookies periodically and clearing them out. That might help.

We are all being tracked more than we know. I used to keep my GPS turned off so google couldn't track my locations (as a matter of principal) and I kept my data connection turned off so that google couldn't use it to transfer their data. Then I found out that off isn't off. It's just off to you. They still use it. Your gps locations are tracked all day long and as soon as you turn the data connection to your phone back on, or connect via wifi, your location information since the last upload, uploads. You can't have privacy if you're using a google phone, apple phone, Microsoft phone, or a chinese made phone. That pretty much covers all smart phones. They do it legally and with your permission. It's all in the fine print that no one actually reads before they agree to it, and in the phone's default settings, some of which you have no access to. If you don't like it then don't agree to it. Of course, then your phone won't work for you either. Your phone isn't really your phone. You just pay for it in exchange for having some access to it. Google or Apple decides most of what you are allowed to do and what they want to use your phone for themselves also.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2019 11:01AM by azsteve.

Yes. It's worse than ever. The only way to opt out is to not use their service. It is very difficult to protect yourself and maintain any kind of privacy. There are only minimal consequences for the business/corporation when our information is breached. It seems more and more that the laws favor the corporation and not the customer.

I would pay a lot to have a service option that didn't make me the product if they had the option. They don't care. Tracking us IS the product they sell.

Later this year, a crowdsourced project is releasing a new phone called the "Librem 5" (google it). Their demo board version was released last year for developers to start development work with. There are hardware kill switches for the gps, camera, data, and wifi. It uses linux as the OS, with the interface to fit the phone, the way Android does. The users (phone owners) have full root/Admin access to everything including all source code. The company is chartered as a social purpose company, dedicated to protecting privacy. They have already released several laptops to the market. The phone is available for pre-order for $650.00. I have no interests in their company other than I am considering buying one of these phones.

I hope more of this takes off so companies might figure out there is a market for maintaining privacy.

My ads always follow Google searches. I tested it once by just searching something random and typed in "lawn chairs." Suddenly I saw lawn chair ads on CNN, Facebook, etc. - anywhere I went that had ads.

Inadvertently an extension bar for some kind of classified ads was added to my home computer and it became inundated with running ads each time I visited RfM or other sites I routinely browse.

At first I thought my computer had been hacked (maybe it had because I don't recall adding that extension, but somehow there it was.) I went through my computer settings deleting the cookies, refreshing the computer, etc.

I added an updated version of my security software to all of my home PC's to get the latest and best firewalls it has to my devices. And then I noticed the extension after doing another PC search when the ads kept running after everything else had been done. There it was. An extension that wasn't wanted. I removed it, and Google asked me why was I removing it? I reported it as spam and malicious malware. They thanked me for the report, but who knows how many other computers its attacking as I write this?

My newly found 86-year old cousin who we met online via our love for genealogy and she's a Daughter of the Utah Pioneers, she sent me an application to join. Has the cutest darn online stationery for e-mails. So I clicked on the invitation to add it to my e-mail account. When I received a phishing notice from my security software telling me the site is a security threat located in Russia, so to proceed at my own risk.

I informed her of the threat, and she seems undeterred, bless her heart. At her age, she is just happy to still be alive and doing as well as she does. I don't think that the stationery site being from Russia will do little to deter her from using it, but it did me lol. I removed it at once.

If you click on a youTube link posted here on RFM about anything Mormon related, YouTube will remember and suggest all kinds of Mormon related videos the next time you access YouTube. It's very annoying.

I've also found that if I search the internet for anything that can be purchased, like a pair of shoes, an ad for the shoes I looked at will pop up the next time I'm in FaceBook. It's kind of creepy.

Yes, I frequently clear my browser (Google Chrome). Doesn't seem to matter.

Same here. Happens all the time. Shopping for flooring? Windows? Mirrors? Shoes?

Puppies? Whatever it is, those cookies glob onto it, and there they are on your browser.

Well I have already gotten my new flooring for this year. I have that mirror I was shopping for.. don't need anymore shoes.

As for puppy. Got that too. She's "in training...." to be cont...,

Cleared out the dang cookies and they start anew with whatever else you may be looking for next.