I knew I was being tracked, but this is ridiculous

[alloy]

I bought a 160 degree thermostat for my LS2 two days ago.

Today my girlfriend asked me if I was looking for a new Lingenfelter 160 thermostat for a 2008 Chevrolet Trailblazer SS with a 395 horse LS2?

Well yes I said. How do you know that?

She showed me her screen. Amazon sent her ads on HER computer for one and apparently other things I looked up in the past few days.

The only thing in common between the two computer is the wifi connection we have.

This is the first time this has happened. Just floors me they can do that.

Does anyone know how to stop this? What if I was looking for a present for her online? Would kinda spoil the surprise for her.

 

[Superburban]

Add blocker plus, stops most of the adds. Won't do anything for their spying though.

 

[Cobra]

Run a VPN

 

[Tozguy]

OK I'll bite, what is a VPN?

 

[Cobra]

OK I'll bite, what is a VPN?

Virtual Private Network. Software driven solution that allow use of the internet without exposing your identification or location.

 

[woodchucker]

I bought a 160 degree thermostat for my LS2 two days ago.

Today my girlfriend asked me if I was looking for a new Lingenfelter 160 thermostat for a 2008 Chevrolet Trailblazer SS with a 395 horse LS2?

Well yes I said. How do you know that?

She showed me her screen. Amazon sent her ads on HER computer for one and apparently other things I looked up in the past few days.

The only thing in common between the two computer is the wifi connection we have.

This is the first time this has happened. Just floors me they can do that.

Does anyone know how to stop this? What if I was looking for a present for her online? Would kinda spoil the surprise for her.

I don't think it's the wifi.
Did you ever log onto her computer b4, or use it? If so you may have some cookies still present.
BUTTT that's not to say it doesn't happen. I have noticed GOOGLE DOES do that. my phone and home, and office computer are sharing google info, because of my phone. I don't use google to search, I use duckduckgo.com I got tired of googles tracking. as a diy guy I didn't want to buy something, I wanted to know how to make it , and google preferred sending me place to buy it. Duckduckgo doesn't
Consider both Amazon and google to be very close in how intrusive they are becoming.
Do you own that Amazon device that you can talk to? If you do that's the breach to your data mingling.
While VPN is an option, not for most of us. I vpn to work, but I am not buying a vpn to ???? where.. just not worth it. What vpn does is encrypt your data so no one can see it, and creates a direct virtual link to whomever you vpn to.

 

[kvt]

When you use your Internet modem, It has an IP that it uses, you then use a private IP behind that, So as far as places like Amazon etc are concerned you both came from the same IP so their big system tracked that you looked at this via the IP and then says Oh that IP is back we will send them this information based on what they looked at before from that IP. Often time even turning off Cookies, and other things does not stop all of it.

 

[higgite]

Try this.
Log on to Amazon.com.
Put your cursor on “accounts and lists” near the top of the page.
Click on “your account”.
Look under “email alerts, messages and ads” click on “advertising preferences”.
Change your preference from “personalize….” to “do not personalize….”.
Click on “submit”.

Tom

 

[Mark_f]

I find that happens a lot. In fact, several days ago I was searching the net for a band saw blade welder. Lo and behold, I log onto the forum here and at the bottom of the page is an ad for a blade welder. In my case, this all comes from Google. They track everything you look at and put ads on your pages for the things you search for. They seem way too nosey for my liking.

 

[dave_r_1]

A VPN (if you buy the service from a third party, not run your own), just masks your location and encrypts the data between your computer and the VPN service (the data between the VPN service and a given web site may or may not be encrypted). It doesn't really help with ads or tracking, as the same information is still passed back and forth between your computer and the various tracking companies.

Unfortunately, it is very hard to really block tracking, as between ever-cookies and browser fingerprinting, tracking companies can pretty reliably track your specific computer.