Opt-Out of Google’s New Targeted Ads
Google refers to AdSense’s new targeting and interest-based features as interesting, others see them as creepy. Basically, instead of just offering you text ads relevant to the content of the page you’re on they’ll track your individual online moves and browsing patterns across websites. This means that if you’re starting your day browsing different soccer sites they’ll give you soccer related ads in the morning, if you visit a digital camera store they can give you ads from that specific store later on when they have a sale – just by knowing that you used to visit them before and so on. The paranoid among us might not want this.
So, what to do if you want to keep on using Google’s services (and visit websites sporting AdSense) without being tracked in this new and hi-tech manner? You could set a cookie using Google’s Ad Preference Manager, but if you get rid of that cookie you’ll be tracked again in no-time so they offer an advertising opt-out browser plugin as well, for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Feels a bit backwards, doesn’t it?
(via)