[Info-vax] The Student System

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-11-06 14:30, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2023-11-04, Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <ui2rrr$2pmp3$2 at dont-email.me>,
>> Simon Clubley  <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>> On 2023-11-02, Chris Townley <news at cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I don't recall seeing any intrusive adverts on YouTube
>>>
>>> There are addons you can add to your own systems that you cannot add
>>> to work systems. I assume you are using one of those (unless you are
>>> paying for YT).
>>
>> Google maintains a profile of identifiable unique users.  It includes
>> location information most of the time, and any accounts they can associate
>> with it.  This profile is used to deliver ads to you that Youtube thinks
>> are relevant, and in this time of year in the US it includes a lot of
>> targetted political ads.
>>
>> This also determines the volume of ads you get.  If I watch a video on
>> one side of Virginia, I will get far fewer ads than someone watching
>> the same video on the other (richer) side of the state.
>>
>> No two people get the same experience.
> 
> I watch Youtube anonymously in private browsing mode, so there's no
> browsing history for it to work with.

While I'm sometimes surprised by the amount of belief people have in 
what Google might be doing (it's sometimes pretty far from reality), 
sometimes I get surprised in the other direction as well. Like now.
Browsing in anonymous mode is not as anonymous as you might think. There 
is a lot of information that can be extracted out, which can still be 
used to get some pretty good idea of tracking of users. Sure, it's less 
precise than what can be done in non-anonymous mode, but it's far from zero.

   Johnny