So a bit ago I got an add for “canned rambutan”. I had looked up Rambutan a few days prior after hearing it mentioned 10 hours into the video game Baby Steps. I wasn’t using a VPN at the time and I didn’t have fingerprinting protections active but I only mentioned it to a few sources (according to my browser history) all of which generally are implied to be private.

Which of these do you think is the reason the ad networks know?

  • Wikipedia
  • Startpage Search
  • Duckduckgo Search
  • My ISP
  • Firefox
  • My Firefox Extensions
  • Kubuntu
  • CachyOS
  • The omnipotent algorithm connecting my mentions of Baby Steps with my progress through the game.
  • I must’ve forgotten a mention of it elsewhere?

Any guesses as to where the weak link is?

  • ryannathans@aussie.zone
    0·
    24 days ago

    I would guess the likely culprits are

    Firefox extensions

    Search engines

    Wikipedia

    Other search results you may have opened or pre-loaded (not a default Firefox behaviour)

        • lattrommi@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          24 days ago

          I might be wrong but I believe the ‘other annoyances’ option in uBlock Origin removes the Wikipedia “donate” banner. That could be what that is.

      • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
        0·
        24 days ago

        You’ll need to provide all the sites you visited immediately after each of the ones you searched. Your origin header will give that info away freely. So if it’s in the query parameters of the URL, then you go to Facebook, it’s as easy as {k: v for k, v in (pair.split("=", 1) for pair in response.headers["origin"].split("?", 1)[-1].split("&"))}