A couple of days ago, just as a lark, I looked up an image of a seventies-era motorcycle helmet. I did this just once. I am now inundated with images of motorcycle helmets every time I open a tab. I am truly sick of looking at motorcycle helmets now.
Give up the intertubez forever? Slash my wrists? Which is the most rational alternative? I'm trying to fact-check an article here: At the moment I really, professionally need to use the tubez. It's extremely annoying.
This is particularly so since I don't use Google for a search engine. I use Startpage. While it's true Startpage only promises not to "record my IP address," a promise I suppose is probably meaningless, it clearly has no ethical problem with selling me targeted advertisements for products I truly don't want to buy (or after this morning, ever even see again.)
I will now go and do a search on "warm fuzzy puppies" followed by "septic tank effluent pump." The resulting nervous breakdown caused by trying to custom arrange my new advertisements should let all the magic smoke out of all the servers on the Internet.
I will then take a nap.
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8 comments:
If you use Firefox (or Chrome I suppose), the AdBlockPlus plug-in makes for a rather ad-free Internet. I don't know what it will do to StartPage, but it's worth a shot.
Use Ixquick HTTPS for a search engine. No ads at all. Ever.
I use AdBlock and never have to see any automated banners.
Joel - You may want to look at "Do Not Track Plus", a free tool that blocks thousands of trackers. It's free, and it works with all of the major browsers. See: http://www.abine.com/dntdetail.php
Startpage is Ixquick
Or you could just delete the cookies...
If "Startpage" is Ixquick, why does it have ads on it? :) Mine doesn't.
Gleaned from a cursory look at their respective 'about' pages:
Startpage is "brought to you" by Ixquick - but Startpage features search results from Google - whereas Ixquick doesn't say anything about Google in their 'about' page.
I've been fiddling with both of these SEs since Scroogle SSL went TU several months ago - still don't like either of them much - particularly in how they handle search syntax that I've grown used to using.
I don't enable JavaScript or cookies unless I need to - so I don't see all that much in terms of adverts.
With this old machine and OS - without the 'functionality' of JS - Google doesn't look all that bad. Occasionally I use a newer machine and OS which by default has cookies and JS enabled - along with the newest Firefox browser - Google then becomes incredibly obnoxious and visually distractive. Reminds me of how much I enjoyed the bare-bones simplicity of Scroogle.
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