Facebook and Google equals tracking

They know you, more than you know you. They know your country, more than you know it

Have you ever noticed that you watch a YouTube video and the advertisement which shows up at the 5 second mark actually relates to you? Or have you ever been logging in to Facebook and looked at the advertisement banners on the site, because they will relate to you and your interest. How come?

Facebook has in the past been accused for knowing to much about each user of the social media service. But when it comes to advertisement, they are being extra sneaky about it. In fact the company has several times before got accused of tracking you whenever you have Facebook open in a tab in your browser. That way the can log everything you visit on the internet and relate ads to you, which can make you pay interest or even buy the product. Google, as the most popular search engine in the world, is doing the same thing, but just by relating your search history with ads. So whenever you go on YouTube, Google ads will quickly find the most relevant ad for you to have. For example: Are you interested in clothes you will most likely get ads with clothes. Have you recently been looking several times on Cristiano Ronaldo’s webpage-shop, you will most likely get an ad for one of his products.

But this is necessary for the digital ads, because the time we live in is going faster than ever before. Trends change by the time you have gotten to try it. Google ads won’t harvest money without knowing exactly what you are interest in right now.

Both Google and Facebook got stats on what countries likes a specific thing the most. They know what 21 year old girls from London in UK have most digital interest. Numbers they some time show off. Here is an example:

“Technology behind the data: My company analyzed over 29 million Facebook status updates in our database for excerpts and phrases related to “engagement.” Then, we created a list of cities by mapping the resulting text to users’ locations. Finally, we ordered this list according to frequency of occurrence.” http://mashable.com/2012/02/14/top-cities-engagement-facebook/

Facebook showed top 10 cities to get engaged in, using their own data. A way to track. In Google search the top results are often the most viewed ones, but take it with a grand of salt, since companies often buy themselves in the top spot. This is still a way to show what people pay interest in, unfortunatuly we only see a small amount of the statistics both companies got.

Is there a way for us to get numbers and track everything going on, on the internet? No, there probably isn’t. The big companies and websites is already doing that, but they don’t reveal their numbers. Should they be rewarded for giving out information and stats? Yes. But what kind of reward does these companies want, because money isn’t a problem for them. Apple revealed on their last event that 95% of Apple users has the most up-to-date software Apple have, while Android users were below 10% in the same statistic. Companies will use everything they know to their advantage, and I can’t see that change.

We are being tracked, and that is not just as a single person, but as a region, country, continent and world as well. We just don’t get to see the numbers. There is no solution for me, other than looking on Facebook for what is liked the most (from persons to museums) and who likes it. Following the #hashtag on Twitter or maybe just go on a new computer and start up YouTube, check out which ad that comes to you then.

Facebook expands its ways of tracking you: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/facebook-is-expanding-the-way-it-tracks-you-and-your-data/372641/