I have etymotic active ear filters for my ears while gigging. They turn down the volume when we get loud and turn the attenuation off when the volume is low. That way I can hear the customers speak between sets if they are further back in the room.

They use hearing aid batteries. Years ago I searched for some at a better price than at the local retail outlets, and for months I got ads for hearing aids, toilet booster seats, walkers, and items that elderly disabled people use.

So I thought I'd change things and started searching for a new bikini for my wife. That didn't work -- perhaps because I didn't buy one (she would never buy one without trying it on first).

What did work is this:

1) No more chrome browser - Chrome is voluntary spyware - there are other options, Firefox and Opera are the two leading alt-chrome browsers. Opera uses the chrome engine but leaves out the chrome tracking, Firefox uses an entirely different 'engine'

2) No more Google search engine - more voluntary spyware - I use StartPage instead - it uses Google, but going through StartPage strips all the cookies and other identifying info and replaces it with theirs, so google thinks you are StartPage, not yourself

3) I use a VPN on my computer, so my ISP doesn't know where I'm going to sell my personal info to advertisers

4) I browse in the 'private mode' and set my browser to clear cookies when I close the browser

I still get ads, but they are no longer targeted to me, so there is greater variety.

I do understand that the price of having free things means ads, and I nothing against that. I remember in the days when I watched TV there were ads, the radio gets interrupted by ads and so on.

What I do not like is advertisers knowing more about me than the NSA and FBI smile - or in the case of the batteries, making assumptions about me that are false and then selling that info to other advertisers.

You can't be private on the Internet, but you can minimize what people know about you.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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