this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
30 points (91.7% liked)

Privacy

32023 readers
1175 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi there! I like to listen to the "Slightly something else" podcast. Although it is gaming-related, they have these ad-segments that have some kind of targetting, as it is always in the language from where I've downloaded the episone.

Yesterday I was really surprised that the ad seemed very well targeted, because it has been referencing a very specific topic concerning my flatmates and me that doesn't have anything to do with gaming.

My first theory was that my IP was correlated with search terms my partner googled in my home IP (I search with searxng). But then I realized that I've subscribed to another podcast related to the advertised topic. (also: the episode with the advertisements was downloaded via mobile network)

So... Apparently, spotify (where slightly something else is hosted via anchor.fm) analyzes the podcasts I subscribe to via rss feed. Is there any way how I can avoid being profiled? Is this the reason why I'd start using a commercial VPN?

Edit: I'd like to reply to your comments, but my lemmy instance won't display them correctly. So I'll try to answer here: I'm already using Antennapod with rss feeds for download. That's why I was so suprised and pissed that the ad was so obviously targeted.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] jet@hackertalks.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Antenna pod would at least help remove the personalized ads, because they wouldn't be using the very intrusive proprietary application.

I don't know what the current recommended best practices, but you can watch YouTube on tor. And since their use case is not about anonymization from a APT, but rather just preventing personalized ads it seems sufficient.

[โ€“] ErwinLottemann@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

unfortunately there are still ads in the podcasts antennapod downloads. podgrab on the other hand downloads adfree versions apparently. i'm not sure why, though ๐Ÿ˜

[โ€“] IuseArchbtw@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

The only ads I have on AP are from the podcasts.