managing your google ad preference's?

franco-bolli · January 10, 2023

Today, I received an email that at first I thought was spam but turned out to be legit.

It was from GOOGLE telling me my "Location Histories" were "ON" and provided a link in the email.

Being skeptical about links in email, I used another search tool on my computer and found links to the same site referred to in the email.

I'll post them here, but feel free to investigate on your own.
I was able to "turn off" ad tracking and many other data/historical tracking features provided by GOOGLE which includes YouTube histories and ad preferences.

I'm not 100% sure how this will affect my browsing experience, however, I'm anticipating that this will reduce the number of odd product ads that show up when I least expect them and I really can't see a need for GOOGLE to know where I've been or what products I'm looking for..

Here is a starting point for managing location histories:

Google location history management

from there, there are links to many more portions of your GOOGLE account preferences and activity trackers.

here is one specifically for activity tracking.

GOOGLE activity tracking

Cheers and safe browsing.

RV_ · January 10, 2023

Those are good links to safe Google pages. Let us know what you did and if it sped up or slowed down your browsing. Are you still using Brave or another browser?

franco-bolli · January 10, 2023

Still using Brave for about 99% of internet browsing. The screen shot attached shows an impressive picture of what I'm not seeing any longer. It comes from the start up of a "new tab" in Brave.

On my phone, I use the Brave search engine but on the home computer(s), it's a mix of Brave Browser and Brave and duckduckgo search tools. I wasn't aware that there was so much tie in with YouTube and GOOGLE, but I'm learning new things every day, occasionally for the second time

FYI, I'm still tinkering with Arduinos and other electronics circuits for fun and not profit.

When I can't find what I'm looking for in the usual places I'll use these two part search engines:

Octopart.com

findchips.com

Most times, but not always, I get an idea of who has the parts needed, MOQ, price and if it's in stock. The best part is that sometimes, the information is accurate!

Edited January 27, 2023 by franco-bolli
removed image

Chalkie · January 10, 2023

21 minutes ago, franco-bolli said:

Still using Brave for about 99% of internet browsing. The screen shot attached shows an impressive picture of what I'm not seeing any longer. It comes from the start up of a "new tab" in Brave.

What I would like to know is over what period of time those number come from, i.e., a week? a month? cumulative for as long as you have been using it?

franco-bolli · January 11, 2023

So, I'm not entirely sure.

I presume the values are since I started using the browser which I estimate is about a year ago.

update:

I looked in the community forum for the developers and it appears the statistics are dated from install. There is a feature request into the developers to make the number resettable.

Edited January 11, 2023 by franco-bolli
updated information

Chalkie · January 11, 2023

18 hours ago, franco-bolli said:

So, I'm not entirely sure.

I presume the values are since I started using the browser which I estimate is about a year ago.

update:

I looked in the community forum for the developers and it appears the statistics are dated from install. There is a feature request into the developers to make the number resettable.

Thank you, that seems pretty reasonable then compared to the numbers I see with the tool I use.

RV_ · January 13, 2023

On 1/10/2023 at 4:08 PM, franco-bolli said:

Still using Brave for about 99% of internet browsing. The screen shot attached shows an impressive picture of what I'm not seeing any longer. It comes from the start up of a "new tab" in Brave.

On my phone, I use the Brave search engine but on the home computer(s), it's a mix of Brave Browser and Brave and duckduckgo search tools. I wasn't aware that there was so much tie in with YouTube and GOOGLE, but I'm learning new things every day, occasionally for the second time

FYI, I'm still tinkering with Arduinos and other electronics circuits for fun and not profit.

When I can't find what I'm looking for in the usual places I'll use these two part search engines:

Octopart.com

findchips.com

Most times, but not always, I get an idea of who has the parts needed, MOQ, price and if it's in stock. The best part is that sometimes, the information is accurate!

Sorry missed this Franco.

I use Firefox 95% of the time. I have it "pinned" to the task bar and I am able to right click it on my Windows 11 main computer and click on "New Private window. On my Windows 10 computer I have to open it and then select new private window then close the non private window. Firefox does it with a right click on the taskbar Icon.

I like Brave more than Edge.

I don't use my phone for any browsing save once in a blue moon, and on those rare occasions I use Google Assistant by voice to find something fast or navigate somewhere.

I stopped tinkering with Pi and other Arduino type micro computer systems way back after my first gen Pi sat in a drawer for a year after setting it up with Raspberry Debian. Heck I have stopped tinkering with bleeding edge long ago and my last few projects are waiting for me to do fresh installs of Windows and then I am pretty much buying new as needed/wanted.

However since Microsoft seems to be heading into ads all over Windows, and developing Windows as a subscription service as we get closer to 2025, it makes me believe they are going to force it adding Office into the deal. That is when I go all Linux, since Windows is becoming much more Linux friendly. And Windows programs are becoming a bit more universal/multi-platform.

So my tinkering with Linux will be Mint/Cinnamon and working a desktop/system with them I like the feel of using.

I have all future proof computer systems now and am selling my last two without TPM and supposedly not Windows 11 compatible at this time. I actually believe that Microsoft should get Windows 11 able to work well on those systems too. I think they will and then realize how they lose their bread and butter corporate accounts in addition to the home users who do not want a new computer system every three to five years.

2025 will be a watershed when they cease security support for Windows 10 and we see if they are really going to do as Apple did in 2005 when they switched from their sadly outdated Power PC chipset and switched to Intel processors and chipsets developed for Windows computers. NO leagacy programs were compatible with the new chips and Apple users had to buy new hardware. They lost some to Windows and Linux, but many Apple users are normally not into hardware or upgrades and just bought a new computer AND had to buy all new versions of their programs. There were no Apps as smart phones did not come out until 2007. iPads were not announced until Jan 2010. So they had to buy new computers and all new programs for them.

At least with Windows 11 we can use all our programs like my copies of Office Pro 2016 which lose support in 2006. I use only Libre Office on my Surface Go 2 tablets, and have it on all my systems now.

I believe there will be market for Linux but the average user has no clue about turning off secure boot and changing CMOS/setup settings to boot from a DVD or Flash USB drive. Just making an ISO image (a .iso file,) bootable disk is beyond many users. Rather than sidetrack here is the Mint installation page and if anyone wants to give it a try go to this link at Mint and click on each menu item on the left and read each before trying it:

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

On Brave I just made a query in on the community forum asking if they can make a switch to allow us to reset the stats every time we open the program. That way we can see the stats for each session by just opening a new tab.

franco-bolli · January 14, 2023

I wonder how long it will be before we move to the centralized computing mode of computing again, all applications through an internet (web based) connection. Heck "the cloud" is just the first step. Subscription services seem to be the way of things and as you've seen, has been for a while. Adobe is the one that affected me the most. Fortunately the legacy copies of my apps still work even though they MAY be vulnerable to security leaks.

Many of the applications I have, can be emulated or are native on linux now but there are a few, Quicken specifically, that aren't and probably won't. Quicken is now an annual subscription but not web based, yet.

In addition to the other vices I have, I'm involved with a model train club that wants to animate some of their scenes, so in steps the arduino. At this point, it's mostly lighting changes like sunrise to sunset cyles, but there are some speedometers and scale ride controls that are needed. I seem to be one of the few that can recognize the hot end of the soldering iron, so I get those jobs.

I still need to consider the change over to Window 11. I only have one PC, that is relegated to the CNC area to drive the software, and the others will need to wait, just for a while.