[Nik333]

I just started my computer & my home page which is CNN, has very attractive ads for Dubai Health & Dubai Hospital across the top and along the sides of the CNN home page. I know websites sell info & my profile gave me away ( no more) but so specific? I commented on a Dubai post here that I had been offered a job in Dubai. They know this took a year to vet me. Or it did then. This is really creepy. Can anyone help me? Is it simply my info being sold? Or gathered? I have a screenshot but can't seem to put it on. :vs_OMG:
My e-mail also gave me a message that I had changed accounts. In addition, a member here I had an really innocent private message with said it wasn't him. He told me by the email the private message person gave me. If you can follow all that, please help.

 

[jimn]

Very simple. The search engines like Google, yahoo, Bing etc track every thing you type into a search and just about every website you go to as well as things you look at on Amazon , eBay etc.. Companies like adchoice buy this information and companies use this information to target advertising to you that aligns with your past on line activities.

 

[Nik333]

I feel like this is like a recruitment. I can understand clothes popping up after I look at a Nordstrom page but this is much more elaborate and specific. It's really quite an attractive ad, covering three quarters of CNN. My profiling is usually pretty bad, like "meet Cherry Blossom women" which has nothing to do with my preferences My searches go from Neurology to earthworms. I'm kind of hard to pin down :}
What about the co-opting of the personal message? That sounds like a hack. To be clearer, the person I was talking to, wasn't that member of the chatroom, but his info was out there..

 

[ZZZZZ]

Consider using a site such as https://startpage.com/ as your search engine. Google doesn't see your searches, and you can easily use startpage's proxy server to visit any of the search results. All free, no hassle.

JMHO DYODD

 

[Nik333]

Thanks. It's hard to explain how different this ad is...

 

[diyorpay]

I prefer Firefox browser these days. But all are able to have add-ons. Maybe try an add on for blocking ads for yours? Try the dropdown on your browser for add-ons, search for most popular, and select an ad blocker. Otherwise get Malwarebytes (free) and run to detect any hacks. Good luck!

 

[Bob Sanders]

I run firefox with the Ghostery and bluhell firewall add-ons. Works pretty good... kills most of the tracking.

 

[Nik333]

I do have Malwarebytes and other Security. It's just getting worse and worse on the web. Will have to try Firefox again. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[dalepres]

The large screen-covering ads are usually triggered by simply running your mouse over them, even inadvertently.

I use a custom hosts file: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm. This will help but not fix the problem.

 

[Nik333]

I changed to Moxilla firefox, opted out of Google personalized ads, again and contacted my Security who downloaded a new whatever it's called and cleaned out some unnecessary stuff. Much less ads, although the new ads are right in front of what I'm looking at! I could ignore the others. Still have fancy Dubai video ads. I guess they really like me! Still need to try the other suggestions. I did have a new type virus. Mozilla apparently uses Yahoo a lot, so I ended up reading those silly questions and saying "why don't you look it up!" Just like my father:} Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[Nik333]

Also, Nik333 is a 'handsome 29yr-old Russian man' :biggrin2: