Posted on 04/22/2014 6:04:00 AM PDT by ThunderSleeps
Something odd happened last Friday and it has been bugging me for a few days now.
I needed to pick something up at an address in town. Wife called me (cell phone to cell phone) and read me the address. A few minutes later I happened to be on the computer and went to Google Maps (using Chrome). I started to type the address in, just the first two digits of the four digit street number and up came the list of suggestions...with that exact address as the first one!? WTF?
Seriously, there must be a hundred addresses in town that start with "64..." and that one that my wife just happened to read to me over a phone came up first? Weird coincidence or what?
That’s so funny. It would be fun to get on somebody else’s laptop and do google searches for things like Preparation H or something like that. LOL
I once was doing some proof reading and came across two words - I won’t type them in here - that looked odd. They were normal words but together they didn’t look right. I googled the two word phrase. Unfortunately those words have meaning in the porn world. OMG. You wouldn’t believe the one website I went to and the ads.
Was your phone location turned on? If that was on, it probably took the closest address to you that started with those numbers. Also, if it was a business, it would likely come up with a higher priority than a residence address, only because more folks would search for a business over an residence.
Forgot to add... start page won’t prevent them from logging sites you visit if you are signed in to Google or have devices synced to a cloud.
Never mind. I misread your original post. I thought you were near the place, forgetting that you were looking it up on the computer, not the phone. That being said, I stick to my second comment on the business aspect side of it.
You are actually lucky, in that you have a company name and address that is legitimate. I have been looking for a company; I have their name; though company name is bogus, two reference points inside two different states, a phone number (have not called yet) and know the business to be operating a scam stealing money from Americans. You are lucky.
When I was planning a Disney trip with my family, I once googled “Gay Days at Disney” so I could avoid them. Boy, you should have seen the ads that popped up after that google.
Google returns results based in part on your location or ISP location. The rest is coincidence.
Is it a popular business? Google maps uses your IP address as a starting point and then begins listing address suggestions based on popularity for searches by everyone in that area and your own past browsing history.
Speaking of Google maps, their new interface is terrible.
Seems like everyone sells everything. I went in for a kidney stone, and they gave me an abdominal ultrasound.
About a month later I started getting "Expectant Mother" magazines.
HIPPA my @ss.
Do you have a Gmail or Google+ account?
I’m logged into Gmail on my computer and my phone. If I look up an address on my phone, it is ‘cached’ (for lack of a better word) in my Google account. If I look up the same address later on my computer, it pops right up.
I have had something similar and more complex happen and android phones aren’t involved.
A couple of years ago I opened up a g mail/chrome account to use You Tube for fishing, boating and other outdoor videos to view and to submit. Sometimes, I use Chrome to log on to web sites when my Comcast internet starts acting slow or unresponsive like AT&T.
About a year ago Google Mail added my neighbor’s and in my town a close friend’s gmail addresses as friends. I had never sent them a G Mail on my G mail acct.
Last week, Google added a younger relative to my list as a relative. He lives over 30 miles away in a different city. Neither of us had ever used G Mail to contact each other.
All three of these G Mail ‘additions’ are big time Apple users with I pads and I Phones. Two of them use Macs at home. Two use AT&T for the service provider for their I gear and one uses Verizon. All 3 use G Mail on a regular basis.
I get less unwanted ads associated with searches on Chrome, than I do with Comcast. It is evident that Comcast sold a lot of my profile data re age, activities and some buying habits. My wife doesn’t use the internet, she uses her Android to keep up with friends/relatives. If she wants to search for something or a service, I do it for her. So she avoids this data mining bs.
Our younger relative said Google does this adding or suggestions to add friends, workers/co workers and people who are into his sports all the time to his IPad/Verizon all the time.
His suggestion was to close down NSA and have Google do the monitoring for free or @ a low cost.
Most comments on this thread are from people who don’t scan the pages they use. Goggle has an Option where you can stop the suggested ads from coming up.
Search history
When signed in, you can receive more relevant results and recommendations based on your search activity. You can turn off or edit your search history at any time.
Simple huh?
Most of the other systems allow you to set up their search systems too.
I use an add on called AdBlock and AdBlock Plus. They do just what the name implies.
I also use NoScript which restricts what websites I allow scripting.
Have fun looking up you other options. Look at your History and you’ll find a way to stop your history from being tracked by clicking on “Do Not Track”.
For a Home page I use https://startpage.com
Before I shut down my PC I run two programs MRU BLASTER and CCleaner. These dump my Recycle Bin, Cookies, Prefetch history and Internet files. That way there’s nothing in the files that can be used tomorrow.
I hope this helps with the paranoia.
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