Wk11: Now that's a bad cookie

Its 2020, you go on your phone, search for a product you have been thinking about, don't pull the trigger on it because you aren't sure if you want it that bad, so you resort to social media to try stop thinking about it. You open up your social feed, and straight away, there it is, an ad for that product you just searched up. If you don't know already that is because of 'Cookies' and no I am not talking about the chocolate chip type.

Cookies are text files with small pieces of data — like a username and password — that are used to identify your computer as you use a computer network. Specific cookies known as HTTP cookies are used to identify specific users and improve your web browsing experience. Data stored in a cookie is created by the server upon your connection. This data is labeled with an ID unique to you and your computer. When the cookie is exchanged between your computer and the network server, the server reads the ID and knows what information to specifically serve to you.

So how do you keep getting these ads on your phone that are so personalised? The personalized ads are a result of cookies and an IP address. Cookies are text files in your browser that track information you’ve searched. Your IP address is kind of like your house address and shows where you are located. The balance between both of them is what gives the information to advertisers.

What can you do to stop these ads?

There are 3 simple ways you can stop these ads from popping up. The first way is too turn off cookies, this is the most simple and easy way too stop these ads. Secondly use a browser plug in, you can use a browser plug-into limit data tracking. For example, Mozilla launched a Firefox browser plug-in, called a Facebook Container, that helps control how much data the social media company can access. Finally you can turn off targeted Facebook ads, to opt out of Facebook showing you targeted ads from other sites, or from seeing Facebook’s ads on other sites, open your Facebook page and click “settings,” and then “ads.”

Then click on the “ads based on my use of websites and apps” setting and press the “choose setting” button and select “off.” Once you turn this feature off, Facebook says you will still see the same number of ads, but they may be less relevant to you. It also won’t stop Facebook (and other companies) from tracking you. It simply means that information won’t be used to show ads targeted to you.

What are some benefits of cookies?

Although based off what I've told you cookies may seem bad, there are actually some great benefits to having cookies enabled on your browsers. Cookies allow you to help save website preferences, they save shopping carts, remember what you have already seen, and they are great for often-visited sites. And also eve though seeing ads for things you want can be annoying, sometimes it opens you up to a deal you never knew about.

Thankyou for reading my blog post! Please leave a comment down below and let me know about a time you've seen an ad for something you have recently searched for, was it annoying? or did it help you in some way?