So a bit ago I got an add for “canned rambutan”. I had looked up Rambutan a few days prior after hearing it mentioned 10 hours into the video game Baby Steps. I wasn’t using a VPN at the time and I didn’t have fingerprinting protections active but I only mentioned it to a few sources (according to my browser history) all of which generally are implied to be private.

Which of these do you think is the reason the ad networks know?

  • Wikipedia
  • Startpage Search
  • Duckduckgo Search
  • My ISP
  • Firefox
  • My Firefox Extensions
  • Kubuntu
  • CachyOS
  • The omnipotent algorithm connecting my mentions of Baby Steps with my progress through the game.
  • Does this only make sense if my browser history is incomplete?
  • Maybe I was using DNS over HTTPS via Cloudflare at the time of my search.

Any guesses as to where the weak link is?

I have noticed ublock origin block counter go up on Wikipedia but haven’t looked into why

lattrommi
link
fedilink
62d

I might be wrong but I believe the ‘other annoyances’ option in uBlock Origin removes the Wikipedia “donate” banner. That could be what that is.

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