Driven to Using Tor Browser, DuckDuckGo, Now Under the Radar
I have not created a blog on here in some time and thought it is about time to do one. I hope it will be helpful to some on here.
There is one thing I greatly appreciate about Wealthy Affiliate - what is taught here on one of the best forms of marketing there is. No marketing is perfect, but there is no doubt that affiliate marketing is one of the least invasive model there is, and when teaching it, Wealthy Affiliate does it right!
The sour note here is that I have left Chrome and Google for most of my time on the Internet these days. It doesn't mean I would never use these, but I have greatly diminished their use.
There are types of marketing being done these days that drives cyber technology to its limits and not only is it here to stay, it's getting worse!
Retargeting/Behavioural Marketing
These models take the cake on being the most evil and creepy forms that there is and what is forboding about it is - it's widespread and rampart like never before. In a few words, to the best of my knowledge, retargeting and behavioural marketing are one in the same though I may be wrong about this.
In essence, when you go to almost any website these days, especially those where you purchase products and services, looking, for example, a specific pair of shoes. When you visit that page, the system sends a cookie to your device. The cookie instructs the browser on the device to display adverts of that pair of shoes, or similar ones. But the creepy thing about it is that this is done without your knowledge (if you are not aware of this process,) and receiving adverts on a totally unrelated page you may visit later. That's it! This is the practice of retarget marketing. As for behavioural, the difference may be that you will get advertising that is based on your browsing preferences whereas retargeting usually involves the re-appearance of adverts about the product page you visited.
It's legal but it's completely unethical, sneaky and dowright despicable.
It Pays to View Privacy Policies
They are quite revealing. By law these must be provided and some of them will scare the pants off of you!
The insurance for my motorcycle is approaching its due day. I've already paid it. However on the free-for-all Gmail (which is far more secure than most of those free email services like Yahoo! and the like) you're fair game to a multitude of creeps we know as insurance companies and many other industries that pry information on you any way they can so they can market to you!
On my birthday - yes, that was yesterday, I received an email advert from coveragehunter dot com. Yes, that's auto tag time and they know that this is most likely when insurance is due as well! Never heard of the company but they sure know a lot about me! For one - in their eyes, I'm just another "consumer" for them to put a sucker hose to my wallet! I went to their privacy policy page. It's not the worst one I've seen but I will spare you that. It's quite long and not the place to put it on here so I will provide a link....
https://www.everquote.com/privacy-policy/
Note that this is a separate website. One look at this made me head for the hills! It will give you an idea what these snakes do! This type of thing is just everywhere! Almost cannot get away from it anymore. Get on board with a company like this, this is what you get!
Doesn't this make you appreciate Wealthy Affiliate a little more? Sure does me!
The Legal Data Miners...
The first thing that crops up in my mind is Facebook, but it's far from being the only one nor the most notorious. However useful social media is to the affiliate marketer, I tend to stay away from these. I do have a Facebook account but rarely use it. I also have FB Fluff Purity for it - a program that allows you to do the kind of things you can't do on Facebook without it.
It allows you to remove advertising, modules, just about any type of posts you would like to divorce from and this list is endless! But - it's not always foolproof. Facebook knows it's out there and does change its algorithms to thwart the program's functionality.
Do you think that, when you delete something off Facebook, that it's gone for good? Think again! You may think it's gone, but Facebook maintains a "ghost account" on you. Even when you don't have an account with them, better think twice before you declare "All's Clear!" They have a "shadow account" on those who don't have regular accounts with them!
Social media doesn't play very nice but it gets much worse...
There are data-mining websites out there that routinely pick up on more than you know about yourself! These are the places you go to find out if your spouse is cheating on you or a friend has committed some crime that you don't know about. These are snoop sites. There are a lot of them out there and can ruin the lives of those who do not deserve it. It is true they can also protect the innocent, but they're sneaky, kniving and you are game to them if you use the Internet like you are expected to.
Why Tor and DuckDuckGo?
I have nothing to hide. I have not done anything that would cause me to want to go in hiding or under the radar. I have no criminal record, not even as much as a traffic violatiion in the last 20 years! I have no interest in accessing the Dark Web. I have no ulterior motives in using these. It is unfortunate there are degenerates who use them for what they are not intended for and have given them a bad name. I have no reason to hide from anyone, but there is one thing I deplore...
Creeps who will do just about anything to find out about me so they can market to me! Sounds like sneezing at a gnat, but I deplore this! It's cyberconsumerism and it fries my behind!
These things will not do much to help me at this point with regard to my credentials being out there for everyone and anyone to see with a few clicks of the mouse, but what I can stop is the on-going junk that comes with using conventional browsers and search engines. Eventually, what's out there already will fade in time.
These also provide added security when browsing since they provide encryption of the packets as they travel through cyberspace. I have to do a little more work insofar as supplying passwords every time but this is a small deal when it comes to gaining back my privacy when I am on the Internet.
I also run Linux. It doesn't come with the BS that comes with Microsoft Windows and even to an extent, Apple. Linux does require more user intervention and does come with a learning curve, but it's free and you don't get marketed to by its makers or third party vendors. You do have to authenticate more often when for example, when you add or remove a program on the system.
When affiliate marketing, one would do better to be out there on the conventional lines but, when it comes to shopping and entertainments, better to do that from underground. There's nothing wrong with maintaining one's personal privacy!
I will probably have some things to say about this on my campaign for WA, but one thing is for sure - it's a way to tie in the relatively-safe form of marketing that is taught here at Wealthy Affiliate! I have at least three articles or more from what I've said here!
Daniel
Recent Comments
16
A marketer who doesn't like being marketed to? You have some good points in your post but also some that would seem contradicting to what you do as a student here. Also WA's method isn't the only form of marketing that people should engage in.
Yes. There are marketing methods I do not like therefore don't like them used on me. I assumed readers would see that this doesn't mean I hate being marketed to period and means I worded the post badly in that regard. I did not expect your argument but it is valid.
Affiliate marketing is my preferred method as it is the only one that has generated income for me. I like it because it is permission-based. This doesn't mean it is the only one I endorse. I realize that WA's method isn't the only way. I believe Carson and Kyle would acknowledge this.
Another reason I don't like, especially retargeting marketing, is because it's done without people's permission and without their knowledge. It plays on their ignorance of the technology involved. It makes people come to the wrong conclusions for what they are seeing. When I figured it out, it angered me and I did something about it after awhile. To me, ignoring it isn't enough. I don't want it used on me at all.
I went way past your argument and started thinking out loud. It went in all sorts of trajectories. When I came back here this evening I saw that it did not belong here and pared it down to an answer for what you said. You can see it has been cleaned up.
Thank you Jay for the feedback,
Daniel
Thank you Daniel. I really Appreciate you letting us know about all this. Sometimes we get do lost in our determination to succeed at Affiliate marketing we forget about some of the dangerous out there. I will have a closer look at Duck Duck ( I have heard of it before), and Your. Thanks Jim
It first glance these programs are not as impressive as you may be used to and they don't have the bells and whistles but they sure have a ton of security. It will be like stepping back in time about ten years but the safety they provide is timeless!
The Tor Browser is powered by Mozilla (Firefox) and there are alternatives to Tor as well. Do be prepared that, because of the way these browsers operate, Internet speed will be slower. It depends on which website you are on. I have not tried Wealthy Affiliate but I suspect load times will be significantly slower. Tor was the browser of choice for the FBI. It is very hard to crack.
It is perfectly fine to pull up the old Chrome and Google for Wealthy Affiliate because this website is clean. You don't get the rubbish that you would on a place like Facebook. Just, for the sake of Google's advertising, do purge your cookies regularly as you use the standard stuff.
Sometimes things that have more quality and are better built are clunky, but there is always give and take to consider.
Give it a shot. You can have all this set up alongside your normal setups.
Use Tor when you go to places like Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart and most other retail outlets big and small, and definitely for any entertainment sites where concerns are not just advertising but, depending on the entertainment, there are some security issues. I hope you don't go to naughty sites and if you do, you'd better have that protection! These, as well as unscrupulous marketer and scammer websites, are bad news!
If you go to someplace dangerous, Tor will let you know about it! Even going full-screen has security issues (I don't know what) and Tor responds with a warning. In this case, go to next-best thing to full-screen - drag the size of the browser window to the edges of the screen and it's nearly as good!
For me, just Linux alone helps keep much of the dangers at bay so long as you have the extra protection of malware protection software as well.
Yes, even though most baddies don't mess with Linux very much because it doesn't have near the popularity as Microsoft (which is often targeted massively) it doesn't mean it can't be hacked, but in combination to its popularity level, it's also much harder to break into!
Soon I will have a dedicated computer that isn't dual-boot like this one is. So far, the Windows updates have not broken Linux. There are some horror stories of this happening on dual-boot systems.
Thanks for stopping by!
Daniel
Well, something weird is happening here, just a fluke - I know you didn't reply four hours ago but that's what it is saying right now. I wrote the blog within the last hour and published it within the last ten minutes.
Hmmm.
Hey, this stuff is worth playing with. You are quite welcome :)
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Hey Daniel - yes it's getting worse. Most users don't seem to care. Until they're hacked. Welcome to the internet age :-)
It may be just me but I'm able to ignore on-page ads and although a few emails get through the spam filters, it's easy to spot the spam. In short it's a slight inconvenience in return for the benefits.
I applaud your stance. More power to you!
Ian
Internet safety is also a reason why I have taken some of the measures to build my fortification. My data is at risk and as you know, a host of other dangers as well.
I like things just the way I want them and as they are intended to be. I don't have ads on the websites I visit unless they are already in a page's original code. I am particular about advertising being in its proper place.
Many of my reviews and the things I discuss on my campaigns are about scams and how to spot them. I do this by examples of actual products I review where I not only point out the scam in faulty products and services but tear the marketing campaign apart bit by bit to show what's behind them.
People need to be educated on these things because, not only do they get burnt, but it also poisons their minds against what good is actually out there to the point where they won't even acknowledge that not all is bad.
I try to be a good stewart of the money I have and not waste it on scams, except to infiltrate the camps of the enemy (insidious marketeers and their pernicious ways,) and I certainly value my data.
I do what I can to not have to invest in a VPN, even though what I have done has its drawbacks as mentioned above.
Thanks for your kind words!
Daniel
Keeping yourself safe is good :-)
Also good to point out the scams and techniques of bad products. I'm sure it will help a lot of people. It seems to be newbies who get caught the most although you know what they say about old fools...? :-)
I do my best to teach people to recognize patterns in bad marketing that should raise red flags. It is far better to be educated and then know with some certainty which are bad and which are safe. The important thing is that, in the way of being scammed as it usually happens on the Internet, there are definite popular methods that are used extensively because they work.
There's also a constant stream of newbies arriving every day and this makes for a consistent income scamming folks with fake products, services and the bad marketing campaigns that do the work. Most of what I have are on this very thing. I do love to find products and services that are what they are said to be and a solid marketing campaign to back what is being offered.
A campaign should not have all negative reviews. People like good news once in a while. Trouble is, these are actually fairly hard to find but they are out there.