It’s CREEPY. Like I’m in high school, a junior, and kind of a huge nerd, so I look into colleges online. I plan on being a nurse (possibly a doctor, because they’re paid more and I think I could handle it, but I think I would enjoy being a nurse more). So a few times I’ve looked around for Texan colleges (Texas being my state) with a good nursing program. Now I find ads for various colleges and nursing programs popping up. Which, okay, I see how that can be useful, but it’s still just kind of creepy…I don’t like the thought that people can find out that information about me if I don’t want them to.
Also, I was just browsing one of the websites I commonly frequent, and I glanced towards the top of the page and instead of the banner being what it usually is, which is for various computer games (not a source of tracking here: I rarely ever play video/computer games. Except Skyrim). Instead, it’s an ad for “The College of Health Care Professions”. Once again a bit perturbed, I click on the link and what do I find? Not only is it a college for my intended major, but it’s a Texan college…in Fort Worth. I LIVE IN THE DALLAS-FORTH WORTH METROPLEX. I used to drive half an hour every day to go to this really fancy private school in Fort Worth, which was really good actually until it got too expensive. I so don’t like the fact that apparently these ad companies can find out where I live now. I mean I get that this is all computerized, I doubt it’s an actual person actually reading my browsing history…but they could, and that bothers me, I don’t want people being able to find out where I live, what my approximate age is, what colleges I might go to, what my intended profession is…I’m sure there’s other information, too.
I mean I know I’m being a bit paranoid…it just creeps me out a bit, that’s all. Especially because I use Firefox and I clicked the option that said to tell sites I didn’t want to be tracked…which means that all this information was found even though I have the highest privacy options selected and am generally pretty careful about what I reveal online, like I wouldn’t normally reveal where I approximately live if it wasn’t relevant to the question.