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?

  • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    2·
    11 hours ago

    AdGuard, ProtonPass, TamperMonkey, Time Tracker, and 10ten have those permissions. The others don’t. I don’t think any of these extensions would be able to function without these permissions.