Ask Slashdot: Can Creating New Online Accounts Reduce Privacy Risks?

rjnagle writes "I'm concerned about the implications of storing personal data on Gmail, Facebook, and other social media sites. I'm less worried about individual data than the accumulating mass of data which potentially be used against me (for targeted marketing, credit reporting and who knows what else?) One solution I'm considering is just to abandon individual accounts and start clean and new gmail/facebook accounts. So while Google/Doubleclick might possess lots of data about me from 2001-2012, from this point on, they only have a clean slate. Would this kind of solution address my privacy concerns? (assuming I remove cookies, change IP address before doing so etc). Or are an individual's profile by now so unique that simply creating a new gmail or Facebook account would fail to prevent these data collection agencies from figuring out who I am? Insights and tips are appreciated."

Re:That's cute, kid.

[dgatwood]

And yet, their data is mostly worthless. By the time I post about something on Facebook, 99% of the time, it is no longer actionable. For example, I'm seeing ads for hot water heaters because mine sprung a leak. That's not the sort of thing you put off fixing, so by the time I saw the first water heater ad on Facebook, the new water heater was already ordered and installed.

And they keep doing that over and over. I'll order something, and the next day they'll show me ads for similar products. Helpful hint: I just bought a cornet. I'm not likely to be interested in buying a second one. At least "You just bought [X], so you might like [accessories for X]" ads would be useful, but the "You just bought [X] so you might be interested in [slight variant of X]" ads are pretty much useless. Thus far, I've seen exactly one such ad that was even marginally plausible—an ad for camera lenses from some vintage products website after I bought a vintage lens on eBay. However, even that is not the sort of thing you buy every day. Show me that ad again in a year or two.

What makes the ads even more useless is that they're for the same type of product from companies that I already do business with. They aren't introducing me to new businesses. They aren't introducing me to new products that I'm not already aware of, having just studied that business's offerings in that area. So what exactly is the purpose of showing me this ad?

But the best part is that they keep showing me ads for products made by my employer's biggest competitor. They know who my employer is.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure their data mining strategy involves a drunken monkey flinging crap against the wall.

You're concerned...?

[albacrankie]

I used to get ads featuring young ladies in skimpy underwear. Move on a few years, and now I get ads for 'mature' dating sites. These ads are extremely depressing. So much so that I suspect it's a euthanasian plot intended to make me top myself. It may succeed. And now you're suggesting I could fix things by changing my e-mail address. That may be even more depressing. Fuck it!!!!