Another curious question from me. What type of information does adsense collect from a user that simply views an adsense placement?

Probably everything they can get..

Yea like IP, browser, OS, service provider... I can't think of anything else ATM.

I guess if you have the Google toolbar installed and are signed into Google account then they'll collect a lot more info too.

Just for clarification purposes I mean what happens when an adsense placement is simply loaded on a page, not clicked. All of those things still?

IP, OS, service provider, browser, the page where that person just came from, etc can be collect when someone views a page. Do you have a stats program by chance? If so look at all the info you can get about your visitors. They can basically get that same info too.

If a person is using the Google toolbar or is signed into a Google account while surfing they'll also be able to tell things like that persons browsing history since they can follow the visitor beyond the one page.

If you look at the code for AdSense part of is is a scrpt that's on the Google server. I don't know what they actually collect, but I would think they would want to collect any info they could.

You don't need to click for them to find out a lot.

Just like now they have that search history thing, and magically know tons of stuff about you. They're starting to become too big of a force, I have a feeling soon that people will start worrying about their privacy & google.

I think people started worrying awhile ago. I'm not so concerned with it myself. It's the nature of being online. If you visit websites then there is information about you that can be collected. I'd certainly rather others not be able to collect that info about me, but it's the price I pay for being online. There's probably more information offline if you know were to look.

On the other hand I do like knowing certain things about the people who visit my site like what page they were on right before mine. Helps me know which of my marketing efforts are working and which aren't. I like being able to trac ip addresses. Helps me know how many of my visitors are unique and how many of them come back and how often. Also allows me to block the ip address of those I've identified as a spammer who's just wasting my bandwidth.

Yea that's true, but I meant specifically Google, as in, they have ads on so many websites, and I'm sure that they collect your IP; they could probably watch your surfing habits nearly step by step. They can collect info about your surfing all over the web, whereas a small, single site owner only knows when you're at their site.

True Google can collect more than the average website, but they're not alone. Yahoo and Microsoft can both collect the same information. Microsoft even has connections directly to our OS (assuming we use Windows). And they aren't the only 3 companies that can collect our data.

I don't believe any of them use the information with ill will in mind. There are many legitimate reasons why they would want to collect the data they. I'd rather they not have all that access to my info, but I think it's just the nature of being online at this point.

It shouldn't worry anyone if google is collecting what all that, as long as it doesn't go into your computer and gets personal info like you financial or credit cards it shouldn't be a problem. After all who cares if they know it's not like they report you to the FBI if you violate a law. They just use that info to better their services I for one would like to see more audience targetted services from google.

Thank You

That's pretty much my view too Numbah1. It can be a little scary, in a 1984ish kind f way, just knowing they can collect all that information, but I agree that the motivies are to provide better services and not anything else.

I agree with numba1 + Van but take a look at http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com...d/show_ads.js:

("cust_age",a.google_cust_age)
;c("cust_gender",a.google_cust_gender);c("cust_int erests",a.google_cust_interests);c("cust_id",a.goo gle_cust_id);c("cust_job",a.google_cust_job)

Name? Interests? ID? Job?!

Interesting. I had copied the script a few days ago to see what's there, but haven't taken the time to sort through all the code yet. Things like gender and interests and job doesn't both me so much, though I'm not sure how Google can tell what kind of job someone has, by what they click on. I would think most of those are so AdWords customers can target ads to certain demographics.

Id and name are a bit troubling though. Depends on what those variables are actually tracking. If it's the name and id of the Adsense publisher it might not be so bad, but if that id and name are coming through the toolbar of Google account that seems like some personaly identifyable informtation.

By the way Harvey, you're looking a little different today.

It might be if you are logged into your google account at the time, They are able to see who views what sites, clicks what adverts and what they search for, Then cross refrence this with your name where you live what yo do for a living... It gets more frightning the more i think about it lol.

Interesting. I had copied the script a few days ago to see what's there, but haven't taken the time to sort through all the code yet. Things like gender and interests and job doesn't both me so much, though I'm not sure how Google can tell what kind of job someone has, but what they click on. I would think most of those are so AdWords customers can target ads to certain demographics.

Id and name are a bit troubling though. Depends on what those variables are actually tracking. If it's the name and id of the Adsense publisher it might not be so bad, but if that id and name are coming through the toolbar of Google account that seems like some personaly identifyable informtation.

Originally Posted by vangogh

By the way Harvey, you're looking a little different today.

Why thankyou - new avatar is Mr Tourette from Modern Toss (Channel 4, Tuesdays @ 11) and I got half a bar of TP from Tim