What the milky one said.

 

IP based tracking, just like Google do so easily when it looks for results near you. Fairly crude since when I'm at home in Bury it thinks I'm in Bolton. But with Facebook it probably just keeps track of where you most often login.

 

It isn't a bad thing though, because when you log in from a very different location, like a different country, it makes you do some security checks before it lets you in. I had this when I was using Facebook in Abu Dhabi, it made me select from a list of people who were tagged in various photos so it could actually confirm it was me, I rather liked it.

I knew someone would say that.

Conveniently, when I earlier went to double check my profile was empty, Facebook showed me the following in the advert column:



Maidenhead being the place my IP resolves to, and also a place that's not particularly near to me.

So no, that's not where they're getting it from.

Not bothered by country-wide new-login-location checks for account security.

That's entirely different to selling my removed information to advertisers.

As above, this IP never resolves any closer than Maidenhead.

They're probably not selling it to the advertisers. Just displaying ads which match your location, which is a different thang.

Don't care, it still offends me.

And they're still selling the use of the information to the advertisers, even if not the specific data value. So they are cheating advertisers with out-dated information.

Adblock.

Opera. :(

lol

Are you connected using 3G? They'll be able to infer from that which areas you spend most of your time in, because your provider sells that information on to them. Oh yes. (Possibly.)

:|

Don't use Facebook then.

:|

All of these services would be chargeable without adverts. Just saying...

I want to install a component on all computers so that whenever someone writes "just saying" it opens a hatch and punches them in the privates.

And if they also say anything equivalent to "you're not allowed to complain because it's free" or "the adverts are the price you pay" or similar then it also slaps them round the face.

Are you this angry in real life?

I don't entirely subscribe to that notion, and free things can certainly be shit but the adverts are the price you pay and honestly, if you dislike it so much just stop using it.

I don't particularly enjoy the Facebook experience, but it's free and mostly works.

I think/hope that model of business is going to die off soon. Someone really needs to find another way to make websites pay.

Sometimes.

Someone with more clevers than me once said, " If you're using service online that is free then YOU are the product".

I kind of agree, but then I don't really want to pay for this stuff either :D

 

Mind you, I do and have paid for some online things and they would certainly be more accountable.