How ads follow you around the internet

Hint: Its why every site asks you to accept cookies.

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Youve seen the pop-ups: This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Please accept cookies.

Cookies do improve your experience. They function as the websites short term memory; with each new click you make, cookies help the site identify you as the same person. Imagine every time you add something to your cart and click away, it disappears. Or each time you load a new page on Facebook, you have to log in again. Without cookies, the online world we know today couldnt exist.

But that world relies on advertising, which gives three kinds of companies a strong incentive to track your online behavior. Brands want to sell products by serving you ads for things youre likely to buy. Platforms and publishers like Vox want to make money by serving those ads when youre on their site. And middlemen are in the business of ensuring the ads from the brands are delivered to the right people.

In this video, we explain how cookies work and what you should know about how theyre being used. And we get a little help from the man who invented them.

Open Sourced is a year-long reporting project from Recode by Vox that goes deep into the closed ecosystems of data, privacy, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Learn more at http://www.vox.com/opensourced

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Sources:
Online Tracking: A 1-million-site Measurement and Analysis https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/OpenWPM_1_million_site_tracking_measurement.pdf
"Why every website wants you to accept its cookies"
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/18656519/what-are-cookies-website-tracking-gdpr-privacy
The reasoning behind web cookies https://montulli.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-reasoning-behind-web-cookies.html
Letter following Facebook Chief Technology Officer testimony before UK House of Commons https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/culture-media-and-sport/180514-Rebecca-Stimson-Facebook-to-Ctte-Chair-re-oral-ev-follow-up.pdf
How does online tracking actually work? https://robertheaton.com/2017/11/20/how-does-online-tracking-actually-work/
Now sites can fingerprint you online even when you use multiple browsers https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-sites-can-fingerprint-you-online-even-when-you-use-multiple-browsers/
WTF are Facebooks first-party cookies for pixel? https://digiday.com/marketing/wtf-what-are-facebooks-first-party-cookies-pixel/
About Cookie Settings for Facebook Pixel https://www.facebook.com/business/help/471978536642445?id=1205376682832142
What information does Facebook get when I visit a site with the Like button? https://www.facebook.com/help/186325668085084
Transcript of Mark Zuckerbergs Senate Hearing https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing/
Facebook Is Tracking Me Even Though Im Not on Facebook https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/internet-privacy/facebook-tracking-me-even-though-im-not-facebook/
Internet History Podcast Interview with Lou Montulli http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/03/chapter-1-supplemental-1-an-interview-with-lou-montulli/

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