I Hate GeoIP Advertising

Published onMarch 15, 2007

Girls in Taiwan

Preface to this rant: I am currently an expat living abroad. However, having most of my interests in Western culture, sometimes amusing things happen. This is the quick story of one of them.

Remember, I'm in a coffee shop? GeoIPized Girls = have to sit with back to wall.

GeoIP is the concept that allows you to map a user's IP to the country it came from (I hacked up my commenting system just so you can see an example, if you are a visual type of person). Advertisers have long since picked up on this as a way to make their ads "better," hopefully becoming more appealing to their clientèle. Sometimes the adaptation doesn't quite work as expected. This morning I was searching for an eBook on Embedded Linux (it is really hard to find English tech books here) -- and just had to snap a few screenshots. The advertisers picked up my IP, from Taiwan, and "customized" the advertisement. Needless to say, I've seen a total of five white females here over the entire last year.

This reminded me just how much crap people know about me; since I'm in a coffeeshop, I don't really care, but still. So, why do I hate GeoIP advertising?

  • It reminds me how much crap people know about me
  • It reminds me that I should be using the Tor network
  • Instead of displaying contextual ads that I even might be a little inclined to click, it reminds me how much I hate advertising
  • Remember, I'm in a coffee shop? GeoIPized Girls = have to sit with back to wall.
Turn on FoxyProxy

Being curious, I decided to see if I could teleport the girls to other parts of the world. Enter Tor, Privoxy and FoxyProxy. I turned them all on, went back and remembered just how cool these tools really are. Full screenshot.






Tagged As: All Things Networking | The WTF | Random | Web
Kelvin Nicholson Mar 15 2007
4:07 a.m. taiwan
#1

Leave a quick comment, get a flag by your name. Time to represent your country! Go GeoIP.

Bunny Mar 15 2007
4:56 a.m. taiwan
#2

hot girls!!!
!!! I thought you're working :~

Jason W Mar 15 2007
5:01 a.m. united states
#3

Agh! Your fullscreen view doesn't work! Maybe the masterminds of GeoIP have hacked your site! :-)

Kelvin Nicholson Mar 15 2007
5:05 a.m. taiwan
#4

Doh! You're right, it was either the GeoIP masterminds, or the fact that I can't type. Thanks for pointing that out!

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This entry is from my tech blog and was written on March 15, 2007. It's been tagged with All Things Networking and The WTF and Random and Web. There have been 4 comments so far.

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