How did the Ad Networks find my search? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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So a bit ago I got an add for "canned rambutan". I had looked up Rambutan a few days prior after hearing it mentioned 10 hours into the video game Baby Steps. I wasn't using a VPN at the time and I didn't have fingerprinting protections active but I only mentioned it to a few sources (according to my browser history) all of which generally are implied to be private.

Which of these do you think is the reason the ad networks know?

Wikipedia
Startpage Search
Duckduckgo Search
My ISP
Firefox
My Firefox Extensions
Kubuntu
CachyOS
The omnipotent algorithm connecting my mentions of Baby Steps with my progress through the game.
Does this only make sense if my browser history is incomplete?
Maybe I was using DNS over HTTPS via Cloudflare at the time of my search.

Any guesses as to where the weak link is?

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[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I would guess the likely culprits are

Firefox extensions

Search engines

Wikipedia

Other search results you may have opened or pre-loaded (not a default Firefox behaviour)

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

I don't think Wikipedia is a likely culprit. I haven't heard anything about them selling data.

[-] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You’ll need to provide all the sites you visited immediately after each of the ones you searched. Your origin header will give that info away freely. So if it’s in the query parameters of the URL, then you go to Facebook, it’s as easy as {k: v for k, v in (pair.split("=", 1) for pair in response.headers["origin"].split("?", 1)[-1].split("&"))}

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

Firefox only stores the time of my most recent visit so I don't have that information anymore, so let's just assume I went to YouTube immediately afterwards.

[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 0 points 1 week ago

I have noticed ublock origin block counter go up on Wikipedia but haven't looked into why

[-] lattrommi@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

I might be wrong but I believe the 'other annoyances' option in uBlock Origin removes the Wikipedia "donate" banner. That could be what that is.

this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025

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