When using the internet to surf or for social media, do you find that you are being presented with ads on things that you have recently searched for or clicked on in your feeds? It may seem like Facebook or google know what you are thinking and showing you stuff that you are actually looking for. 

Well, this is personalized ad serving. And these companies can do this because they have recorded your browsing history and behavior from what you have viewed and what you have clicked on. They do this by saving your cookies which are basically logs of where you have browsed and can last as long as 60 days before they are deleted. 

So your activity from as far back as 2 months ago could still be influencing what you see in your feeds and your screen. This gets amplified when your mobile smartphone is on the same operating system as your PC because you will be logged into your browser with the same user account as your mobile phone. So, whatever you have been idly looking at on your mobile phone whilst on the train or in the supermarket queue will also pop up in related sites and ads on your pc at home or in the office.

If you don’t mind this kind of tailored online experience, then you can benefit from having a more focused web experience and not getting ads that would have little interest for you. But if you, like many, find these ads intrusive and repetitive then there is a simple way to avoid them. 

Get a VPN

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network which you can find out more here by learning about le migliori VPN. Which is a remote server that acts as the middle node point for your PC or mobile and the websites that you are visiting. It can be a dedicated server for you just you, but most people know of these as hosting companies that have multiple servers used for thousands of end-users who want that little bit more privacy. 

VPNs also allow you to bypass geo-blocks like BBC iplayer from outside of the UK. They allow you to bypass firewalls like the ones companies may have for social media sites or China has for Facebook. Some big ones out there are ExpressVPN, NordVPN, CyberGhost and one of my personal favorites with a fun tongue in cheek name HideMyAss VPN.

For just a monthly subscription fee, you can use these VPN providers to cloak your web activity so marketing companies, e-tailers, search engines can’t see that it is you and can’t record the cookies of your activity. You can even choose the city or country you want to use. This could be for speed reasons because one thing to note is your connection speed will be reduced when you use a VPN, or it may be because the user may want to intentionally trick the website that they are visiting from a specific country eg, Netflix from an American VPN so they get more USA shows or US pricing. 

There are free VPNs out there but tread carefully with these as they are free because they either serve their own ads for advertising income, are not very secure or “leak” which is a term used for dropped connections during your session.

Many of the reputable ones, like the ones listed above give you a free trial ranging from 7 days to 30days, take advantage of these to test how easy these are to load and how quick the connections are before you decide which to buy. And most have monthly contracts rather than annual, so customers can stop when they want, although signing up for longer usually means a lower monthly subscription fee.

Why Everyone should have a VPN

In summary, we strongly recommend using a VPN for any online activity, it gives you anonymity and ultimately protects you by encrypting data transfer and from hackers and ISP or Government surveillance.