Swapped my Google calendar for a self-hosted one after a weird ad incident

I used to use Google Calendar for EVERYTHING, work shifts and personal stuff all mixed in. Then last month I was talking to my buddy about getting a new grill for my backyard in Phoenix, and next day I saw ads for grills on my Gmail sidebar. That creeped me out enough to switch to a self-hosted calendar on my old Raspberry Pi. Has anyone else had ads show up that just felt too specific after using Google services?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim_ramirez38d agoMost Upvoted

Man, I gotta say I think this is a little overblown. My truck GPS logs every stop I make for a month straight and I don't lose sleep over it. Google serves up ads based on keywords from your emails and calendar events, that's been their whole deal for years. You really think a shady ad bot cares if you're getting a Weber or a Traeger? It's just an algorithm matching words to products, not some master spy network. I get that the grill thing felt creepy in the moment, but swapping your whole life to a Pi calendar for that seems like a lot of work for zero actual gain. You'd probably have more luck just turning off ad personalization in your settings if you're that worried.

reese_hayes718d ago

Close but not quite right on the GPS thing. Your truck GPS logs where you've been, but it's not listening to your conversations or reading your texts. Google's ad system is definitely keyword based, but the creepy part is how specific it gets sometimes. I had a buddy who mentioned a obscure band name once in a private message, and next day he's seeing ads for their merch. That's not just matching product keywords, that's pulling data from conversations that aren't public. Turning off ad personalization helps some, but a lot of that data gets tied to your profile anyway through other services.