It tickles me when I read of journalists protecting their privacy. You can see how far up the tree they’ve climbed.
There are many, many more ways to track that anonymous phone. These are feel-good settings to disable for that sense of false security; like you’re in control. It does have effect, don’t get me wrong.
But a big part of tracking is not what your phone sends, but other devices detect. There’s no opt out of that data collection.
Welcome to advertising tricks. My SO gets my ads because I block them too. “Blocks ads” is a data point that is tracking you around the web. They simply redirect your content to the next closest impressionable consumer. If they can’t reach you, they’ll market everywhere around you.
But this takes off doubly so this time of year. This trick really ramps up around gift giving events like The holidays, v-day, birthdays, or other life events.
I always second guess this now. It’s a logical argument, but I’ve experienced this ad attack too.
Someone close to me had a medical scare and the entire web flipped from “blah blah buy this crap” to “when I found out I had cancer…” I saw red. It wasnt just me, several other households were hounded immediately and relentlessly.
They had a huge helping of privacy education after that. Browser plugins, privacy tips, and I built a Pihole for their network.
There are no ethics in online advertising. Once you are categorized as a premium marketability consumer (life events like health, pregnancy, and I suppose alcohol/sobriety now) the web turns on you and your close associates.
That year 4 families joined the online privacy and Adblockers forever club.
I do that too, but had to add another variable. I use a priority-level or yearly rotating trigger word to pick out messages from spam. Keeps more of the riffraff out and easy to ban old temp addresses.
[Trigger].[Company name] @ domain.com