Topic: AN INTERESTING THING HAPPENED TODAY READING MY EMAIL
Topic Posted by: Janie
Date Posted: Sun Jul 27 17:53:52 2008
Additional Comments: I'm wondering if this has ever happened to any of you? I was reading my online nursing journal, News for Nurses, and clicked onto one of the articles on hyperthyroidism. Instead of the article coming up, I got an ad for Obama. So I clicked back to the magazine and redid it. Sure enough, his ad came up again. This is pretty bad, IMO, as we should not be forced to his campaign strategies when trying to read out emails. Boo! I think I would feel the same way if an ad came up for any candidate running for political office. How is it that this is able to happen?
Posted by: maggimae Date posted: Mon Jul 28 16:53:29 2008
Message: You should report this to the administrator of your on line nursing journal. I don't see this as a pop up. If you clicked on a link that was supposed to take you to an article and you were instead directed to a political ad, this isn't a pop up.
From what I understand, pop ups occur based on one or two things....sites you have visited in the past forming cookies (did you ever go to an Obama website to read about him?) AND now the candidates have a special system of delivering their messages to people they THINK might vote for him. I suspect that the Obama campaign feels people in the medical profession would prefer him as a candidate. Because you were visiting a nursing site, they targeted you for the pop up. I guess the only thing you can do is do everything you can to block all pop ups. You still will get ads catered to you on various websites (like MD) based on these two things; cookies and targeted political campaigns, but at least you can divert your eyes from an ad. Pop ups are unavoidable, aren't they?
The article is a few years old but it kind of explains what they're doing. In the past few years, they've found more intricate ways to decipher how we might vote.
