How can Facebook possibly know my personal interests so well?

[ElizabethA1]

I'm on Facebook. For work I look at web-pages about certain aspects of youth culture, e.g. ballroom dance and volunteering. Now on Facebook I'm getting ads specifcally about ballroom dance and volunteering. These are not on my profile anywhere. How come Facebook can figure out what sites I've been visiting? And how can I stop it?

[Hannah,,Ahava]

idk how u can stop it.. but ya,, they,, lotsa ppl websites watch everywhere u go! :O

[The Tuxedo]

Lots of websites store "cookies" on your computer. These cookies store information about you, usually browsing habits. Thus, if you visit ballroom dance websites occaisonally, you will find you get more ballroom dancing ads.

The counter to this is to delete the cookies. If you are using Internet Explorer, you can delete them by clicking on the "Tools" button at the top, and then selecting "Internet Options" from the dropdown menu.

In the "Internet Options" menu, choose the "General" tab, and in the menu that you should see, look for a area entitled "Temporary Internet Files", and click on the "Delete Cookies" and the "Delete Files" buttons.

Doing this regularly should help you.

Another thing, Facebook can relate the groups/pages you have on your Facebook page to the ads in their database. So if you have joined a lot of Ballroom Dancing groups, then Facebook will give you Ballroom Dancing ads.

You can't fix that though, it's the way Facebook operates, and manages to remain free.

[Ali]

I believe you can.

For privacy and speed you can stop the "redirects". ie, get direct links inside facebook.
I use a script with greasemonkey. (its easy if you just click the links)

1) First get greasemonkey firefox addon (you must be using firefox) here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
and then click add to firefox.

2) After that install the script "Facebook direct links" here:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8733
and click the "Install Script".

Enjoy