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Jewish World Review
Apr. 4, 2013/ 24 Nissan, 5773
Being stalked --- by cookies
By
Michael Smerconish
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)
Ann Richards is stalking me.
Yes, I'm referring to the silver-tongued former governor of Texas. The politician who once said about women: "If you give us the chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
She once said of fellow Texan George H.W. Bush: "Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
I know what you're thinking. Didn't she pass? Indeed she did, back in 2006, but that doesn't seem to be stopping her.
She's been after me since March 4, when I was in New York City and thought I'd check on ticket price and availability for a new, one-woman Broadway show called "Ann," starring Holland Taylor, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. There's great buzz around the show and the one-liners from Richards it features, including this one:
"I musta drunk eleven hundred thousand martinis by the time I landed in A.A. and by then, I was this big ol' county commissioner! So I like to think I broke a barrier for politicians with an addiction in their past. And nowadays, hell, you can't hardly even get into a primary unless you've done time in rehab."
I logged onto the official website for the play, probably spent less than five minutes perusing possible seat locations, and decided to pass for now. That must have offended Ann, because she's been following me ever since.
She popped up when I was reading the Philadelphia Inquirer story about reaction to the controversial cover story in Philadelphia Magazine titled "Being White in Philly."
And there she was while I was reading a Washington Post story about a 16-year-old boy who sneaked out of his house to attend a party and, trying to return home after drinking, entered a neighbor's house instead of his own. He was fatally shot by the neighbor.
And there was Ann above a Politico story on a radio executive who said the financial ramifications of Rush Limbaugh's offensive comment about Sandra Fluke were still being felt by that industry.
Even when my random search to confirm what songs appeared on Carole King's epic 1971 album "Tapestry" landed me at something called sing365.com, there was Ann, smiling at me through red lipstick, looking Nancy Reagan-regal in a white suit.
I'm creeped out at the idea that Ann Richards knows my Internet preferences. It's enough to make me see the show just to get her to stop following me.
But an expert on this sort of online marketing doesn't think it will be so easy to shake her. Joseph Turow is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth." Turow told me that the ads I keep seeing are manifestations of what people in the ad industry call "remarketing" or "retargeting."
"The way it often works is this: An advertising network makes a deal with a website (say, that play's website) to place cookies little anonymous ID files into the browsers of the computers that visit the site," Turow explained. "That same firm has negotiated the same right to do that on hundreds of thousands of other sites. When you arrive at other sites where the network has those 'tag' rights, the network's computer sees its cookie and records that you have been there.
"The network can also serve ads on those sites that reflect the interests of advertisers who want to retarget you based on what you looked at earlier, based on the cookie tracking. The network shares the revenues it makes from the ad with the website on which the ad is served."
In my case, Turow said I had been to a number of sites where a company that was remarketing the Richards play had its cookies. He said this is the most common example of "behavioral targeting" today, and that he himself experienced it when recently shopping for a camera lens.
If I go to the play, will Richards leave me alone? "Probably not," Turow said.
"But often, what these companies do is, they have a limit in the number of times they target you," he said. "And sometimes if you clean your cookies, that would go away.
"Another way to do it, by the way, is, if you use different browsers, you wouldn't see it on one browser but you would see it on another browser, because the browsers are cookie-based. More and more, there's a problem with phones because a lot of phones don't accept cookies, and particularly what's called third-party cookies. For example, Apple phones don't."
I told him this sounds like the Internet version of what I've experienced via U.S. mail. For example, I was sent a Lands' End catalog soon after I placed an order at L.L. Bean, even though I had not requested the former.
Turow's reply: "So what you've touched on is a nerve that if you follow it through, it courses through the entire body of the Web, and it's a very interesting thing, but only the tip, only really one nerve, in a huge and expanding organism that is being created."
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Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here. Michael Smerconish writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Previously:
03/26/13 Food giants engineering the recipe for obesity
03/07/13 He wrote the book on keeping the fires burning
02/05/13 Making policy palatable with food and drink think
12/19/12 In defense of the DJs
12/17/12 Key to election --- stocks, not jobs
12/11/12 United Airlines' post-9/11 commitment to security rescinded?
11/01/12 Good reasons to revive draft
09/25/12 If Romney loses
04/19/12 Christie will get GOP nod in 2016
04/06/12 Romneys not only family with embarrassing stories
03/08/12 Here's an easy fix for King monument quote
02/28/12 Valor-medal lie as free speech
02/21/12 Now we know: Van Halen's M&M rider was just a test
02/14/12 Life inside the (class) bubble
02/09/12 Rethinking paths to wealth
01/17/12 Romney must face his work history head-on
01/11/12 Don't let those gift cards be a gift to retailers or the state
01/03/12 Headlines hoped for in 2012
11/09/11 Romney, beware: Cain may bob through the straits
11/02/11 Where there's ad smoke, there's … what?
10/20/11 After husband is murdered, 30 long years of phone calls
10/13/11 Black women should only marry out of their race?
08/31/11 Some political gaffes really say something
07/27/11 An overture of candidates' theme songs
06/28/11 Where's the app for common sense?
06/02/11 Over-scrutinizing lives costs us potential leaders
04/19/11 Taking a chance to say, Hi
04/06/11 Race policies should be altered to reflect new demographic reality
11/10/10 Delaware's independent, but short-lived, voice
11/03/10 Papers should leave endorsing to others
10/21/10 Media help to hype perception of bullying
09/23/10 Officer down, killer hyped up
08/04/10 Documents highlight Pakistan's shortcomings as a U.S. ally
07/06/10 On taking back Sept. 11
06/29/10 Name elite corps to develop energy independence?
04/21/10 New account reinforces a serviceman's valor
03/11/10 Medical profession must police itself better
02/18/10 One-trick athletes
02/09/10 Active, retired law officers should be able to carry guns on planes to help stop terrorists
02/04/10 How to bring tech up to speed
01/28/10 Campaign donations must be fully and immediately disclosed online
01/07/10 The flying emperor still has no clothes, and no one is willing to say so
12/24/09 A law to mandate college football playoffs?
12/17/09 Cheney's abuse of freedom of speech
11/26/09 The true cost of freedom from anxiety
10/27/09 If GOP wants to win in 2012, it must reshape its primary process
10/08/09 It's time to get smarter on extended school day
09/03/09 What a summer of eulogizing flawed public figures reveals about society
08/12/09 It's time for cyclists and motorists to reconcile
08/05/09 Faces have changed, but vitriol remains
06/25/09 Fair comment or foul? Warm up the Muzzle Meter
06/08/09 Believability is key in crime-hoax villains
05/14/09 Did Hollywood inspire the meltdown men?
04/20/09 Let's give killers their due: Anonymity
03/12/09 Uninsured who can't afford medical care lose a lot more
02/06/09 My debate with Musharraf on hunt for bin Laden
01/29/09 Torture must remain an option
01/15/09 Making a case for suing Madoff
12/22/08 A difficult but rational chat about plans
12/17/08 Facebook epidemic: More than 120 million have joined, many too old for this nonsense
12/01/08 The high price of downsizing the news biz
11/14/08 Prescience on greed, arrogance of a system
09/29/08 Closer look at party lines
08/26/08 Obama's pick creates GOP opportunity
08/21/08 Fishing with the Angry Everyman
07/31/08 The perils of e-mail: Ponder, then click
05/22/08 Two very different sides of the Internet
02/12/08 Sublimely ridiculous suits
11/28/08 Cell phones cut out secondary circle of kinship
09/26/07 What do we owe those who have died in Iraq?
08/30/07 A Navy SEAL's gut-wrenching tale of survival
07/30/07 First it was a faux pas, now it's a new word
© 2008, The Philadelphia Inquirer Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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