Gmail thinks I’m a slut
Alright, I know Gmail scans for keywords to appropriately (in theory, anyway) target the text ads at the top of the page. Considering that I can encrypt messages I’d prefer Gmail didn’t scan, I’m not terribly concerned with this. But lately the ads coming up on my page are disturbing.
I was mildly offended when it admonished me to visit a list of 10 reasons not to jump in the sack with a guy. I’ve been seeing this ad for days.
But today, Gmail upped its ante. First, it ambushed me with ads containing a news article about a teenager abandoning her baby on the bus, and trying to send me to some website discussing teenage pregnancy. And then for a truly horrific encore, it followed with an ad containing scary implications about what Gmail thinks of me based on my email. I couldn’t even bring myself to click on it—an ad entitled “Breastfeeding My Husband.”
How on earth do I convince Gmail that it has the wrong idea?!?
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April 10th, 2008 at 5:29 am
Can’t AdBlockPlus make them disappear? That sounds like a better solution to the problem than trying to convince the googlebots of anything, because they’ll simply take whatever you throw at them and turn it on you somehow.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Looking through the AdBlock items, I’m not seeing what’s generating the ads. Besides, it’s a line of text with a URL, not an actual image-based ad or java script, which is what AdBlock usually looks for. Gmail doesn’t even call them ads, they’re called “tips”, but again, I’m not seeing a script or anything in AdBlock that is immediately recognizable as the source or generator.
All the scripts and images from “googleadservices” are already blocked.
However, the solution to this problem, expensive though it is, seems to be “buy a laptop.” The minute I did that, Gmail started offering me less questionable tips and started trying to send me to links for notebook PCs.