{"id":290,"date":"2008-08-07T09:33:11","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T14:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2008\/08\/07\/how-does-my-browser-know-i-am-indian\/"},"modified":"2008-11-10T22:39:32","modified_gmt":"2008-11-11T03:39:32","slug":"how-does-my-browser-know-i-am-indian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2008\/08\/07\/how-does-my-browser-know-i-am-indian\/","title":{"rendered":"How does my browser know I am Indian?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few weeks I have noticed that some webpages I visit have banner ads that are targeted to me quite specifically &#8211; in particular to my Indian origin. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>For instance <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.strategypage.com\/htmw\/htintel\/articles\/20080806.aspx\">this page (a story about ipods being used by the army)<\/a> contains a set of banner ads that seek to find me a &#8220;perfect Indian partner in Michigan.&#8221; See the images below one from this page and another from a different website &#8211; whose URL I forgot to record. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/images\/indianbannerad1.jpg\" border=\"0\"> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/images\/indianbannerad2.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/p>\n<p>I know they can figure out Michigan (or East Lansing) from my IP address &#8211; and I had seen these sort of geography-based targeted ads before. What surprised me about this latest set of advertisements is their focus on India. How did they figure that out? Is it because I follow some Desi Blogs (see blogroll on left?) or because I visit Indian news sites once in a while? <\/p>\n<p>I wonder what advertisements other people are seeing when they visit these pages? <\/p>\n<p>Combine this with how <a href=\"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2008\/08\/06\/browsing-for-gender\/\">my browser history reveals my gender<\/a> (something I had posted about earlier)&#8230; it just reinforces my thoughts on the <a href=\"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2008\/08\/05\/the-end-of-practical-obscurity\/\">end of practical obscurity<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>And finally, just in case you think these guys know everything about me &#8211; that&#8217;s not really true. I am most emphatically NOT looking for any kind of matrimonial service&#8230; \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few weeks I have noticed that some webpages I visit have banner ads that are targeted to me quite specifically &#8211; in particular to my Indian origin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,33,37,22,15,29,8,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}