Curse LLC - more than 280 firms have access to data on our pcs while visiting CFC

[The_J]

Not everyone does.

 

[HiRezAudio]

We'll pass this on to @Thunderfall but spyware is generally regarded as having a malicous element to it (not just advertising that people might object to).

That's simply not true, sad to say.
Spyware is anything that tracks what you do online, where you go, what you buy etc and targetted advertising is absolutely under the heading of 'Spyware' because it by definition must be spying on you to get the information in the first place.
I think you are getting confused with 'Malware' in the quote above - and the definition of malware is precisely what you say is 'Spyware'.

The levels of telemetry on websites and in software such as operating systems these days is truly shocking - has anybody seen how much telemetry is on Windows these days compared with how it was on XP?
I thought I was reasonably well informed until I saw a presentation on this subject from a system builder and where it only used to be one - Windows Update - there are now 4 pages full in HTML form. Your personal data is given to anybody who wants it these days unless we all say NO MORE

 

[The_J]

That's simply not true, sad to say.
Spyware is anything that tracks what you do online, where you go, what you buy etc and targetted advertising is absolutely under the heading of 'Spyware' because it by definition must be spying on you to get the information in the first place.
I think you are getting confused with 'Malware' in the quote above - and the definition of malware is precisely what you say is 'Spyware'.

The levels of telemetry on websites and in software such as operating systems these days is truly shocking - has anybody seen how much telemetry is on Windows these days compared with how it was on XP?
I thought I was reasonably well informed until I saw a presentation on this subject from a system builder and where it only used to be one - Windows Update - there are now 4 pages full in HTML form. Your personal data is given to anybody who wants it these days unless we all say NO MORE

To address it again: If you say "no" to the cookies, no profiling here will happen.

 

[HiRezAudio]

I always say 'NO' to all cookies.
Period.

 

[Ozymandias]

The free version of CCleaner does a good job of cleaning up both cookies an trackers.