Are Targeted Ads Stalking You? Here’s How to Make Them Stop

What are some easy ways to sidestep stalker ads?

Here are a few simple steps you can take if you are being pestered by an ad and want that to end:

• Periodically, clear your cookies. Ad trackers will have a tougher time following you around if you delete your cookies on each of your devices. Apple, Google and Microsoft have published instructions on how to clear data for their browsers Safari, Chrome and Edge. (Click the links for instructions.)

• Reset your advertising ID. In addition to cookies, Android and Apple phones use a so-called advertising ID to help marketers track you. You can reset it whenever you want. On Android devices, you can find the reset button in the ads menu inside the Google settings app, and on iPhones, you can find the reset button inside the settings app in the privacy menu, under advertising.

• Periodically purge your Google ad history. Google offers the My Activity tool, myactivity.google.com, where you can take a deep look at the data that Google has stored about you, including the history of ads you have loaded, and choose the data you want to delete.

If possible, hide the annoying ad. On some web ads, like those served by Google and Facebook, there is a tiny button in the top-right corner that you can click on to hide the ad.

Can I bring that up a notch?

There are more extreme methods to take if you want to prevent targeted ads from ever following you around. But this isn’t for the faint of heart: In my experience, you have to take all, not just some, of these steps to get the pesky ads to leave you alone forever.

• Install an ad blocker. For your web browser, you can install add-ons that block ads. My favorite one for computer browsers is uBlock Origin, and on iPhones I recommend 1Blocker X. (For Android users, Google banned many ad blockers from its official Play app store, so the simplest way to block ads is by using a private web browser.)

• On mobile devices, use a private browser. Firefox Focus, DuckDuckGoand Ghostery Privacy Browser are privacy-centric mobile browsers that include built-in ad and tracker blocking. These are handy when you want to do a discreet web search. (They can be impractical to use as everyday browsers because the built-in blockers can break important parts of websites.)

• Install a tracker blocker. Tracker blockers detect snoopy code on websites and prevent them from loading. My favorite tracker blocker for desktop and mobile systems is Disconnect.me.

• Wherever you can, opt out of interest-based advertising. Tech companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple offer instructions on opting out of receiving ads based on your interests.

It will probably take you a couple of hours to set yourself up to prevent ads from haunting you. I gradually made all these changes to my devices and internet accounts over the last few years and only recently stopped seeing targeted ads. It was a grueling process.

But I’ve been happy with the results. Those wristwatch ads that once followed me are gone. And recently, I was served an ad for 7-11 on Instagram.

Was that ad irrelevant to me? Yes. But was it a sign that I was no longer being well tracked? Also yes. I confess I was pretty happy to see it.