Ads on websites that know what town you live in?

[HinunterZuNich]

I'm computer stupid when it comes to certain areas so I apologize if this is a easily answered question When I visit another Disney website, it has an ad on the left side that loads a "dating website". In the add it shows pictures and has three girls that it says are from a town, which happens to be right next to me? Can it just tell by looking at my internet provider? I don't really care too much, just wondering how they do this. I believe I had signed up for the message boards on that site but I'm not sure if that affects anything.

 

[attisb]

The way it is done is by looking at your IP address against a database. IP addresses are given in blocks to ISPs and stored in a database. You can buy these from some companies. All this ad is doing is getting your IP address, which it has to get otherwise the Internet woudn't work and checks it against the database to figure out which city to display.

 

[tigsmom]

I get this too.....I'm not interested in dating any of the lovely young ladies they say are waiting for me.

 

[Gregory]

Thats just goes to show how much people know about you, without you even typing a word... Scary, huh? Its also fairly amazing what can be done with computers...

For the most part, though, these ads are harmless... Just a cheap trick to get you to go to their site...

Anyways.. while it wasn't the site who gave the ads your info, its illegal for them to distribute info if they say they won't in their Privacy Policy. So, don't worry.. usually, no site will give out information you gave them