I really don't like this

The other day I asked a friend of mine a simple question: where does he buy his bow ties? Many years ago I went through a phase of wearing a bow tie until one day someone came up to me and said, "And my next trick is ..." I thought that was a fatuous thing to say but shortly afterwards I stopped wearing them. Then I had a conversation with someone a few works ago and she sent me to a web site where there was a very nice bow tie waiting to be bought. I bought that bow tie and have started to wear it ... Following advice from my friend I went to three web sites this week to look for other bow ties. Some really nice ties on offer too. Five minutes ago I clicked on a link in an email message and when I got to the page I wanted to read, there, top left hand corner of the page, was an advertisement for one of the three bow tie web sites I went to the other day. I don't like that. I know about cookies and so on. I know that google monitors my messages for advertising purposes and so on. These days, though, we are being monitored in a google like way outside our email as far as I can see. For similar reasons I stopped using Facebook and twitter recently: apart from the waste of time these sites encourage, they are far too intrusive now. Everywhere we go and everything we do has a facebook and twitter link. Now we are being hounded even beyond that. What can we do about this? Refuse to accept cookies? Can't do that unless you want to input some things over and over again ... In the end then, be aware of what is happening and watch out for the insidious. Someone, somewhere has made 5 pence out of my innocent click through, haven't they? Which takes me to another point: knowing the way google works, I NEVER click through any of their sponsored ads. NEVER. If I see a site that interests me I will copy and type the address of that site rather than click through it. Do I begrudge google their money? Not at all but it's another way in which the modern world is paying another tax without realising (I am sure that is true, by the way) it and without being able to control it. Duncan Williamson