As most web users already know, Google is stalking our every click, search and blog post and there is only so much we can do to hide from its watchful eye. One response to this is to go and hide in a virtual cave (or a real one if you're really paranoid) but the one being adopted by most of the online community this week is to turn it into a game.
Google Ads Preferences is the section of Google that allows you to 'make the ads you see more interesting', in other words, to volunteer information about yourself to the company so it can tailor the ads you see to your interests. Of course, on arriving here, you'll find out that Google has a quite alarming amount of information about you already, all collected from your travels around the web. More interesting still, it will have drawn up a profile of the type of person it thinks you are, including your likely age group and gender.
Many women have been talking online about how they have been wrongly classified as men based on their interests, while others are estimated to be older or younger than their actual age. So what does google have to say about you? The search engine giant had me pegged correctly as a woman, but it got my age (flatteringly) wrong, based on the cookies in my browser. But the interests were spot on, suggesting Big Brother is alive and well...
