They call it 'personalized search results'. I call it creepy.

Guessing it happens to you too? Look at a pair of hiking boots online... and then get inundated with hiking boot ads. Even worse, when your hubby looks at hiking boots and you start getting the ads. Do you sometimes wonder if your devices are listening to you talk?

This has bugged me (pardon the pun) for a long time, but what really truly freaked me out is when I started getting ads FOR MY OWN ARTWORK! This. Is. Truly. Creepy.

I finally took action:

1. Clicked OFF 'cross-site tracking' on all my devices

2. Selected DuckDuckGo as my search engine on all my devices, laptop and desktop computers. DuckDuckGo not only protects privacy but also avoids 'personalized search results'.

Woo Hoo! So far, it's working...