It’s not often one sees an Indian government handle or its subsidiary give it back to users when they ask queries or complain. But IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation) just gave a savage reply to a user on Twitter who wanted to know why ‘obscene and vulgar’ ads were appearing every time he opened the IRCTC ticket booking app.
Obscene and vulgar ads are very frequently appearing on the IRCTC ticket booking app. This is very embarrassing and irritating @RailMinIndia @IRCTCofficial @PiyushGoyalOffc kindly look into. pic.twitter.com/nb3BmbztUt
— Anand Kumar (@anandk2012) May 29, 2019
IRCTC, providing the user with the technical know-how, schooled him by telling it’s actually Google which places ads on its booking app and the content of the ads pretty much depend on what the user’s browser history contains. And that he should clean up his history to not be targetted with pornographic ads.
Irctc uses Googles ad serving tool ADX for serving ads.These ads uses cookies to target the user. Based on user history and browsing behaviour ads are shown. Pl clean and delete all browser cookies and history to avoid such ads .
-IRCTC Official
— Indian Railways Seva (@RailwaySeva) May 29, 2019
Google rolled out interest-based advertising in 2011 which allows Google to behaviourally target users by looking up the type of pages the user visits, and how recently or frequently they visit them. Using these categories, Google shows ads to the people most likely to purchase products or services relevant to their browsing habits.
Here’s what people had to say about IRCTC’s savage reply after everyone got to know what was the man was browsing:
Dude IRCTC just owned you. You can do with watching less Porn if the ads bother you.
— پربھاContractor (@deepsealioness) May 30, 2019
Hahahahaha such a dope reply you nailed it @IRCTCofficial
— Mugdha Deshmukh (@ThatGirlIn30s) May 29, 2019
*IRCTC Twitter admin while typing this* pic.twitter.com/2ImHGvIxTb
— Raghav Mittal (@mittalrag) May 29, 2019
Anand Kumar be like pic.twitter.com/vMqaazynnS
— Saurabh Das (@das_ee16) May 29, 2019
IRCTC nailed it pic.twitter.com/fCWJ3Fo5PW
— Ashish (@ashi_narang) May 29, 2019
Dear IRCTC, please give this Admin a raise! @IRCTCofficial @PiyushGoyal #irctcseva
— Ashutosh Sam (@ashutosh_sam) May 29, 2019
Hahaha what an awesome response. Browse on porn all day and then blame IRCTC for it
— Sandhya Vaidyanathan (@thatmasalagirl) May 30, 2019
To the person who handles IRCTC twitter account… pic.twitter.com/8dvfsIcOUX
— Nausheen Fatima (@Naushee05002956) May 29, 2019
