Capitol One credit card company finds products I saw on the web, and emails with “You’ve earned enough points to buy this!” The latest is from this thread: What is this kitchen tool?
The picture in the thread is from Ebay, and Capitol One used the same picture to entice me into buying it with their credit card. How do they do that?
Various companies sell your browsing history and/or your search history (all that stuff that is stored in your cookies, for example), and various other companies buy those histories. Then they match them against their customer base (I’m not sure how exactly they do that, probably by email address or something) and send out personalized advertising. Personalized advertising is, at least theoretically, much more efficient than random advertising at getting people to follow the suggestions and buy the product or use the service.
It annoys the hell out of me. They’re messing with what I read on the 'Dope!
So does Ebay sell my browsing history with them to Capitol One, or is there a midddle man?
Check your web apps, you probably have the Capitol One app. I use the app, it has saved me some serious cash ($100 off a $200 dashcam). I have notifications turned off so I don’t see any of the offers.
Brings to mind the article “Amazon knew my daughter was pregnant before I did”. Based on her browser history, of course, she began to receive targeted snail mail, back in the day. After a certain amount feedback, some negative(!) the algorithm was modified to mix the targeted goods (diapers, strollers, etc.) in with a bunch of other household items.
What I find humorous is when I research and buy something, I see ads for the item for the next 6 months, even though I won’t be buying it again for a long time. The other thing to do is to randomly search for a different product each day, just to confuse the algorithms. Or google something totally different and see how long it shows in the ads you see.
You may be thinking of this story from The New York Times (gift link) that describes how Target (not Amazon) was able to predict a teenager was pregnant before she told her father.
Reject all cookies where possible. Try using an ad blocker, also Go Duck Go privacy essentials, install Privacy Badger into your browser, use a more secure browser and actually set up settings to suit (most people don’t), avoid using Chrome Browser, or anything from Google if you can help it (hard to do), always delete cookies & history. Also adjust settings on your internet security software (anti virus/malware etc).
It’s about impossible to keep from being tracked these days unless you turn your privacy into a full time career, but you can minimize with a small amount of effort.
We live in a world where much of the population actually pays money to be tracked (example; Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, various devices such as smart thermostats . . .the list seems endless). Then there’s social media. And probably #1, smart phones. If you’ve put a company’s app on your device you’ve just given them permission.
Heheh, oddly there was a period of time where I got almost nothing but ads for baby products. I’ve never had to take care of a baby, and I don’t intend to at this late date. I did remember that story and think “Maybe the advertisers know something I don’t.” It’s been a couple of years since that happened, still no baby. I still get the baby ads, just not as often, and mixed in with ads for weird survivalist food, designer t-shirts, and holsters that interest me about as much as how absorbent a particular diaper is.
Reverb is absolutely telling the advertisers what I search for, though. If I browse a certain instrument on their site, I’m going to see a few ads for it for a few days at least. Yes, yes, yes. I already know how nice that synthesizer is, I bought it. I have no need for more of them.
This is the thing that “annoys” me the most. I’ve already bought some durable non-use-up-able product. Why send me ads for the same damn thing? Their algorithms are dumb.
It’s done by computer, or I’d browse for chloroform, rope, axes and quick setting cement and see if I could freak someone out.
Heh, that’s why I just ignore it and don’t let it bother me.
Do you happen to have any Capital One extensions installed on your browser?
Well, you freaked me out! 
Nope, nor on my cellphone.
How so?
How come?
How did that come to pass?
My apologies, Beck.
You sure you aren’t one of the Becks who lived across the street in West Pulaski county?
You so funny.
I was just teasin’ you.
Advertisers rely on a sort of durable ID that they associate with you. In small part it may be the IP addresses of the devices you use the most. I suppose mostly it is cookies left behind in your browsers’ scratch files. Each advertiser rents a small space on popular Web pages, and, each time you visit one of (their) pages, they get to see the title of the page by setting a cookie on your device and then reading it back. Most media-involved pages do I/O to several dozen cookies on every single presentation. Thus, advertisers can keep track of the sponsored pages you visit. But that’s not all. This is where the durable ID comes in. The advertisers who know something about you from your filling out a form for them are able to associate that info with their cookies through your IP addresses and through other cookies that they own. Advertisers then share this ID info for a fee, so anyone who wants to pay for it can build a dossier on you.
The defense is this: You have to avoid leaving traces of your browsing that can be used to build durable ID. Consider using the TOR Browser Bundle. It is a Firefox browser hardened against pop-up ads. Furthermore it wipes all cookies at the end of every session so they are not around to be picked up during the next day’s browsing. And yet further your inbound and outbound TCP traffic follows an indirect route from your device to the server you are requesting a page from. Your ISP cannot be sure which page you’re requesting. Neither can the page server tell exactly where they are sending the content back to. Though they may try to associate the apparent IP address with you, it avails them not — because the apparent IP address frequently shifts from one country to anther around the world.
Sounds like the item I read about. The summary in another magazine seemed to suggest it was due to her browsing history, more than what she’d bought recently.
As a side note, the data they collect and how they correlate it all seems to mirror some of the concerns politicians say about Tiktok data collection - which oddly enough, is what every other company collects as it able and will happily sell to China at list price.
Duck Duck Go