I did a similar post a few years ago, when I still worked in an office. I went to Qdoba for lunch, paid cash, and put copious amounts of Cholula on my burrito (Qdoba has Cholula only; Chipotle has Tabasco only; it’s like a Coke vs. Pepsi licensing thing, apparently). When I got back to the office I checked the news online quickly before getting back to work, and there was a banner ad for Cholula. So I asked: coincidence, or was I tracked somehow? The consensus in that post was that my phone location was likely tracked, so it was known that I ate at Qdoba, and served up the ad as a result.
So yesterday I was emptying the dishwasher after work, had the kitchen TV on to a PBS over-air station - a cooking show in which they were making ‘perfect Cacio e Pepe’. I thought, there’s a simple weekday meal to make, so I do.
In my Firefox browser, it shows a number of links when I open a new tab. They are a combination of articles tailored to my tastes and also stuff like offers for meal kits and credit cards. Very algorithmically focused to my interests and highly monetized. I often see articles related to subjects I just clicked on in the SDMB. No surprise there, and I don’t really mind too much because there are often articles of interest to me that I read.
This morning, what do I see on a new Firefox tab? An article for making perfect Cacio e Pepe. Coincidence or cross-tracking? I’m leaning toward coincidence with this one, because the recipe show I had on was over the air, not streaming or cable. I don’t think that can be tracked yet in any way, can it? We do have Alexa capability that comes standard now with the Amazon Firestick, which was in the adjioning room possibly within earshot, but I’m not quite paranoid enough yet to believe Alexa is constantly listening and passing on what it learns to the cloud.
