I mean, I kinda knew this stuff is tracked all the time, it’s just never been so obvious to me that it’s across all devices I use like this. Color me duh.
I was looking for stuff at Target online on my work PC last night. I put a few things in the shopping cart, and when I had a list I knew was all available at my nearest store, I deleted the list.
I was looking at Facebook on my phone a few minutes ago, and a “sponsored” post by Target said not to forget these items! The exact items I had put in the cart and deleted last night.
Google really is tracking everything, I didn’t think about Facebook on my phone knowing what I was doing at work (I do use it in both places), but clearly it does.
I remember being kind of annoyed the first time things I searched for at home on Google showed up in purple/autofill on my phone when I went to search for something beginning with the same letter.
Or, I think what happened first is that I pulled up a map on my computer and then later on in the day my phone randomly gave me the drive time to that location.
Like you, I knew google tracked all this stuff, but that made it really blatant.
I’m now a bit more careful about using a private/incognito window when I’m searching for something at home that I don’t want popping up on my phone or work computer.
And, speaking of Target, a few months back I took my tablet on a road trip a few hours away. Sunday morning when I woke up I pulled up the Target ad. It pulled up the ad for the store that was nearby, whatever, didn’t care, I’m sure it was the same as mine and I was just killing time. When I got home, the Target ad on my computer (that I didn’t take with me), took about a month before it started using the ad from my hometown. Odd, since I don’t have any kind of account with Target. The only thing I can figure is that my tablet relayed to Google that I was in a different city and Target got the location from Google. Since my laptop doesn’t move around it might not update the location very often. I never did quite figure that one out.
It’s the same Facebook account, not two different accounts, so why would you think that it wouldn’t know what you were doing just because you’re accessing it on different platforms?
While I do use the work PC to access Facebook, I was not on it, didn’t have a tab open or anything with FB while I was shopping on Target’s site. It wasn’t until I was on my phone the next day and looking at FB that I saw the sponsored Target reminder not to forget the items I shopped for. That’s what made it finally obvious to me that multiple platforms are not only tracking my activity, but “telling” each other about it, too.
Agree with this. Nothing in what the OP says requires the involvement of Google. And I recommend this story about how retailers track peoples’ shopping habits to the extent that Target figured out a particular teenage girl was pregnant before she’d told her father.
OK - this could be because you used Facebook on both machines, which dropped your ID in a cookie, which then resulted in a redirect advertisement when you switched platforms.
Ditto for Google. If you are logged into Google (say, via Gmail), and you also use Google on your phone with the same ID - you can get cross-device tracking and the re-targetting of advertisements.
Now you can add in some beacons at the store, that are tied to the free wifi at Target, and you can get a special deal as you walk by the aisle with those new Star Wars lego sets you were checking out to send to me.
The technology is creepy, yet valuable enough that people allow for the tracking.
Yeah, I’m not terribly surprised or bothered by it. I jut thought it was funny when I saw the Target ad in my feed, telling me not to forget these things - when I would have fully expected the ad to contain clothing on special or whatever other kind of summer or household item they might have on sale in commercials and stuff - instead I saw a picture of the exact tampons I had in my cart, and then realized when I swiped left that there was a picture of the exact maxi pads I had in my cart, and then the shower curtain liner, and the tension rod… At first I was like, "these are weird things to advertise… hey, waitaminnit!
Facebook doesn’t actually know anything about your Target cart contents. They’re just allowing Target to show an ad on their (fb’s) site/app and that’s as far as they’re involved. So Target then takes the opportunity to say hey, we know this person that we’re serving this ad to, let’s show them their cart in this little ad space that Facebook has provided for us.
I’m assuming you’re logged onto Target on your phone, correct? Try logging out of target there. The target ad in fb should no longer show your cart.
This is my understanding, anyway. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
That’s a common way things work, but not the only way. I used to work for a company that sold recommendation software and we could get access to stuff left in shopping carts.
I realized there is no more privacy the day I bought paper plates and men’s deodorant at Target one day and it spat out coupons for nursing tanks and baby clothes. (Yes, I was pregnant.)
Did you also purchase unscented lotion, unscented soap, big bags of cotton balls and vitamin supplements? Because those are some of the items that Target sees as a clue that a customer is pregnant.
BTW, did you know that the little coupon book you get in the mail from Target is customized to you?
Well, I’d also bought maternity clothes, so it did have plenty of good clues, I was just disturbed that it knew who I was. (I did read about the teenaged girl that Target “outed”.)
My point on why it struck me, I don’t have a Target account, was not logged in to either FB or Target while shopping and on my work computer, and the shopping cart was deleted. Then the items showed up in my Facebook feed on a different device - my phone - the next day.
And now Target will think the reminders worked, because I’m going to pick up everything today.
Well, I have one idea, but it’s not one to be unconcerned about. If you have logged into Target on both machines in the past, it could still be tracking what you do, even when you aren’t logged in. But this is a huge no-no. And it’s kinda stupid, since, while they can be pretty sure it’s you using your phone, how do they know it’s you using that work computer? Imagine if what’s in the cart actually was someone else’s. Do you think they’d be happy that you know what they shop for?
Heck, it’s dumb to do this even if you are logged in, because how many people automatically log other people out when going to a store website? And why assume stuff you deleted out of your cart is anything you are still interested in?
I’m actually more inclined to believe that things are not quite as they seem.
Even if this were the case I don’t see how it’s possible. If SDT was not logged onto FB or Target on the work computer, how on earth would FB or Target then identify SDT when she came in again later from her phone? It’s a completely different device. I can’t see how the phone request could be linked back to the earlier anon request from the work PC browser. Tracking cookies didn’t jump from her work PC into her purse and follow her home and then into her phone.
Most likely there were other cookies, perhaps even Super Cookies involved. It doesn’t matter if the OP wasn’t logged in at the time he was using the Target website. If there was a way to connect that shopping session with a time when he was logged in to something at work (FB, gmail, itunes) that can also be identified on his phone then marketers have a path to connect the dots.
That makes the most sense. I use Firefox with cookies enabled at work, and while not logged into FB, I do access it from same computer. It’s why I mentioned using FB at work, since it’s the only link that makes sense, even though I wasn’t logged in it seems to still be tracking what I’m up to, and Target used that to send deleted cart reminders directly to my feed.