Websites contacting you

just tried the first sponsored link on a google search for "Dorset hen house" and sure enough there is an e-mail in my promotions box from them.

Now a days I feel that google is more proactive with its algorithms than it used to be.

Not so long ago, one had to search, to find a product. Now it knows you, your friends, your interests, your purchasing habits, where you are and what you are likely to do, eat, see, purchase in that location, so it serves you, before you search. It also looks at your search history in deciding what it wishes to serve you, even by geo location.

latest example UVEX face masks. Search vs Serve. While we had them in stock, sales based on Google’s serving an advert were higher than those searching for it. From the results I could see, Google served the adverts to people who were most likely to purchase. In our case: Chinese nationals based throughout the U.K., at times google felt was most likely for them to purchase. It didn’t serve those adverts to engineers. As soon as two Chinese nationals were served and placed orders with us, it probably learned and served it to others. It serves such adverts on its search engine, and its search partners, YouTube, Facebook etc.. It did not wait for potential buyers to search.

it is not easy to get these services from google. The hoops we have to jump through to show and prove our reputation with them are tough, and their back office implementation teams are like robots who can’t help you properly most of the time!. But we have no access to the personal details of potential customers until they specifically place an order with us All we can see is numbers as in count of people who came through to us using search or serve method, how many proceed to place an order and value.

Ketan at ARC

All good Bill, thanks for asking.

what you and Jason have observed is bad practice, like cold calling. I would suggest it is definitely in the grey area.

There may be software available to them, to help them fish for your email address, but under gdpr rules I personally think that they would find it hard to prove a legitimate reason for doing this. That is my opinion. If this practice was brought to the attention of the ico who enforce the gdpr rules, then I think these guys would have to review their practices.

Ketan at ARC

Looking again at how it is listed in the inbox may give an indication of how they do it. You will notice that there is a small "ad" box next to the entry so is it really an e-mail or an advert. usually just the top tow entries have the add by them and it did knock the ARC one off. Won't bother to open it and find out for risk of being overrun by chickens.

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Bill,

I am glad you have the answer you were seeking.

I still believe that the use of such third party software to send clear targeted email to your wife is working in the grey area, but the definition seems to be bending I guess.

Ketan at ARC

Does this actually get you any closer to the answer to the original question. That is, how they (or a third party) knew where to send the email to in the absence of your wife providing that information?

Or am I missing something?

Was she signed into Google?

Neil

After I shop in the local Co-op Google regularly asks me to review the tanning salon next door.

Neil

Neil,

That is your specific relationship with google and based on your geo location.

Strictly speaking, they cannot release your email address to the third party in question. If they did, that would open up a serious can of worms for them.

the third party software has somehow probed the website visitors email address. How legal that is or how they bent the rules is difficult to say. Bandersnatch, I don’t know what the answer is, but it is definitely grey.

Ketan at ARC

.

If my understanding is correct [albeit far from complete] ... They didn’t actually send an eMail; they placed a targeted advertisement at the top of the eMail list.

The difference is subtle, but presumably legitimises the behaviour ... Mrs Chugg has not disclosed personal data, and nor have they captured it ... The advertisement has targeted a machine, and machines don’t [yet] have the same rights as humans.

MichaelG.

Edited By Frances IoM on 08/03/2020 22:52:16

Amazon were exposed a few days ago for the data they collect from their Ring doorbell devices, the detail they collect was staggering. We are filling our homes with connected devices and they all will have the capability to spy on us, our computers will often have a camera looking at us which is good for apps like Skype but how do you know when it is not monitoring you? My smart tv also has a camera watching for gesture control except I found it a nuisance and the camera is now not viewing me. Viewing my home network is scary just how many things it connects to. The moment you get connected to the internet your privacy goes out the window. I feel reasonably immune to advertising but I do find an increasingly large part of my time is focused on the YouTube skip button.

Mike

So (again if I understand this correctly) they infiltrate the user's machine and insinuate their message directly in his/her email client? That's abusive and inexcusable, plain and simple.

(It should be possible to tell if the email is actually sent in the normal fashion by examination of the email headers).

.

Please see Jason’s post of 08/03/2020 20:53:52

MichaelG.

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It's worthwhile deleting all cookies occasionally. It is a bit of a pain as you will have to log in to various sites again but not too bad done say once a month. If you are particularly concerned you can tell your browser to delete cookies each time you switch off but that can become a bit of a pain.

Russell

Perhaps it it’s about time a million of us clubbed together and looked at this chicken house advert - day after day for a week or two should do the trick if they are paying for this privacy intrusion.🙂

I once threatened to get up to 30 friends (or enough to swamp all their lines) to ring the free phone number, of a nuisance cold caller, at the same time and leave the calls connected for half an hour or so. I had done that on our line already the previous day but they did not get the message. The nuisance cold calls ceased, at that point.