Websites contacting you

[This posting has been removed]

Cookies. The whole system now of computing is like public domain. You must have clicked ok on many sites to carry on. You are agreeing for them to see your favourites so to speak. They will then send you links to what they think interests you. I cannot even get to my Yahoo mail without agreeing to there privacy policy. That is just the shallow end, I am sure someone will be along shortly to give you a more complex explanation.

Steve.

[This posting has been removed]

Sorry that bit I am sure someone else will advise.

Steve.

May be something like when I applied to build my garage/workshop 800 sq ft.

Within days, I had offers from everyone and anyone who had a shovel and called themselves a Builder offering to build my garage. When I asked around about some of these "Builders" I found that most of them would be hard put to build a coal shed. You might ask, how do they get onto you ? Simple,the local Council post all such stuff on the Internet for every gobshite to see and have a go at. Took me ages to get rid of them all, until I found one guy who knew what he was talking about.

Same thing in your case, I suspect.

[This posting has been removed]

It's unlikely (but not impossible) that the cookie has somehow stolen your wife's email address from your machine. More likely, it worked like this:

• Wife visits hen-house website A and buys something, or asks for a reminder when something is back in stock, or orders a catalogue. All these require her email address, which is remembered by Website A. Website A also leaves a cookie on your computer with a unique identifier and informs a tracker of that ID.
• The tracker cross-references everything it can collect about user activity on the internet in a database, when, what, and with luck who. Most commercial websites, including this one, collaborate with trackers so that advertising can be tuned to whatever the customer is interested in, rather than guessing. In addition to data collected at the server, the tracker may also be able to read cookies stored on the users computer.
• Later, wife visits website B and does another hen-house search. This generates another cookie and tracker report.
• At the tracker the new identifier is recognised as 'hen-house' related, and the cross-reference is searched for a match. In this example the match made it possible to send an email direct to a previous customer, identified by comparing cookies.

Large amounts of data are collected by Trackers, Google, Amazon, Facebook and many others. Read the terms and conditions before signing up to anything - you may not be happy with how your data is shared and used! Most of it is benign, a proportion criminal. Either way don't imagine for one second that what you do on the internet is anonymous. Big Brother is watching!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 08/03/2020 17:20:44

I even found when trying to access my e-mail on yahoo, that unless I ticked yes it would not log on. Terrible state of affairs really.

Steve.

Yahoo is notoriously carp. Good at losing personal data, too, I believe. Talktalk is part of it and they certainly ‘lost’ a huge amount of customer data. Likely why we had loads of scam calls - long after we ditched them.

If you have an Alexa and you discuss your future projects and wants list within earshot you will find websites being suggested when you log on to your browser, Big Brother is definitely watching you and listening.
Dave w

Just musing .... if she'd entered her email address on any site, Google is probably quite capable of linking that address to her IP and serving that information up to another site (presumably for a price).

While IPs are not strictly static they are often more so than people assume.

If you have Alexa then you have a linked Amazon account. Yes, you will probably be sent ads. just as you are if you browse on the Amazon website. An Ad-blocker might help.

What can we do realistically to prevent this sort of thing happening? I looked and find I've got hundreds of cookies, if I delete them all what sort of problems am I going to cause myself?

If you use the internet and especially social media then someone is collecting information on you, if you have a smart phone it will be listing to you unless you have gone to extreme lengths to stop it. I go down the pub and talk about random things that I have never used any internet enquiry about and as soon as I get home I get adverts on what I have discussed in the pub, my phone was the only other party involved in the conversation and only by being switched on in my pocket. One could be a coincidence but it has now happened multiple times. Big brother is watching us

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 08/03/2020 19:25:26

Axminster tools do that. A few years ago I was about to order something but at checkout noticed the delivery would be Friday so stopped to order it the next day and get delivery on Saturday. Got an email within hours, may have been minutes asking what was wrong with the product. They could only do that because I had been a previous customer so they had my email. However with some of the big boys making so much money and buying smaller companies or just buying information your details can move about a bit.

Bill,

Did your wife visit the said website previously and give them her email address, with permission for them to contact her?. If so, and if she used the same computer/location to view a product on that site, their system associated her IP address with her email address and communicated with her.

If she did not give them permission previously, then the site which contacted her is living in the grey area, to the best of my knowledge, outside the scope of various regulations, including gdpr. It is possible for them to get this information from your IP address but not correct practice if she did not give them permission, as far as I am aware.

I am not a 100% sure, but again to the best of my knowledge, one does not automatically agree to be contacted by a U.K. or eu website by accepting the cookie policy on a site. It is however true that a search engine monitors your activity and serves you adverts on platforms such as Facebook etc. based on your habits, but to be sent a specific email would require some kind of consent if done properly. Indirect consent in my opinion is the wrong way.

Ketan at ARC

When you are in the pub, google sees your geo location, along with other people you hang around with. If you are able to turn it off, it helps so that you are not served with crap. By the way, in my opinion it also knows when you are likely to go to the pub, come home, what you like to see/search for, and what is the best time to serve you with an advert, for specific types of products, and what is the best time you are likely to make a purchase.

When my daughters come to visit, because they share the same WiFi, I get served with adverts for makeup through to ladies fashion! ... but thankfully no emails!

On YouTube I regularly get served with adverts on machine tools, web servers, and I will not be surprised if people on here including myself get served with adverts from ARC.

Ketan at ARC

Edited By Ketan Swali on 08/03/2020 19:46:35

Edited By Ketan Swali on 08/03/2020 19:51:09

I just wish I did not keep getting all the ARC adverts on everything I go to but I know how hard Ketan and the team have to works to keep that up

Luckily my G.mail has a separate "promotions inbox" so at least the ARC e-mails don't clutter up the less important stuff

Edited By JasonB on 08/03/2020 20:17:29

[This posting has been removed]