Creepy E-Commerce in 2018

[Casual Observer]

I gotta mention this. I've been selling technology for a couple of decades now. I get how the internet ads work, I'm not creeped out by the fact that targeted ads follow me to every site on the internet. I get that everything I do online is tracked and used to make better suggestions to me as to things to buy, I got no problem with that. However . . .

I occasionally buy something from Walmart.com and either have shipped but usually pick it up in the store that's approx. a block from my house. I have a walmart credit card but hardly ever use it. There is no walmart "shoppers club" card or anything that would track my purchases.

On walmart.com there's a page of "purchase history", and there's pages and pages of shit that I've bought in person in the store not using my walmart credit card. How are they correlating that I've purchased tons of "fancy feast" and "potpourri spray" using cards that have nothing to do with Walmart? Are they matching every credit card I use in the store with my name for the website? I thought I was past being creeped out by E-Commerce shit but this is beyond what I thought they were doing.

[Jizaboz]

Yes that's basically what they are doing. You also mentioned you ordered items over walmart.com to have picked up which is a big part of it.

The only way to avoid these things with just about any huge company these days is paying in cash and not using their website or app.

[Flack]

Most people can be uniquely identified by their DOB, gender, and zip code. It's possible they have connected your brick and mortar purchases with your online purchases by matching this information via different credit cards. I believe a year or two ago, Google and Walmart announced some sort of partnership, so between that and your/our credit card companies willing to sell your information at the drop of a hat... it's all connected.

Last year, Nordstoms announced they were tracking customers by setting up multiple wifi hotspots throughout their stores and tracking people's movements via their cellphone's MAC address. I don't know, but it's possible to slurp that information via online sales, too.

Ever since I read that article I've started putting my phone on airplane mode at the mall.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Safeway introduced a chicken wing bar where I live a few years ago. I went through a phase where no matter what I bought, I'd go, get three or four chicken wings and eat them in the car drive home.

Then it turned into just going there, getting the wings and nothing else.

I recently used their website to buy some groceries on-line. They had all my purchase history saved. In order. And it took a little while for it to pull the data back, complete with photos. So I had this long section I had to spin the trackball down for where it was just chicken wings.... chicken wings.... chicken wings.... loading.... chicken wings.... chicken wings.... chicken wings....

[RealNC]

I gotta mention this. I've been selling technology for a couple of decades now. I get how the internet ads work, I'm not creeped out by the fact that targeted ads follow me to every site on the internet.

Off-topic, but there's a thing called "Privacy Badger". Everyone should use it!

[The Happiness Engine]

Do all your credit cards have the same home address? Something that gets transmitted and saved FOREVER at the end of every single transaction? Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy my database record.

[AArdvark]

I heard about a couple of guys that, as an experiment, talked about guns in front of their home smart speaker thing, Alexia or Seeree or whatever. Sure enough, in a day there were gun ads popping up in their social media feeds.

They say they don't listen, but they do, my friends, they do!

THE
KEEPING MUM
AARDVARK

[Jizaboz]

I changed the Siri settings in my iPhone to speak and understand Japanese instead of English so I can practice with it. Good luck figuring that out, advertisers! lol

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I changed the Siri settings in my iPhone to speak and understand Japanese instead of English so I can practice with it. Good luck figuring that out, advertisers! lol

Ah, to that we say...

BU YAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Flack]

Great callback, or greatest callback ever?

[Jizaboz]

Haha sensational!