Last week I bought a new purse (thank you, purse thread!). Today I picked up my son near his apartment. He remarked on my purse when he got in the car and asked if it was new. I said yes, that I’d gone to the mall. We went on to other topics. THEN, 20 minutes later while we were driving, he checked a sports website on his phone, and there was an ad FOR MY EXACT PURSE! Same brand and color. How is this s possible? I had searched online for my purse the day I bought it to make sure I did not miss an even better deal, and the purse has been following me in ads, but we were still far away from our home and wifi router! I think the ad must’ve showed up on his phone based on his proximity to me! We have different model phones and do not use the same provider.
Has anything like this ever happened to you? Find it bizarre and very creepy. I don’t really want my searches showing up on strangers’ phones, like what if I was on the subway or something, with my purse? And the person next to me got an ad for it?
And how long does stuff like this stick around? In other words, if I order “x” (or even do an online search for it), and my kid’s not home for months afterwards, I’d assume that even though he shares my wifi, any related advertising will long since have disappeared. But what if he’s home the next day, or the next week? And how the heck are family members who share wifi ever able to get surprise gifts for each other???
Facebook is even creepier. An hour after I typed out our church prayer list for our church newsletter Facebook suggested the people on it as possible friends.
I’ve been getting hotel ads since I started searching for hotels, in the city I’m planning to be in. I often get dress ads when I participate in MOB or similar dress threads. No way am I really in the market for anything like a MOB outfit.
Okay, don’t think I’m nuts but I swear that computer and phone microphones pick stuff up. I’ve talked to my husband before about stuff I haven’t searched on and have had stuff hit my computer that references that item. More than once. Strikes me as too weird to be coincidence.
I believe FB uses proximity. Multiple times I’ve had it suggest adding friends who were at the same meeting, party, etc. that I was earlier in the day. All were professional acquaintances that I was around frequently at the time but did not have mutual friends. Little freaky.
Get something called fluff busting (FB) purity. Gets rid of ads, suggested things, sports announcements and even those purple backgrounds if you like. Not for phone apps yet but I wait hopefully.
A real growth field - decreeping our electronic devices. I would love to clear out all the garbage!
I like some of the ads, though. :-/
Hate the FB friend suggestions-- I get the creepiest lot you can imagine.
What LBowie is talking about is odd, but imaginable. It’s not the usual active search that now yields unwanted ads. I’d dig around the geek sites and try to learn more. I know, eg, you can go into some big chains and they can track location and send you a store ad. Wonder if this instance is something about you both being the same or linked accounts?
It’s really weird because we don’t have linked accounts. He has AT&T, I have Project Fi. He has an iPhone and I have a Google Pixel. It did occur to me that his phone might have been listening, but we did not state the brand of the purse. He rarely uses Facebook. The ad appeared in the Bleacher Report app on his phone which I do not have. Later at home I did some searches for shoes on purpose (a brand that tends to shower me with ads) to see if they might pop up on his phone and we couldn’t make it happen.
The weirdest that happened to me was when I was watching an episode of Law and Order SVU and wanted to look up who one of the actors was. I started googling “law and order svu” and the first suggestion was the exact name of the episode I was watching! I even took a screenshot because it was so bizarre but I don’t know how they could’ve known that, other than literally listening in and then matching up the audio with some database? No one has ever been able to give me an explanation…
