
Amazon advertised my search items on my wife's Facebook - cogs
I sat with my wife at my laptop and discussed whether to buy a particular coffee machine or office chair as I looked them up on Amazon UK (my account) and read reviews.<p>One hour later they showed up on Amazon ads on <i>her</i> Facebook account.  Very dodgy.
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Jemaclus
I've noticed this phenomenon as well, but one thing you can do is watch the
network traffic on your router, and you'll see that they aren't snooping in on
your conversations. What's likely happening is that Facebook knows that you're
married to her, and since spouses/friends/close relationships tend to have the
same general interests, it's a good way to narrow down the scope of
advertisements for you and your social graph. If you search for a coffee
machine, then your wife is also likely to search for a coffee machine,
therefore, it follows that Amazon would show an ad for a coffee machine to
your local network.

Like I said, I've definitely observed this phenomenon before. I've also
observed that it's likely confirmation bias: I don't remember all the OTHER
things Facebook advertises to me. The only reason that ad for the coffee
machine jumps out at me is because I was just talking about it, but who knows
how many times it showed up on my feed and I just glossed over it because I
tend to gloss over ads?

Posts like this come up quite often, and I definitely think it's dodgy and
suspicious, but ultimately, I think it's just clever marketing tactics by
Facebook to determine what to advertise to you.

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askafriend
It's not that crazy, they have several signals that they can use to make that
determination. It's not black magic or anything "dodgy".

It's probably some combination of your IP, cookies, location, account
relationships, credit cards, etc etc. There's a lot of pretty simple data they
can use to make the decision to show her Ads on Facebook's Ad platform.

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NumberCruncher
What happens if Amazon uses the lookalike audience feature of FB? He uses the
contact details of customers who was looking up the coffee machine and
automatically defines a group of FB users who look alike them. In this case
your wife looks alike you. Or if I would have developed the lookalike audience
feature I would say she looks alike you. That is why she gets ads for the
coffee machine.

[edit:] This may be considered as dodgy. In Germany it is forbidden to use the
lookalike audience feature of FB and companies are fined if they admit using
it.

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samblr
Below are the scenarios:

1\. Amazon passed your [IP address + SKU browsed] to facebook ad platform. And
facebook knows from there on.

2\. Facebook snoops on your audio and its ad platform pulled SKU from amazon.

3\. You have various extensions on your browser which can "read all websites
data you visit" \- which have sold your browse information with IP to
facebook.

Third is most likely.

\+ I have noticed - "somehow" my facebook learns what I watch in youtube and
vice-versa. Only way this could happen is via one of my "trusted" browser
extension!

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gardnr
If you are logged in on both services then they just need to load a resource
from the other service. The request sends cookies. They used to call this 1x1
or tracking pixel.

Looks like youtube doesn't talk to Facebook directly. It does talk to
doubleclick though. I recommend installing uMatrix to manage loading 3rd party
resources.

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demygale
Facebook tracks your browsing history even if you log out. I suspect Amazon is
the same way. Does it bother you to know that these sites can track almost
every site you visit? If not, why does it concern you that it can link your
account to your wife's.

Clear all cookies between browser sessions.

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usaphp
Are you sure about that? How is it possible to track the browsing history by a
website?

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Paulods
I often search for things at home on my personal laptop only to see them on my
facebook at work on a different location/machine.

I assume its due to the fact your amazon has been linked to her facebook
account at one point or another as you were logged in to both at some point.

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bsvalley
Meanwhile people don't hesitate to upload photos of their homes, kids, trips,
places they go everyday, to some random FB and google servers.

I mean, we're talking basic product advertisement from the largest store in
the world...

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GrumpyNl
Same happens when your friends are looking for something, they are in your
network so you might be interested to. Second, you share a house / ip
addressess so easy to link those together.

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drKarl
Same IP address? Same computer? Same browser? Did that browser had maybe
cookies that tracked your amazon searches?

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cogs
Different computer, same house. So it wasn't browser cookies.

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howlett
Are you logged into Amazon with your account on the second computer?

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cogs
No I'm not. It's possible I have done in the past, but not currently or
recently.

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quickthrower2
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