It's not an unusual item at all, but it wasn't for me, it was for my 22-year-old son. Something I would use (and almost everyone does), just not this particular style, though it's a fairly popular line. And I don't usually order this type of item for me, or my family, online. And no, I've never mentioned the item in a Facebook post.

This is alarming to me too. I know I see things that I search online pop up every where, FB or AOL or as I'm doing other searches, but so far not like you mentioned.

Did you search for the item online before you purchased it? I notice that when I search for something, even on a site unrelated to Facebook, ads for it start appearing on my Facebook feed. I think we are all living in The Truman Show.

According to this article, yes, in a round about way it does.

Facebook knows....

Lukk...I've been looking for you. Dateline will have a segment about Dr. Fata on tonight's show. Thought you might be interested.

Oh! I am indeed thanks so much!

After living through it, It sure will be interesting to see it on Dateline

I read the link that lukkirish posted. Yep, that's creepy. I'm not on Facebook, but it still creeps me out. One thing I don't understand with targeted advertising like this: what is the point of advertising the item to bpathome AFTER she bought it? do they think it'll cause her to run out and buy several more?

Just another reason not to give personal information when making a store purchase. Also, Facebook doesn't need your phone number ... only an email address.

Now, since it's for my son, I'm pretty sure HE looked it up online, though not on Facebook, and we are Facebook "friends", so...

If he used the same computer it's likely a cookie was "planted" from whatever site he visited, which is why it's showing up on Facebook.

Nope, DS always uses a different computer from mine.

lukki, that article was creepy. It's from 2014, so I'm sure the credit card thing is now going on. Facebook is Big Brother :(

You can actually choose to not use Facebook at all. It's possible, altho not easy, to maintain some small level of privacy. If you choose to use Facebook, you get the 'rewards' and they are not all warm and fuzzy.

I remember when debit cards first came out. My hubby and I refused to get one for years because we felt it too easy a way to track things we purchased. Not that we purchased anything we didn't want others to know about, but still, creepy. With the internet knowing everything we do, I've mentioned quite often that the book 1984 is hear, but it just took about 20 extra years to get here.

I guess one more reason to shop with cold, hard cash.

Should we put wigs and fake beards on when going shopping? Just kidding...

In any case, tracking has already gone offline:

USPS Photographs Every Piece of Mail in the U.S.

Just think of it: they photographed each and every of the 100+ pieces of our Xmas mail to our past and present clients. My only hope there were no covert terrorists or anyone with links to them in our holiday greetings list!

B, when making your purchase, did you give them your email address or phone number? If not, I find it creepy also. But if you did, that explains it.

Stores don't have to have that info so never give it out.

I don't mind the ads from online stores when I'm on FB. Just the other day I saw a really cute top being advertised and I bought it. :)

I'm pretty sure I didn't give my phone number, and for sure I didn't give my email. The salesclerk asked if I wanted to have the receipt emailed to me, and I declined. I don't think I gave Facebook my phone number.

The ad changed to another style of the item, and it's approaching something I MIGHT buy, but haven't looked for online in a good year.

i don't overly mind the ads on Facebook, either, just when it's too targets. I guess in the it's not that different than when the paper catalogs used to come; like while in college, when you get married, have a baby, turn 50.

I've never used social media, but I still find ads creepy, disconcerting and downright annoying that pop up on my laptop after I've looked up something. Especially if someone tells me about something they've purchased or like, or when I check out things to which GW people refer. Then I get bombarded, and it may be stuff i totally dislike to boot! There should be a way to turn that off. If I'm researching a gift for my daughter, and she stops over and sees my screen, she would know what I'm up to, then no surprise.

I don't use Facebook, so I don't know if it works with that, but with AdBlock Plus and Easy List, I don't see the ads (I use Firefox as my browser). Very nice.

Blocking the ads doesn't block Facebook from knowing what I'm up to, just blocks my being aware of it!

Gramarows, I've felt the same thing, looking up about a gift, or even something I'm curious about but don't have any intention of buying/doing, and suddenly there's something about it in my ads. Now I'm seeing ads directly in my Facebook newsfeed for the (granted, adorable) teether someone posted on the 1st Birthday Gift thread (because they didn't post a picture, but a link, and I clicked it)

At least I don't see ads, and yes, I'm being tracked anyway. But it's so much nice to not see 'em. Like throwing out the mass of junk in the Sunday newspaper.

It is creepy and invasive and it's one of the reasons I never have and never will join facebook. We don't do discount cards either.

One way to make the tracking stop on your computer is to clear your cache, cookies and stuff from your browser every day. I do it religiously before I stop for the night or start in the morning. The one caveat is that you have to resign into sites like GW, but for me, it's not a big deal if it keeps marketers out of my business.

Zuckerberg is evil. It needs to stop.

What's a discount card?

Snookums, what needs to stop?

"It is creepy and invasive and it's one of the reasons I never have and never will join facebook. "

I've seen him interviewed. He has no respect for privacy. You are his. And he rules the world. But Google and others are probably just as bad.

Privacy is something you can control up to a point. There are people everywhere who share way too much ... even here.

That's true but he/they take it too far.

Well, there's no true privacy, unless you live off-grid, ride a horse-cart and grow your own food in a remote wilderness area.

I use email and social media since they're a big part of modern life. However, I keep in mind that every message, website visit, post or comment of mine can be tracked back to me despite my online aliases.

In our digital civilization basically everything about you can be tracked: your supermarket purchases, books you borrow from a library, your medical history and prescriptions, your snail mail, your phone conversations and texts, movies you watch on Hulu or Netflix, stuff you sell on Craigslist or Ebay, your kids' grades and activities, your oil changes at Jiffy Lube - the list is endless.

The targeted ads are simply a visible symptom. Just like the tip of the iceberg.

What Orwell's 1984 didn't foretell was that we invited Big Brother right into our homes, we have willingly given up our privacy.

Exactly, Holly-Kay!

Do we really have that much of a choice? I mean, you'd have to move to the hills and go live in a cave or something.

True Snookums. It is so frustrating though to be held hostage by either giving up on technology or going back to the middle ages. Still, it continues to amaze me how readily and willingly we have given up so much of our privacy. I am not making judgements because I am as guilty, if not more so, than everyone else I know.

Oh, I agreed with you with a Like ;-). But how do you get around it. They find more and more ways to own and use us.

Cindy, I'm referring to loyalty cards...

IMO, there is a difference between willingly giving up your privacy as opposed to someone (or some entity) just being intrusive, like Facebook. The problem is, most of the time, you don't know what is going to be done with your information. Even the disclosures are not truly transparent.

"a difference between willingly giving up your privacy as opposed to
someone (or some entity) just being intrusive, like Facebook."

No, when you sign up for Facebook, you willingly give up your privacy. And using Facebook is a choice, and you can choose to not use it. Believe me, your life will be just fine without it.

Sushipup, I think facebook tracks your ip just from visiting other sites they are affiliated with. You don't need to sign up.

I think the train has already left the station Snookums. I don't think we can turn it around. We can maybe slow it a bit. Technology is a blessing and a curse. What worries me more than anything is identity theft and unscrupulous access to on-line bank etc.

Next question. Is there anything Facebook does not track?

If you have a computer that is not connected to the Internet at all, Facebook surely doesn't track what you do on it.

Nope. Nothing. The Nielsen TV ratings folks can't track viewing as they used to, because we don't watch as we used to. So they are going to pull data about shows from Facebook posts. It won't be connected to accounts, just mentions and such. But I don't know, one thing they usually track is WHO is watching what. So hmm. Maybe your data that Facebook has on you will be in there, just not your identifying info?

Hi, the very same thing happened to me today and to my financee a couple of weeks ago. Both of us bought products we had never mentioned on Facebook or searched for on Google and paid by credit card. Next time we logged on Facebook both of us had the very product as the first ad in our newsfeed.

This is so creepy! How is this even possible?

@lukkiirish: We did not give our phone numbers or email addresses away, so matching the email address can't be the answer. We didn't use loyalty cards either.

I thought it might be the cell phone giving away my location, which would explain the ad if I'm at a certain store that sells only products of one company. But at a department store that's not a sufficient explanation.

Do they have access to our credit card history? Any IT experts around here?

Houzz tracks you pretty nearly as much as facebook, you know. That's one of the main reasons so many old gardenwebbers didn't come over. And just like facebook, merely going to a page on the site even if you don't sign up gives you the tracking cookies.

I suspect for some of you, you might have read a thread about things here rather on facebook.

ETA And google does, too. Most of you may not realize that even if you don't do a google search for something, if you go to a page with any google feature embedded in it, like a page that uses google analytics, or has a google searchbox for the site itself, or has any youtube embedded content, even if you don't click on the google stuff, you get tracked by google ever after unless you remove the cookies.

As a matter of fact, in many browsers, even if you don't actually go to a site like that and have removed the cookies, you will still get them back if you start to type a similar URL. You know the convenient way your browser remembers the URL and starts to autocomplete it for you? The site is being pre-loaded in the background even if you're actually going to a different site with a similar name. To avoid that, in safari on a mac, go to the preferences>privacy and turn on "Do not load the top hit in the background." Not sure where it is in chrome and safari.

If you don't like this, use ghostery, delete your cookies after visiting sites, use any private browsing function available, and check out disconnect.me for your phone.

However, if you are using Windows 10, as a system it tracks every move you make on its own and there's not much you can do about that. Earlier versions of windows give the option to turn things off.

gramarows

I've
never used social media, but I still find ads creepy, disconcerting and
downright annoying that pop up on my laptop after I've looked up
something. Especially if someone tells me about something they've
purchased or like, or when I check out things to which GW people refer.
Then I get bombarded, and it may be stuff i totally dislike to boot!
There should be a way to turn that off. If I'm researching a gift for my
daughter, and she stops over and sees my screen, she would know what
I'm up to, then no surprise.

************************************************

LOL - after searching for something like kitty litter - and seeing it 'follow' me in ads, I then look up something random but pleasant, I won't mind later viewing,

There are a lot of tracking features in Windows 10 but they can be turned off. Here is one article that explains how:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/windows-10-doesnt-offer-much-privacy-by-default-heres-how-to-fix-it/

There are many other articles available on this as well.

hoovb, I spent some time at Christmas discussing this with a lot of techies from Austin, and they all agreed that those features no longer work very well. You can't even keep windows 10 from auto-updating anymore, a huge problem for IT.

ETA But yes, you should do those things, anyway, even if they don't make as much difference as they did before. It sure won't hurt anything.

Do you know what FB founder did before FB? He was a hacker.

So far, I have not had that happen with buying something and having ads pop up. I have had them pop up shortly after I look at an item on line though. Like if I'm searching for a boot, next time I go to FB, there is that boot in an ad. I don't know how they track your CC sales though if you just buy something in the store. YIKES! What bugs me is that there is no way to turn off those ads. You can block a certain store's ad from popping up again but I don't even know if that really works. I swear I've blocked many from coming up but there they are again later on. Hiding posts from people doesn't work on FB either.

Heard an interview on Radio Times about a new book on how we are tracked even in brick and mortar stores. Fascinating and scary. The author recommends not using a store's free wifi . In fact, even consider turning off your phone before entering a store. Imagine what kind of info we will be handing over in the new Amazon stores where you check out by having your purchases tallied as you walk out the door.

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