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Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

• polack 5y ago
  I have no sources at all, but my memory tells me that I've read that Visa, Mastercard and similar sell "anonymous" transaction info and that Google is their customer. I've been living under the assumption that Google could de-anonymize practically all that transaction info when they match it up to all their other info they track us with. Maybe I'm wrong?
  • duncanfwalker 5y ago
    Some payment providers, like WorldPay, have both online and real-world payment systems so you can imagine they could be passing back that type of targeting info.
  • soared 5y ago
    Visa’s audiences are merchant level, spend/frequency level. Ie “users in the top 10% of spenders at jewelry stores”. “Users who’ve bought train tickets in the past month”. Visa has very strict rules about audience size, and all the audiences are modeled. (Your criteria can’t target something like less than 20k users, and then they model that up to a few million users). In this case either the store, the pos/crm, or bank used his purchase data.
• duncanfwalker 5y ago
  I think that usually these things are actually just a symptom of the fact we see hundreds of ads every day. Most of the time you don't consciously notice them but then, when they trigger some recognition, you do and it feels like a big coincidence - which I find almost as disturbing as the idea that they were somehow watching. The eerie feeling compounded by the fact that we are sometimes correctly targeted and there's no way to distinguish the two. Zeynep Tufekci writes a lot about the this type of thing if you're interested in it.
  • techrat 5y ago
    Also known as the frequency illusion. Like when you learn about a word for first time and then suddenly it seems like it's popping up everywhere.
    • loloquwowndueo 5y ago
      Or when you start looking into buying a particular car model and suddenly it’s the most popular car and you see it everywhere :)
• arkitaip 5y ago
  Have you been googling about your symptoms, illnesses or anything else that can have a connection to drugs like Voltaren?
  • wideareanetwork 5y ago
    No I’m almost certain I haven’t. Because I’ve used it before and I don’t really have any questions about it so I ran out and I just go buy more. At this stage I’m just assuming it’s a coincidence. It has made me realize the holy grail for google and advertisers is to access your bank transactions and advertise to you based on that.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • haffi112 5y ago
      A bank transaction would not reveal what product you bought whereas a receipt would. If prices were unique you could deduce something from a few items bought together though. In the business of advertisements the user pays for clicks. However, it would be much more reliable for the user to pay for ads that led to actual transactions instead of just clicks. Is there some reason for why this hasn't happened so far? (Or has it already happened?)
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Some merchants do transmit information about the purchased items: https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/ https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/
    • loloquwowndueo 5y ago
      Indeed though I find it silly when I buy something like a laptop (I’m probably good for a couple of years) and start getting bombarded by “hey laptops galore!”ads. I just bought one, don’t need another ! It would be cleverer to identify the replacement cycle for each kind of product and only promote stuff the victim is likely to be looking for at that point in time (after 3 years likeliness of looking for a laptop replacement is higher).
• jjgreen 5y ago
  Did you pay with cash?
• Hackbraten 5y ago
  Did you take your phone with you to the chemist, and did it have GPS or Wi-Fi enabled? That wouldn’t explain the exact match but the product category, and choosing Voltaren feels like a pretty plausible coincidence given the category.
  • donkarma 5y ago
    IIRC this is the most probable cause. Not to be a conspiracy nut but it probably didn't help if you spoke of it out loud either
• znpy 5y ago
  > I guess it could just be coincidence? Could it be? of the billions of items you could be advertised for, why then exactly Voltaren? Do you have an android phone, by chance?
  • friehe 5y ago
    I get Voltaren ads all the time on YouTube. I don't use it or any similar products. Maybe they just have a large advertising budget.
• halotrope 5y ago
  It might be that you are just noticing the ads now that you bought the product. I read about similar observations recently. Might be a cousin of frequency illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfti1
  • StavrosK 5y ago
    It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and got ads about it a few minutes to hours later.
    • DubiousPusher 5y ago
      > I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. How do you know?
      • StavrosK 5y ago
        Network traffic and battery usage monitoring.
      • mrweasel 5y ago
        It seems like one of those things that are simply to hard to keep secret. Implementation would require way to many people to keep it secret. I’m also not sure if it make finacial sense to implement, given the large number of more easily metrics available.
        • DubiousPusher 5y ago
          > It seems like one of those things that are simply to hard to keep secret. I used to believe that too. You might call it the unwieldy conspiracy principle. But I'm not as certain of it anymore. Things like the Snowden revelations might seem evidence for the principle but I kind of see it the opposite. For years, thousands even tens of thousands of people knew about that and they still kept it secret. It's entirely possible it could've gone on for years more without a particularly conscientious person happening to be let in on it. The same goes for the Pentagon papers. And COINTELPRO was only uncovered due to people actively breaking into an office and stealing records. Who's to say if stories like those are inevitable conclusions that befell all the major conspiracies worth writing about in our recent history or if they are just some portion of ones uncovered. Similar maleficence has persisted in the private sector too. I'm not saying for sure they are listening in but at the same time, I'm not sure I buy unwieldiness as a surefire principle demonstrating it is not happening either.
• mam2 5y ago
  Did you day the word voltaren close to your phone ? That happened to me for real estate investment discussion over the phone with my mom.
• tchalla 5y ago
  What phone do you use?
• thinkingemote 5y ago
  Don't you use an adblocker? I could be being targeted with all sorts of stuff but I'd never know.
  • vinni2 5y ago
    Adblocker stops you from seeing the ad but not from google deanonymizing and linking your transactions to your search. Also lots of websites these days require you to disable adblockers to function.
    • sneak 5y ago
      I don't use those websites.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
• jedwhite 5y ago
  It's credit card purchasing data, which is sold and cross linked to your identity for advertising re-targeting. It is deeply invasive and should be blocked. It works like this. You go to a store and buy, say, a sexual wellness product. You then get targeted with ads online (search result ads, facebook ads, news media ads, amazon sponsored results etc) for the same product, or something related (let's say something embarrassing that you might not want other people to see). Other users on your same network or IP may also be re-targeted with the same ads. Credit card data tracking is a levelling up of surveillance capitalism. It is deeply intrusive. Not all card providers participate, but it is a significant source of revenue for them [1] [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90490923/credit-card-companies-are-tracking-shoppers-like-never-before-inside-the-next-phase-of-surveillance-capitalism https://www.fastcompany.com/90490923/credit-card-companies-a... [Edit: Removed specific reference to a medication as it likely triggered anti-spam]
  • 0898 5y ago
    How would the card merchant know what specific product you bought though? Is that data transmitted too somehow?
    • jedwhite 5y ago
      Yes, the product details are included.
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        For some merchants. https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/ https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/
• shoto_io 5y ago
  You might have “googled” the term or a related term subconsciously some time before you’ve made the purchase. I do this all the time even when I’m purchasing things offline.
• azotos 5y ago
  I think that Android phones can record stuff you say about marketings/ads purposes. Check if this happens for you here https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?pli=1&product=29 https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?pli=1&product=29
• Ovah 5y ago
  Tangential: a while back I bought a very specific cheese from Lidl. And the very same evening I got a Lidl ad for that very cheese on Facebook. I have never signed up as a member, the only things that connect me to that place would be my credit card. I did bring my Android phone that has got Messenger lite installed, but that's stretching it tbh.
  • DavideNL 5y ago
    Your public ip provided by mobile/celltowers already reveals your location quite accurately (even with all location services turned off.) So it's definitely possible. Google is an ad company, they sell your profile/interests and such to advertisers, it's their core business. So it's not "stretching" at all...
• lpapez 5y ago
  I was seeing this happen in our household as well. For now, the only answer I have is using UBlock everywhere + having PiHole up and running. These two really go a long way for at least blocking the creepy ads, but I think we have passed the point of no return when it comes to preventing tracking itself. Everything is being tracked all the time by insanely advanced ad-tech.
• baybal2 5y ago
  Opt out of VISA marketing https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do Second, disable GPS, and cellphone tower ID reporting (root needed.) So Google can't correlate you with sales records. At the moment, there is no way to disable Google AGPS spying on the stock Android. Third, block Google apps from reading your IMEI/IMSI/serial number, so they can't get AGPS data from your cellphone provider if it sells it. Better, get a de-Googled ROM
  • machello13 5y ago
    Use an iPhone?
    • atat7024 5y ago
      This only works if you trust Apple instead of the firm you're running from. But it does "work". iPhone is the only phone besides a GrapheneOS phone with an intact security model worth writing about.
      • FredPret 5y ago
        Not to say that any organization (eg Apple) is trustworthy to an outsider, but at least Apple makes a lot of money upfront from the device’s price tag. Their incentive is to not annoy their rich & powerful customer base with privacy violations.
        • karmakaze 5y ago
          > Their incentive is to not annoy their [...] customer base [...] Apple knows how much they can get away with annoying, that's why they can push updates that slow down your phone, or make devices less repairable. Privacy is trickier though because it's based on trust not annoyance and it doesn't take much to lose it. I've already lost trust in Apple. What I do trust is that 'privacy' is currently working for Apple to increase their market share. It also conveniently keeps data away from competitors.
  • 5y ago
• rahilb 5y ago
  It’s probably a coincidence or just the worst advertisers on the planet. Why would I show an ad to someone who literally just bought my thing?
  • dorkwood 5y ago
    It's pretty common. I once bought a fan online and had ads for that same fan follow me around for weeks. I believe they're called "retargeting" ads.
    • asadkn 5y ago
      Retargeting is generally done after you have shown interest in a product, but haven't converted yet. "Conversions" are always excluded if possible. It makes no sense to retarget a recent buyer.
      • dorkwood 5y ago
        I agree it doesn't make any sense, and I would prefer to live in a world where ads were served as you described.
      • bombcar 5y ago
        They may not know you converted, especially if the ads are internet and the purchase was in-person.
  • jsjohnst 5y ago
    > Why would I show an ad to someone who literally just bought my thing? The majority of targeted advertising I see is for items I just bought. There’s also a reasonable explanation for this... Not every merchant shares purchase data, so if you do any research anywhere before making a purchase, they know you are interested, but as there was no tracking beacon on the site you ultimately bought from (or the purchase was misidentified or delayed or any number of reasons), that’s why you are now seeing targeted ads for it.
• dwighttk 5y ago
  I have not done anything Voltaren related and have noticed a bunch of ads. So I think they just did a big ad buy.
• kruxigt 5y ago
  It's listening from your pocket.
• gonzo41 5y ago
  I guess it could just be coincidence? Have you ever noticed how you don't seem to see much of X, and then all of a sudden you see one X. And then you can't stop seeing X. Though, googles probably spying on you.
• tluyben2 5y ago
  This happens a lot and what I find the strangest thing is that the ads are for things I just bought: travel I just booked, freezer I just bought etc. I do not need anything again that I just bought and so these ads are even of less use than they normally are...
• morelandjs 5y ago
  I’m going to guess that the drug store sold your transaction information. Who they sell it to varies from chain to chain, but it’s common practice. For example, CVS in the states sells your purchase data. If you want to avoid being tracked, use cash.
• foxhop 5y ago
  Are there credit card companies which do not sell transaction data?
  • durnygbur 5y ago
    In Europe, are there any other credit and debit card companies which are not VISA, MasterCard, or Maestro?
    • guerrilla 5y ago
      Maestro is MasterCard btw
• ArnaldoTeCodea 5y ago
  hdghd
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• felle_realist 5y ago
  There could be many ways but it doesn't really matter that much which of them was used this time. The real solution is twofold: - Block ads. All ads. No advertising allowed, ban it, rigorously. - To do that effectively on a "main stream" mobile device (i.e. not a Pinephone or Librem running some form of Linux with a mobile shell) you need an Android-capable device on which you install an AOSP-derived distribution (LineageOS being the most well-known and -supported). Do not install Google apps ("gapps"). Install a system-wide ad blocker, there are several options here ranging from a simple hosts-based solution (efficient but less effective) to vpn/proxy based solutions (effective but less efficient), I use the former. Use Firefox with uBlock Origin, sync your filter list with the one on your PCs for a quick start. Also, pay with cash if you can to deny the beast some more data. If you use "free" wifi make sure to only use it to connect to your VPN server, don't use it directly other than to check whether your flight or train is in time etc. Don't feed the beasts, starve them. It doesn't matter whether that beast goes by the name of Google or Apple or Amazon or anything else, just don't feed them. Don't use the Google search engine directly, use it through a meta-search engine like Searx. Don't use "stock" Android, stock iOS, stock Windows as they come on those shiny new gadgets, at the least find out how to disable the myriad of "telemetry" these things come with. Replace stock Android with an AOSP-derived distribution - unfortunately there is no similar option for Apple devices. If you're mostly using PC-type devices as glorified web terminals you're better off doing that using a free Linux distribution (Debian is a good choice, free of commercial interests, no tracking included), no need for Windows or MacOS here. Don't even thing about using Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Echo or whatever voice-related gadgetry they come up with tomorrow, that stuff is straight out of an Orwellian nightmare. Any voice processing should be done locally on the device, it should work without any internet connection. If it needs an internet connection to work you just don't use it. This can be generalised to other services as well, there has to be a clear reason for the service to need an internet connection or you simply deny it such - this is possible on the mention AOSP-derived distributions by using a firewall which blocks outgoing connections, iOS users are sadly out of luck in this respect unless they are willing to permanently fight Apple for control over their devices. If you can, run your own services - mail, chat, web, video, media etc. This takes a bit of effort but it gives a lot of freedom in return. Source: my own experience over many years of doing just the above. I might see a few ads per year, if that. My data is mine, stored on my storage devices, hardware running on my own premises, backed up to other devices I control.
• dorkwood 5y ago
  I suspect all the people putting this claim on the same level as "my phone is listening to me" conspiracy theories are living outside of the USA. One of the first things I noticed after moving to America was that I was being served ads for oddly specific in-store purchases. I checked my bank's terms and discovered that, sure enough, they were sharing my transaction history with "non-affiliates" so that they could market to me. From memory, they did offer opt-out methods for limiting the amount of data that they shared. Maybe you could see if your bank offers the same?
  • cactus2093 5y ago
    Well the other problem in America is the payment rails are very primitive. How does your credit card company know which items you’re buying, when the payment description will be something cryptic that you can only sometimes even match to the store name and that’s it. It’s not like your credit card company gets an itemized receipt of your purchases. I’ve actually worked at a company that was purchasing this data from banks, it was all anonymized and we were looking for trends. Maybe there are other companies that are able to buy the pii data and use it for marketing, but I think there are better, simpler sources. The stores/brands themselves can sell the data about their customers, or they are passing it to google to run targeted ads on their own customers and then google now has that data too and can use it for other things, etc.
    • bombcar 5y ago
      At least some credit card companies support (in some cases) getting an itemized receipt - I know I've been in my AMEX account and been able to see the full details of a purchase. It needs the credit card company, the payment processor, and the merchant to all have compatible systems that support it. I know I've seen it advertised as a feature of some business cards.
  • hobs 5y ago
    Your phone is listening (or at least some are) - I thought it was crazy until I was corrected by https://twitter.com/thezedwards https://twitter.com/thezedwards who actually helped build one, reformed himself, and now does pro privacy work.
• metafunctor 5y ago
  As others have explained, this is most likely your credit card purchasing data being sold, by your credit card issuer, to any interested party willing to pay for it. Yes, the data sold includes detailed product information linked to your identity. What I'd like to know is if the same happens when I pay with Apple Card, or when I use Apple Play with, say, a VISA card?
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    >Yes, the data sold includes detailed product information linked to your identity. Not necessarily. I’ve only seen a few huge merchants sending level 3 data: https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/ https://paymentdepot.com/blog/level-3-data-processing/ Staples.com and airlines are the only ones where I can see the items bought on my credit card statement. Although it’s possible that some banks are not reporting that information on the statement, but I couldn’t find any more data on the subject, other than the fact that smaller businesses are not sending this information.
• sto_hristo 5y ago
  Never knew about the VISA thing most people mention here. That is some wildly impressive tech. I wonder how much google is paying them.
• sct202 5y ago
  In America, some stores seem to share rewards member information to product companies so they can target their ads on other platforms. For example, I paid for a very specific candy from CVS using my credit card, but used my partner's CVS rewards member number and they got ads on facebook for that candy while I haven't seen a thing.
  • duckfang 5y ago
    Whenever places wantba phone number for ad and/or discount stuff, use: (Local area code) 867-5309 There's always an account, and it's a 100% gamble if this purchase you get something.
    • zaptrem 5y ago
      What’s the significance of this number?
      • klyrs 5y ago
        It's a popular song wherein the artist doxed some gal named Jenny. Just google that number
      • mvonballmo 5y ago
        It's Jenny's.
  • jeroenhd 5y ago
    This feels like it should be illegal if it isn't already.
    • pc86 5y ago
      Why? I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm actually inclined to agree. But this hand-wavy "this should be illegal!" type of comment is extremely common on these threads and is completely unhelpful.
      • 5y ago
• amelius 5y ago
  A housemate might have seen the Voltaren lying around, then Googled for it on your computer.
• losvedir 5y ago
  Did you search for "pain" or "arthritis" or "migraine" or something like that? Visit a page devoted to your condition or symptoms? Could be whatever led you to get Voltaren in the first place also led you to issue search queries or visit sites in a way that let Google infer you might be interested in Voltaren.
  • OskarS 5y ago
    Or even just search the pharmacy website to see if that branch had it in stock? I would think something like this would be the most likely culprit.
• seoaeu 5y ago
  Because you aren't using an adblocker. Seriously, you should really consider uBlock Origin or similar. Google doesn't honor Do Not Track, so you should feel no obligation to honor their desire for you to look at their ads.
  • NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    It's always surprising when I happen to have to use devices that aren't my own, and there are ads. Disgusting!
• beagle3 5y ago
  Did you get a receipt by mail to your gmail, by any chance? Google analyzes receipts. When I still used gmail, it would automatically add flights to my calendar based exclusively on the receipt sent to my gmail account.
  • albertshin 5y ago
    this is also why Amazon started dropping the item names in the email order confirmations
• rchaud 5y ago
  Did you pay with Google Pay?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• durnygbur 5y ago
  I say "<product>" (turquoise skirt, hand truck) with iphone laying in radius 3m. Later on while browsing the internet with Safari on the device I see ads selling this product. Other than this, Whatsapp is scanning the conversations for keywords and brand names - there is no doubt even.
  • matthewleehess 5y ago
    A few years back, I saw an online rumor, that I decided to try for myself. I left my (locked) iPhone 6 in front of a TV overnight, that was left on a Spanish channel. The next day, ALL of my Facebook ads, across all devices, were in Spanish — along with about 20% of the ads that I came across during regular web browsing. Took about a month for them to revert back to English. I do not speak Spanish. At the time, I lived in a rural New England area, where census data reported very low Hispanic population. Zero reason for me to get targeted with alternative language advertisements. I’m not a Luddite of any kind. Several decades of tech industry experience, specifically with ecommerce software engineering. Hold all available certifications for Google marketing, Facebook marketing, Hubspot marketing, along with many more. Know quite a bit more about this topic than the average Joe, and it concerns the hell out of me. Since that day, Facebook’s apps haven’t been allowed on any of my devices, and their services only get used by me for work purposes.
    • azornathogron 5y ago
      Was it a smart TV? Is it possible that it's actually the TV that was snitching on you and not your iPhone (of course, it could be both of them!)
• paulcole 5y ago
  How do you know you didn’t see ads for it before? Isn’t it likely you’re only noticing the ads now because you just bought it? Is it surprising that ads are targeted at someone who actually bought the product? Doesn’t this show that ad targeting works? You just happened to notice the ads after you made the purchase. What products did you buy that you didn’t see ads for? Which ads did you see that you didn’t end up buying the product? This is a case of you being aware of Voltaren because you bought it, saw the ads, and are now trying to connect the two.
• pen2l 5y ago
  Tangentially related, for the first time ever I saw Gmail losing its anti-spam game. We were doing some home-modeling and we went to Home Depot sometime early this month. And... some entity somehow discovered this. And then all of a sudden I started getting spam emails related to Home Depot's/home rebuilding. The spam emails successfully pass through gmail's filter because they seem to emanate from aol,gmail,hotmail,yahoo etc. email addresses. Here's an image: https://i.imgur.com/KqIN6oB.png https://i.imgur.com/KqIN6oB.png I'm about as impressed as I am mortified. I thought I had my opsec down, I was using noscript, I use throwaway email addy's where I suspect I'll be spammed. But I was had too. This Hecatoncheires entity is getting ever-larger. It knows a lot. It knows me well. I have seen evidence that it knows about the medication I take, the insecurities I have, my half-baked aspirations and plans. I feel defeated at times when I see its knowledge of me manifested in the ads I am shown, I feel confronted because at the time of this writing I don't know where this leak occurred, I don't know at what vector exactly I'm being had.
  • harikb 5y ago
    There are so many possibilities here. There is the stores you visited and the Credit card company involved along with anyone of the ad tech partners who have a cookie on you tied to your email. Now how they know you bought X 1. Say CC sells data to say Bluekai (now salesforce). If you bought a hammer, they need not have known it was from HD, a middle man might simply be bidding for anyone categorized as shopping for home improvement goods and hoping to cash in on HD lead-gen/affiliate $$$ 2. You likely searched online for these at some site and probably just don’t remember that you did. The only thing that will get rid of this is to ban/regulate “affiliate” marketing (so shady companies who don’t follow rules can’t cash in), because so long as someone is willing to pay to bring sales, it will happen on way or another.
  • AYBABTME 5y ago
    Google Maps is a huge vector most people don't think about.
    • pftburger 5y ago
      Seconded. Visited the dentist recently. On my way I looked up directions in google maps, then for a week had dental insurance adds. This one is obvious though. That was on iOS with it’s pretty strict location tracking rules etc. I’d be interested to see if you can get it to show you adds just by visiting the dentist (and not searching) on a vanilla android phone (IE google’s location history on by default)
• dkdk8283 5y ago
  The surveillance economy is too profitable for this to change any time soon. Walmart is rolling out facial recognition across all their stores. Doesn’t matter if you pay cash. Pay with a card once and you’re identified. I consulted for Axciom and the best way to avoid their reach is to move to a country with good privacy laws or to a country that’s too poor for these big companies to care about.
  • pedrogpimenta 5y ago
    Even if you don't pay by card... if they have facial recognition and someone has upload your photo on facebook, or you uploaded your photo on facebook 10 years ago when you were 14, then they already know who you are, probably better than yourself, even if you deleted that photo when you were 18.
  • crocodiletears 5y ago
    Target has had facial recognition for the better part of the last decade. Not sure if they've integrated with their non-security oriented systems, but I'd be surprised if they hadn't.
• karxxm 5y ago
  Maybe you saw the commercial unconsciously before, went out and bought it, and then saw it consciously. I‘d bet money on it that this is the case most of the time
• nomorefools 5y ago
  Did you bring an Android phone?
• zubi 5y ago
  March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb memory-stick attached to the key-chain would be destroyed when being washed. I dried the keys along with the usb-stick, sat down at my table, opened up Facebook only to be greeted by an ad on top about water-proof usb memory sticks. I felt a chill ran down on my spine.
  • KaseKun 5y ago
    Unfortunately, though this is an excellent story, this is just an example of a bias known as "frequency illusion". It happens with a lot of things, like seeing the clock at 11:11 more than you do at 11:09. Or seeing lots of your make/model car but being blind to the hundred of other variants on the road. How many times have you opened up your laptop and not seen a Facebook add for something you just did, or something you discussed? You'll never notice those occasions.
    • newswasboring 5y ago
      I understand you have used Occam's razor to come to this conclusion. And its a perfectly valid point. But, this particular story has been repeated so many times around me that I am genuinely suspicious. But alas, the only way to know would be to look at the code. And even then we might not understand because its a blackbox type system which is ill understood by even its designers.
      • quenix 5y ago
        The "11:11 on the clock" story has also been repeated by millions of people for decades. That many people fall prey to a cognitive bias does not make it any less of a bias.
      • syndacks 5y ago
        How is it that no such scandal has been uncovered? Surely by now some hacker would have been able to prove that a phone is recording, sending to server, processing, and returning relevant ad. Or surely someone would have come forward or whistle blown by now. So I'll quote Hitchen's razor for you: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
• jonahbenton 5y ago
  Not coincidence. Not "bank purchase history" shared with google- in most cases banks and credit cards don't know item level detail. Lots of ways this data flow could happen, at least in the US. Happy to go through specific details I have seen if you want to share more about this, but two high level points 1. Remember that when you purchase something, the data about the purchase is BOTH yours AND the entity from whom you made the purchase. Most of those entities have data sharing agreements of various kinds for all sorts of legitimate business reasons 2. It isn't google who knows about the purchase, and even the advertiser doesn't "know" you made a purchase. Advertising is zillions of two sided marketplaces, with an enormous ecosystem of data packagers and conveyers and linkers, with lots of concern about recency and freshness of data. Your purchase landed some key about you in a bucket that was mixed and repackaged with many other keys that the advertiser knows as "keys recently interested in Voltaren." Some of those keys are related to people who bought it, or who searched for it, or more indirectly who lingered while reading a page with an ad for it...and in most cases are very short lived. So give it a few weeks and many of those buckets of keys will have been completely remade.
  • dantyti 5y ago
    please do go into detail about how data about an exact goods purchase that is linked to a specific person (ignoring the bunk about 'anonymization') can be regarded as having a legitimate business reason
    • rovr138 5y ago
      Marketing is a legitimate business reason. Other example, In the US, lots of jurisdictions have restrictions on ingredients. For example, dextromethorphan and pseudoephedrine. If you are buying over the counter medicines that contain these, in some jurisdictions, you need to provide an ID.
      • inetknght 5y ago
        > Marketing is a legitimate business reason. Pervasive targeted marketing is not a legitimate business reason.
• InvOfSmallC 5y ago
  My guess is called Cruxification. Especially if you are not in EU there isn't much you can do (besides usual adblock, firefox, pihole etc...)
• Spooky23 5y ago
  Prescription data, at least in the US, is not very private. Many entities know that you met a doctor and they know when the doctor prescribes. Between PBMs, subrogation, wholesalers, and other factors, marketers are easily able to de-anonymize your identity for targeting purposes. In my family’s case, my wife’s hospital admission and prescription was sufficient to correctly identify her as likely 10-12 weeks pregnant. Their confidence in that was sufficient to yield us a Fedex’d box containing congratulations and starter kits of enfamil, on her due date. Since they don’t read your records, just infer from events, they didn’t know that she had miscarried, and nearly died in the process. I know this, because Enfamil identified the list used to target her, and I bought it for my zip code. I also learned that my neighbor 4 doors down has type 2 diabetes, and has expressed interest in a BMW or Audi at the end of her then-current lease. (She went Audi btw) When people lecture you about various observational biases, you’re being paranoid, etc, they are full of shit. The marketing machine is way more wired up into everyday life than you can imagine.
  • otterley 5y ago
    If you can prove this, at least in the USA, this would be a serious violation of HIPAA and severe penalties would apply to entities who disclosed, knowingly received, or paid for personal health information without the patient’s consent and used it for an improper purpose. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/marketing/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance...
    • Spooky23 5y ago
      Lol. No. You can comply with HIPAA and “anonymize” in a manner that a marketer can use to retarget, especially by combining with other data sources. HIPAA protects you against receptionists gossiping and wholesale release of your records. Not much else. When your doctor writes a script, that data is in the hands of a data aggregation company before your pharmacist looks at it. Every pharma rep has a report card for each doctors prescription practices as a result. Insurance companies and others sell claim data in aggregate and so do downstream partners like subrogation services. Some states even shared Medicaid claim data to aid in targeting ads and analysis to fight opioid abuse.
• testicle 5y ago
  Please check if you allowed to record voice:)
• throwa9724567 5y ago
  If you purchased in the US using a discount card (eg: GoodRx), they get transaction level data from the pharmacy and can use that to retarget / market to you. It’s not PHI / HIPAA protected since it’s not flowing through insurance and is transaction data.
• weinzierl 5y ago
  I see Voltaren ads a lot and I mean really a ton since about two or three months. I purge my browser sessions daily and I notice that they reliably come after watching fitness videos (Training Pal and similar). I guess they target people with sports injuries.
  • morsch 5y ago
    I'm also getting loads of Voltaren ads on YouTube. Apparently watching retro computing and cooking fucked videos is also linked to sprained ankles. I think Voltaren is just spending a lot of money and advertising with shotgun accuracy. The ad copy is funny - Voltaren, not just for accelerated healing, or something to that extent. Everyone I know uses it (or, more likely, cheaper generics) for pain relief, without any particular expectation that the injury will heal faster. So that's the claim they hone in on, as opposed to the thing everybody knows. Standard ad stuff, I'm sure, but it's interesting when you notice it.
• zeeshanqureshi 5y ago
  What I find surprising (and even mildly terrifying) is that such anecdotes don't even alarm people in many circles of the society any more. Lots of folks think this is what the future is supposed to look like and are completely ok with it.
• tiborsaas 5y ago
  It's probably just coincidence. This week I was only thinking about something and there was an ad about exactly that product on Facebook, like 5 minutes later. I laughed out loud, since it was impossible. There were two explanations: - they are stealing my thoughts with 5G. - random things are random and I don't remember 99% of the ads where I couldn't correlate them to other events. (yes, there's a middle ground somewhere that they know the subjects that I'm interested in and sometimes someone throws a bullseye)
• m-i-l 5y ago
  I had a similar super-creepy and definitely not just a co-incidence experience a while back, which I shared on HN[0]. Short summary is that it was almost certainly the result of Google buying my credit card transaction data from Mastercard and using it to personalise my Google news feed. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884687
• luke2m 5y ago
  Maybe you researched it beforehand?
• dehrmann 5y ago
  > How does google know I bought Voltaren? > Is my bank purchase history shared with google somehow? Google buys Mastercard (if not more) transactions and ties them to your Android location history. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-and-mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-track-retail-sales https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...
  • beervirus 5y ago
    Presumably that data would include time, amount, and vendor... but not item-level details. Right? There's something else going on here.
    • JustFinishedBSG 5y ago
      Drugs often cost a very specific amount of money (When I buy drugs it's always something like 4.86e or whatever, not neat 4.99) so I assume it's easy to de-anonymize
      • hansel_der 5y ago
        > neat 4.99 i get what you are saying, but calling a price ending in .99 "neat" feels very wrong
    • dehrmann 5y ago
      It's in level 3 data. https://www08.wellsfargomedia.com/assets/pdf/small-business/merchant/level3.pdf https://www08.wellsfargomedia.com/assets/pdf/small-business/...
      • otterley 5y ago
        “For Level III data, only Mastercard® and Visa® corporate, purchasing, and fleet cards can qualify.” So consumer credit cards can’t get this.
        • 5y ago
• dilippkumar 5y ago
  Slightly related fun story from 2014: [1] http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/ http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-... Discussed on HN earlier: [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931
• outsider7 5y ago
  Everything you don't want to share with the Gaffas: Shutdown your cell, pay in cash.
• giardini 5y ago
  It's simple hygiene: clear out browser data after each session, use private browsing (fwiw), and a VPN.
• antpls 5y ago
  Today I browsed Google from my desktop PC about "Gundam" (the japonese anime) for about 1 hour. Pretty niche topic. Then when I was done, I closed all browser tabs, I unlocked my smartphone to check Instagram, and the second ads I get is a Gundam ad. I have no idea how my shadow "desktop" ad profile and shadow "mobile" ad profile matched. I share no accounts between my desktop and my smartphone : - I use different Google accounts on my phone and desktop (although I occasionally log in one or the other in private tabs) - The internet connections are different : 4G for phone, fiber for desktop - On desktop, I use Chromium with Ad block Plus - I do not use facebook nor instagram on my desktop PC So how the f. did Instagram know about my Gundam browsing on desktop. This must stop.
  • sroussey 5y ago
    LiveRamp connects all the “anonymous” identifiers together for a household.
    • ericbarrett 5y ago
      Third party SDKs also report your location to these services[0], which makes it trivial to track your phone to your location (or they could just buy that info directly from the carrier). Your home ISP's assigned IP is also in a database with your name and a unique identifier. So it doesn't matter what adblocking you use, they still know where the hits are coming from. All this data is traded around the ad "ecosystem" and integrated real-time, so it can be milliseconds from action to ad-impression. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/locat...
  • danbolt 5y ago
    I think Instagram can usually figure it out from the Minovsky Particles given off by your PC for that short bit of time.
  • PeterisP 5y ago
    If you log in different google accounts in private tabs, then any browser fingerprinting would immediately link them. Also, it's plausible that one of your contacts has your phone number connected with the email of your desktop google account.
• maxk42 5y ago
  I did an afternoon of googling for information on the hospice industry to satisfy my own curiosity. Then I fired up my TV to watch some streaming television. Now I'm getting video ads for hospice services every time I watch TV.
• samoraai 5y ago
  Crazy! I read this HN thread on Safari on my mobile that i never use to access Facebook... a few hours later I’m on Facebook on my laptop in Chrome incognito mode, and one of the first ads that shows up is for Voltaren...how in the world?!?
  • christophilus 5y ago
    IP address, maybe?
  • prox 5y ago
    Your IP? And your mobile and laptop have been fingerprinted earlier to belong to the same person?
• ericlewis 5y ago
  My guess would be you searched to find the chemist to buy it from or searched for it in some way.
• christophilus 5y ago
  I use cash when I want anonymity. Despite what anyone says, it is still king.
• grok22 5y ago
  https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/google-tracking-credit-card-data-advertisers https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/google-tracking-cred... -- that's from a quick Google search. Even though the article says "secretly" etc...there is really no conspiracy theory-like secret to this and it's well-known that everyone sells data to whomever they can make money from. It's more like what user jonahbenton has explained in another comment. The makers of Voltaren are able to broadly advertise to anyone who might be interested in Voltaren -- they don't know specific users. But Google (or any other advertising provider) has access to info on who might be interested in Voltaren at present -- which might be decided based on various factors including your credit-card purchase data. If Google does wants to dig down, they probably can use various info to drill down to you specifically and that is what makes people rightly uncomfortable, but what I am trying to say is that in general they are not specifically targeting you for the ad -- but a broad category/bucket of "people who might be interested in Voltaren at present". One might say it is the same thing...
• fma 5y ago
  Somewhat related...If anyone shops at Kroger or their owner chains (Fred Meyer, Ralphs, etc) and use their rewards card...know that they sell your data. That use the revenue to subsidize their prices - which is why they are cheaper than other grocery stores. You can opt out of it, or simply signup for a rewards card and not use your real info.
• zupreme 5y ago
  Are you sure that you have not done some online research regarding Voltaren, either before or after purchase? Did you email anyone about it or receive any emails about it? If so...
• furypt 5y ago
  I've heard stories like this multiple times. Both on Android and iPhone. I don't believe it's a coincidence. The chemist is probably sharing the time of purchase along with items bought with Google, FB (probably indirectly but data gets there). These services probably have access to your location, either via your phone or via network provider. They try to match. If the likelihood is high enough (e.g. chemist had few customers at that time), show ad. It's possible they match using location but they might have other data that increases the matching like payment provider which has a lot of your personal data as well as knows your purchased something from that store at that time.
• nottorp 5y ago
  It could be worse. You could concievably buy Voltaren again soon. Usually you make a 5-10 year purchase, like a TV or a large kitchen appliance, and they keep showing you ads for the exact same model.
• anigbrowl 5y ago
  SaaS idea: a tool that monitors your advertising profile (keys, whatever you want to call it) and gives you the same information that your browser+adtech markets are auctioning about you. Also allows you to delete keys you don't want to share.
• walligatorrr 5y ago
  Google and Facebook both have in-store conversion tracking: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en-G... https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/help/1150627594978290 https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/help/1150627594978290 Wouldn’t be surprised if this data is used to refine which ad these platforms should show you.
• aaron695 5y ago
  Why did you buy Voltaren and that's probably your answer. If you bought Voltaren as a joke though an offline random process ( which is hard to do ) then you might have more evidence it's linked to the sale part. The other day I watched Mosquito Coast again after 30 years. Afterwards I saw Apple are making a TV series. That's not a coincidence I just have no idea how it happened. It was not simple, a Ad or Article I would have read, it's an interesting premise I always remembered. It was downloaded from the torrents. It was after looking at a movie then director then actor then movies then the decision to watch. But something I don't know what, helped me stop there on the chain of browsing and watch it.
• Robotbeat 5y ago
  Huh. Good argument for paying cash.
• benreesman 5y ago
  Usually when this sort of thing happens someone searched for something or a related term in the previous 30 days (typical retention period in “hot” storage for such features) and doesn’t remember doing the search. Most people, myself included, do so many searches so casually that we don’t remember doing it much of the time. Source: FB Ads and IG ranking for 7 years.
• cma 5y ago
  If you mentioned it to anyone and they Googled or browsed to it where a Google embed or tracking pixel was present, Google could potentially infer your interest.
• worik 5y ago
  Use cash.
• jrockway 5y ago
  If they knew you bought this, wouldn't they suppress ads for it? Why market to someone who has already closed the sale?
• g8oz 5y ago
  I guarantee this type of tracking is going. And I'm sure that the marketing industry is aware that these tactics are running on borrowed time. Once the mechanics of how it's being done are collated by EFF type activists it will turn into a political narrative and action will be taken. Right now people are too confused by their strange experiences, doubting themselves and swayed by less outlandish alternative explanations. Sometimes the hooves you hear are in fact zebras not horses. The players in the surveillance ecosystem have shaped themselves into narrow forms that allow for plausible deniability. App makers, device makers, the monetization SDK providers, the re-targeting platforms with their Orwellian forecasting & optimization calculations and especially the data brokers each play their part in a division of labor as powerful as Adam Smith's pin factory. The pushback will come from the EU in my opinion. The U.S Big Tech file is going to be taken up with tackling the monopoly power of platforms for the next few years. In the meantime beware of free apps on your phone and look up how to opt out of marketing on your smart TV. Pay for sensitive items with cash. If your phone is Android use the Firefox browser with the uBlock Origin plugin.
• contingencies 5y ago
  1. You are using Google logged in. 2. You are using a credit card and expecting not to be identified. Everything else is details.
• johnsmith4739 5y ago
  Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon: you were having ad-blindness until your purchase that brought up to your conscious level the "Voltaren" concept. As you cannot recall the previous cases where you saw the ad because it did not make it into your conscious mind, it seems that the ads started only after your purchase. Your perception works in 2 modes - bottom-up (signal processing) - and the ad didn't make it through - and top-down (pattern recognition) - exactly the experience you report - you recognise a recent pattern.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  My money would be on coincidence. How often did you buy something and got irrelevant ads? I had such a coincidence happen to me once. I saw an ad for a product I've never heard about online... and a short while later, I saw the same ad on non-smart broadcast TV, billboard, in print or some similar place where I could be sure that the ad was not targeted. Had it happened the other way around, I would have doubted it myself, but it was clear that this could not have been anything but coincidence. Besides that, why would the company behind it spend money on promoting the very product that you already bought? If anything, the fact that you bought it would be used to not show you ads, at least until some time later when you'd be likely to buy another one. (Retargeting frequently gets this wrong because they see the interest but don't get the purchase information.)
• razodactyl 5y ago
  https://www.visa.com.au/legal/privacy-policy-opt-out.html https://www.visa.com.au/legal/privacy-policy-opt-out.html
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• thisiswater 5y ago
  I would like to contribute an anecdote which turned me from a "google is listening" skeptic to someone who turns their phone off as often as possible, especially during any kind of sensitive conversation. I'm one degree removed from this anecdote, but I have no reason to doubt its truth. A group of friends were on a road trip, driving for several days cross-country. These are university-aged young males, 20-23. None have any interest in starting a family any time soon. At the beginning of the trip, they agreed (verbally) to test if google was listening by discussing "nappies" intermittently, loudly and jokingly. They would only discuss nappies in person - everyone agreed not to mention this on any digital channel whatsoever, not to look up nappies for any reason, etc. That is, they deliberately excluded nappies from their online lives. They chose nappies specifically because they're completely irrelevant. None had ever to their knowledge been delivered an ad for nappies. None had ever purchased nappies or any baby product. Sure enough, end of the trip - ads for nappies. I would love an explanation more plausible than their phones were listening.
  • angrais 5y ago
    >> I would love an explanation more plausible than their phones were listening. One of the three deviated and searched for nappies online prior to the trip. Rather than relying on external people to make judgement, you could test the hypothesis yourself: write on paper a phrase. Spend one week without ads and document all ads you see. Spend second week saying word N times per day. Also document all ads you see. Ask N people to do this and report your findings, then you might provide statistical insight and validate your hypothesis. Otherwise, who's to say one of those students didn't Google it before the trip? Does anyone have any ways to improve the design of the above experiment?
    • thisiswater 5y ago
      "One of the three deviated and searched for nappies online prior to the trip." This is a hypothetical which was deliberately excluded when they decided to run the experiment. These are intelligent young people acting in good faith to test if they're being spied on. Why would they have googled nappies? I'm sorry but I don't find that explanation convincing at all.
• NoblePublius 5y ago
  Your girlfriend googled it on the home wifi when she saw it in your medicine cabinet and your home wifi is also associated with your devices
• thisismyswamp 5y ago
  In this thread: people who assume ad targeting systems are sophisticated enough to know what you buy at the chemist, while still stupid enough to recommend something you've already bought. OP probably googled something related before going out to buy the item :)
• motoboi 5y ago
  Do you know companies actually send data to Google (and Facebook) to target ads? Its common and help companies target clients with ads on the internet in general (YouTube, sites, etc). It works like that: - The Chemist wants to sell things online or physically. - They pay google for ads for their products on sites related to its business lines or keywords about its niche. Google then show their ads for people in general, people interested on those subjects or to people visiting sites about those subjects. Interest is determined by search history and navigation (every google ad in a site (chemist or not) help google know you were there). Then the chemist want to target past customers with more specific ads (like reminding people of items in theirs carts): - They send google ads information about clients and past physical or online purchases / interactions. Google then match the user with its own database and connect the sent data with its own data. - Now the Chemist benefits from the google (because google can find you online) - Now other google clients benefit from this data (because now your google hidden profile is more accurate about your interests and habits) - Now Google benefits from that because it can use the purchase data to hone its models about ad-to-spend. The chemist also want to pay google a fraction of the purchases if the client saw an ad. - Google uses information sent in realtime by the Chemist and other companies, model this data and determine which people, sites and subjects have a bigger probability to turn an Ad into a sell. I have myself done that in the past and Facebook was quite accurate at turning ads into course subscriptions.
• juancn 5y ago
  My guess is that you either searched for something (for example) related to a sports injury or some sort of pain, or you where nearby somebody that did it. Many cases of this are just clustering. Another option would be if they're integrating something like Close-Up data. Close-Up is a company that collects prescription data and sells it to different marketing companies. They usually collect what doctors prescribe, so they can tell if pharma marketing efforts are working. I'm not sure how deeply entrenched they are in the US (or how HIPPA compliant they are).
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• decker 5y ago
  Did you do searches related to the condition that caused you to be prescribed Voltaren?
• syngrog66 5y ago
  I read this HN post. I did not buy Voltaren or search for it anywhere, or chat about it anywhere. I use Twitter a few minutes ago. I see an ad for Voltaren. Initial Bayesian Conclusion Histogram: - 33% Voltaren ad push just happens to be underway, and no spying was used - 33% Google's Android Chrome knew I visited a HN link to today's post about Voltaren, somehow added this fact into my advertising profile, Android Twitter app used it to pick me an ad - 33% like above, except that since in Android Chrome I'm logged into Twitter, somehow Twitter itself was the upstream source of the interest hint
• codazoda 5y ago
  I haven't seen it in other comments, so I'll ask, do you use Gmail? If so, a confirmation email listing Voltaren could give Google all the info they need. I don't know if Google would use your email in this way, but it's feasible.
• YuriNiyazov 5y ago
  My bet would be on “Level 3 credit card data” being sold and insufficiently anonymized
• EugeneOZ 5y ago
  Apps on your smartphone are (or were) listening you.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jpadkins 5y ago
  https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity Look for activity related to Voltaren (it has a search function) https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en
• sleepysysadmin 5y ago
  I have on multiple occasions tested talking to the google home without triggering it to see if it's listening. "I wonder if I should buy X" but I dont actually want X and never search for it. That alone makes google ads start showing me ads about X.
• moneytide1 5y ago
  Someone's tech salary was justified to develop (or refractor) a function to automatically crawl a digitally stored purchase history and waste potentially useful ad space on the suggestion of a product that is guaranteed to already be owned by the user. Then they can put on their curriculum vitae that they worked as a "Googler" even though they added nothing to society (except confusion and paranoia). Google may even allocate tax write offs because they "filled a seat" among their ranks.
• parliament32 5y ago
  Did you use a rewards/loyalty/points card? Did you google Voltaren before or after the purchase? Did you mention the product name in an FB or IG chat?
• bacan 5y ago
  How do you know it is not just a frequency bias? Just coz you bought the cream, now you notice the ads?
• AFlyingBoom 5y ago
  Curious about which country OP is in and which payment method was used. I'm in Australia, and find when I pay by credit card, this same thing happens to me where I get ads for medicines related to precription medicine I've just purchased. When I use cash however, I don't get the ads, so my best bet is that it's the credit card that's used to match the purchase to me in this scenario.