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Ask HN: This company links my home IP address to my employer. How?
I've just had a spooky experience at http://wowanalytics.co.uk/ - I work remotely and was researching WOW Analytics website for a client. They have some buzzwordy technology that links IP addresses to companies.
Fair enough I thought... until they linked my home IP address to my company. Yes I'm a director of it but no domains point to my home IP address, this postal address etc...
So how the heck did they manage that? Short of having filled in a form on a website with the company name, and it saving name + IP address, I can't think how it could make that leap...
- caw 13y agoI think there's actually analytics available where their pitch is "use us on your website, and we can help identify users." They'll track you around multiple sites until you finally drop an email address in or fill out a form. Then all of the other sites you visited get the same information (that's the incentive to use their tracking system). Can't remember the name of the analytics company and my google-fu is failing me right now.
- porker 13y agoAhh, that's an interesting approach. I could see someone giving away a free product to get this data (as AddThis did with their, only I don't believe it got name/email/company details)
- aslewofmice 13y agoJudging by the pixels on their site, they likely used Google AdWords remarketing: http://www.google.com/analytics/features/remarketing.html http://www.google.com/analytics/features/remarketing.html If you used the same computer from work that you used at home, you were cookied from work when you initially visited the site. Then when you were browsing the internet at home, the ad that was served recognized your cookie ID as the same visitor who visited the site and they can purchase that impression and serve their ad.