Used to think tracking cookies were harmless. Now I run a blocker everywhere.

Was at a coffee shop in Portland last Tuesday. Opened my laptop to finish some work. Noticed ads for that exact coffee shop on my Instagram 10 minutes later. Realized my phone had connected to their wifi. That creeped me out enough to install a tracker blocker on all my devices. Has anyone else had a moment where targeted ads got too specific?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer_perry7725d ago

Read this article about how some retail stores use phone tracking to figure out how long you stand in front of certain displays. Makes you wonder what other stuff they're quietly collecting without telling you.

jamie79425d ago

Yeah, that wifi tracking is real. I had a similar thing happen at a Target where I walked past the electronics section and got a push notification for a sale on headphones I looked at online the night before. What spooked me more was reading that stores can track your physical movements in the store using your phone's MAC address without you ever connecting to their wifi. Best fix I found is turning off wifi and bluetooth when you're out, not just disconnecting. Also running a DNS level blocker like NextDNS on my phone catches a lot of the tracking before it even starts.