How Websites Know Your Email Address the First Time You Visit 184
An anonymous reader writes "Darren Nix works for 42Floors, a business that uses its website to help people find office space. He recently received a marketing email for a service that offered to identify visitors to his website. After squeezing some information out of the marketer and playing around with a demo account, he now explains exactly how sketchy companies track your presence across multiple websites. The marketer offered to provide Nix with 'tracking code that would sit in your web site' which would 'grab a few key pieces of data from each visitor.' This includes IP addresses and search engine data. The marketer's company would then automatically analyze the data to try to identify the user and send back whatever personal information they've collected on that user from different websites. Thus, it's entirely possible for a site to know your name, email address, and company on your very first visit, and without any interaction on your part. Nix writes, 'A real-world analogue would be this scenario: You drive to Home Depot and walk in. Closed-circuit cameras match your face against a database of every shopper that has used a credit card at Walmart or Target and identifies you by name, address, and phone. If you happen to walk out the front door without buying anything your phone buzzes with a text message from Home Depot offering you a 10% discount good for the next hour. Farfetched? I don't think so. ... All the necessary pieces already exist, they just haven't been combined yet.'"
Re:Tor (Score:5, Funny)
>> hospital courtesy phone
Get 20% of bedpans for the next 3 days at webpan.com.
Re:Tor (Score:5, Funny)
I know that you're not a girl... ;-)
Re:10% ? Great (Score:3, Funny)
Interesting.... Menards gave me a 25% discount when I showed them your army discharge papers.
Re:10% ? Great (Score:5, Funny)
Did they give you a 20% discount because you joined the army, or because you left?
Re:10% ? Great (Score:2, Funny)
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Unrelated to this thread - but relevant to the signature:
If you turn off your refrigerator, it is your food that goes green :-)
Re:Maybe.... (Score:4, Funny)
make it 20% and I'll walk back into the store. Yes I'm a price whore.
It can get so much worse!
*Buzz*
Buy at least $200 in drapes for your wife in the next hour, or we text her the log of your visits to sexycoeds.com
(1 hour later) *Buzz*
Buy $400 of additional merchandise or we make a post on your facebook page about your love for gay tentacle porn. Thank you so much for Liking us earlier! We couldn't do it without you.
Re:Tor (Score:2, Funny)
What on earth am I going to do with one fifth of a bedpan? I bet it leaks.