How does Google know what I bought at the store?

[farmerjohn1324]

I was surfing a website on my phone and ad came up from Home Depot and it highlighted 4 products that I recently purchased or viewed.

One of them was a light bulb that only lights up when it's dark outside.

This is an item I purchased in store with a debit card and never viewed on my phone.

It also had a few other items that I purchased in store and even one that I didn't even purchase, but I just asked one of the workers about, but I think I looked at that one on the Internet once.

I'm assuming this is Google's AdSense or AdWords program?

 

[Cromewell]

If you view the product pages before buying it they know you were looking at it. They track a lot of data and use it to tailor advertising.

 

[farmerjohn1324]

If you view the product pages before buying it they know you were looking at it. They track a lot of data and use it to tailor advertising.

I didn't view product pages of the light bulb. There was nothing "online" about that purchase at all.

 

[beers]

Did you view it from other computers on your network? They do a lot of directed advertisements based on IP as well.

We get a lot of adsense ads at work like that since we overload on a single internet IP for general web traffic.

 

[aldan]

so you purchased it in store?did they ask for any personal info at the till?ie email,etc.

 

[farmerjohn1324]

Did you view it from other computers on your network? They do a lot of directed advertisements based on IP as well.

We get a lot of adsense ads at work like that since we overload on a single internet IP for general web traffic.

I suppose it's possible that I searched it on my phone and just don't remember.

 

[farmerjohn1324]

so you purchased it in store?did they ask for any personal info at the till?ie email,etc.

No I did self check-out.

 

[Agent Smith]

There are many, many ways to track your purchase activities besides other things. Primary vector is by cookies. Then there is HTML5 local storage. There are also certain personal markers that your browser has. With a smartphone it's exceptionally difficult to control all this crap. If your using Firefox, go to its options and select clear browser data on exit. You can also clear data in Chrome via its settings as well. You might want to look into something mentioned here: https://android.gadgethacks.com/how...pps-without-root-extra-battery-drain-0174614/

Edit-

You might want to install the Ccleaner App. It's fairly good at getting rid of cookies and Temp files. On the HTML5 storage front, I'll have to do some research on that for a phone. What phone and browser do you use?

As a test, check this out. http://sharonminsuk.com/blog/2011/0...fect-on-html5-localstorage-or-sessionstorage/

Here's a guide but it's for desktops: https://mid.as/kb/article/00103