Coincidence, Paranoia or is someone reading my emails?

[Sleep404]

Today, I sent my family a short video of my 6mth ds crawling and shortly after I received an email from a high street shoe shop with the subject, "first shoes for your crawling boy".
I have never signed up with this company and ds has only been crawling 2 days, so I'm a bit .

Did you sign up with Bounty, or something similar? They would know how old your baby is, and thus his likely development.

PS crawling babies don't need shoes.

Yes, but the email is from Clarks and I always tick the box to say do not share my details with other cos.

What was the subject line of your email? I'm not an expert but don't companies pick up on stuff like that?

You may not have ticked the right box, in your immediate postnatal haze. It's far more likely Bounty have sold your details to Clarkes, than that your email is being monitored by a shoe company, honest.

'They' do pick up on key words in your emails and then you get relevant adverts next to your email.

So yes, someone or at least some computer program, is reading your emails.

I got exactly the same email today from Clarks!

Cookies collect your data and track you online then send targeted adverts etc

We need to test it out, send yourself emails about pombears and mooncups and see what response you get

Iborolass. I have only recently learned what a mooncup is , but what is a pombear

It's the wonderful world of cookies. They've picked up key words in your text (when I say "they", I mean the mystical forces, not an actual person) - presumably you typed "here's DD crawling!" or suchlike. It is worryingly spooky - happens to me a lot.

Pombears are a type of crisp/snack, totally innocuous but famous on mumsnet after a thread about them. I don't know if the thread still exists but the snack has become part of MN folklore.

Go on, send yourself a email, we need to know if Big Brother is watching

Cookies. Its why when you look at a hideous dress on Reiss you find it being advertised on every web page you visit for the next week.

And about not knowing Pombears!!! Google.

I got the same email today. My boy is not yet crawling so no sneaky reading.

I think Bounty are the culprits. Or one of the other million baby sites I appear to have signed up to during my pregnancy :)

Right, email sent with the heading mooncups and pombears. That should confuse the dastardly computer if it is indeed watching.

I'm definitely not emailing anyone about Viagra or Russian brides but I get plenty of those emails in my inbox.

Cookies will only affect the ads you see - they don't make enough information available to third parties for them to send you e-mails, and the cost and time involved in doing so would be prohibitive anyway. This is just a coincidence.

Bounty will have done it most likely. Especially if the form in hospital was filled out by a rep. Expect years of spam.

When I had DS2 15.5 years ago, I deliberately mis-spelt our surname and ticked the no junk mail box on the bounty form .We are still getting junk with the misspelt surname

Yep xylem the bounty rep misspelled my name so I know exactly what spam is down to them. Three house moves later it's finally died down but sheesh... Fecking millions of it.

It's not Bounty, its the Registrar. Government sell your information all the time.

My mum signed up to the cow and gate club with a false edd, because she wanted the free cuddly cow. She forgot to tick the box requesting that they don't send her loads of shit, and she got emails telling her about her child's progress for ages! I think it stopped eventually, I assume because the company assumed the baby was too old for formula

"The Registrar" doesn't know my email address.

I had something similar once that creeped me out. I went to Starbucks for the first time in literally four or five years. I'm sat there drinking my hot chocolate and get a text from O2 offering me vouchers for Starbucks. I paid in cash, nothing technological. Do they track us now in some way??

Old lady, ya think?

They can identify the location of your mobile phone......