To wonder how they got my email?

[JBJ]

I get how cookies work, and that the Better Bathrooms adverts that keep popping up everywhere are directly related to me looking at bathroom suites yesterday online, but I looked, briefly, on the Victorian Plumbing website, couldn't find what I was looking for, and came off their site. Within minutes, I had an email from them with offers relating to what I was looking at. I have never shopped with them before, never given them my email address etc.

Coincidence or is Big Brother really watching closer than I thought?

My mum was looking at a furniture shop once and now we get emails from them daily, she swears she didn't sign up to it or make an account with them and given that she doesn't actually know her email address (I handle all the internet shopping stuff for her) I can't see how she could have accidentally signed up, so it's very odd, so I don't have the answer but have had the same thing happen.

Some websites use tracking cookies, they cn see other cookies created during your active session, so if you had logged in to your email account in the same session, they would get the cookie with your info, i do beleive. I my be wrong but that's how i understood it to work, it is effectively spying on you yes.

Huh. I really don't know.

Do you browse logged in to Google or anything? Mine automatically logs in. I'm wondering if there's something in a cookie somewhere that says where the traffic has come from (standard analytics) and including your Google ID? Is it a Google email?

I personally use firefox with the "do not track" add on, and also un tick the box in my browser settings to track what sites i go on. You could try only using incognito mode on the chrome browser, or the "start private session" option every time you use firefox. I dont use any other browsers so no idea about those.

My ghostery add on is telling me it is currently finding and blocking 5 different trackers on Mn.

You might of given your email address to someone who is affiliated or partnered with them (sometimes by not unticking the don't contact me with marketing info guff) they wouldn't of been able to get your email address just from browsing the website alone but through a combo of other factors such as ad tracking, cookies and partner networks they might of been able to identify you.

They could have bought a database of potential customers, when you browse their site they'd know and marketing automation starts a campaign of emails.

I had this a lot with companies associated with My Voucher Codes (only one of the emails acknowledged the link). So far as I can tell I'd gone to nab a voucher code for some restaurant or other and put my email address in. Then I'd later gone on to a load of (coincidentally) bathroom sites looking for a loo seat. I got a similar email a few hours later.

It is a bit terrifying!

My email account is yahoo so not associated with google. My email is logged in through the mail app on my phone so not physically logged in for months. I find it quite disturbing that companies can pick up so much information just from browsing their website!

You can use throwaway email addresses when signing up to stuff, that will cut down on this type of spam as they will of probably got it off a partner or affiliate site that you willl of signed up to in the past as they can't get your email from just pure browsing

Just had another email off them and scrolled to the bottom and there's a bit saying "understand why you received this email" with a link to this page:

emailprivacy.criteo.com/gb/opt-out.html?q=68a0d9f318e938050809c068f777d134deb204b7163cb5a7a6fbdbb70d38c7849e1a601ff20841e4532c3c633b84e684&uuid=23da7ef1-8249-4a6b-85c0-074877523430

Still can't say I altogether understand it if I'm honest but I've opted out now!

Google has recently changed its terms and conditions and as such has the ability to share your browsing history and scanned content of gmail with online marketers. Depending on how much info you have given google and how much the company pay google for the data, they are able to target you with ads online, email you and in some instances call you up. This will explain the cases above where people have received email marketing.

When you log onto a website (eg this one?) and register your yahoo account as your email address, that will get potentially stored in a cookie that is run by a third party marketing company (criteo, according to your link above) that partners with this site.

When you then visit another site that also partners with the marketing company, that marketing company can then send you an email on behalf of the other site.

My dbro told me that if you had Gmail you can use a symbol (can't remember which one- usefully - to insert anything you like and it comes to your email but with the insert included - so when giving your email to a company say mumsnet and I entered my email as maddenig+mumsnet+@Gmail. Com it would arrive in my email but still include the name mumsnet so then I would know that the email address had been supplied by mumsnet (not sure in the symbol but it's something like that)

I deal with a lot of this sort of stuff for my job and that website is saying this:

• you previously signed up for promo emails somewhere (nothing to do with Victoria plum)
• your email was placed in a big database of people signed up
• Victoria plum pay Criteo to scan this database and match anyone who looked at their site with someone who signed up to the database
• you get emails

I suggest you delete your cookies and then put a do not track or just unsubscribe when you get emails like this.