Emma's Diary Facebook targeted notifications

[Weathergirl1]

Just a quick question to see if anyone else has had this?

Firstly I have not signed up to Emma's Diary (or Bounty for that matter) and have no intention of doing so! I have received two notifications on Facebook relating to someone (I don't know) commenting on one of their posts. The only time I normally get these notifications is when it's a post I have previously commented on, and in this case I definitely hadn't. When I clicked the link to the post it was a promoted post. The bottom of the email suggested if I wanted to unsubscribe from these notifications I could, but that link just tooke to an option of unsubscribing to ALL notifications of this type, not just ones from Emma's Diary - so I took to decision to block the page. Today I received another notification from this same post with a different user having commented on the post.

I am really careful about what I sign up to and I even use MN in an incognito browser. The only thing I have done differently recently is register with Mothercare as I bought something from them online and you had to sign up to get a £5 voucher (and they aren't supposed to share my details with any third parties).

Has anyone else had these weird Facebook notifications?

I work in social media and handle a lot of paid promotions - the only way people can get their content in front of you is either through interest/demographic targeting (so they know that you’re pregnant from your browsing history or recently viewed pages and pay for you to see their posts) or through having your email address, for example Mothercare should be able to use your details because you recently signed up, they could add you to a custom audience to encourage you to buy stuff.

Where it gets trickier is the fact that you’re getting notifications about the content, this generally is only possible when you’ve interacted with their page. There isn’t a way for advertisers to send you a notification through Facebook ads at the moment. Have you clicked on a link from them recently or seen any of their other posts?

I have now seen their post because I clicked to see what the notification was about but I hadn't clicked on anything to do with them previously. They're now blocked and I'm still getting notifications about this specific post!

The reason I'm so annoyed by this is that I am specifically avoiding this sort of thing. I haven't posted anything on Facebook at all regarding pregnancy.

It’s crazy how linked together everything is online! I used my works computer to google something the other day & adverts for baby stuff came up. The only link between my work laptop & my personal devices is Amazon. I buy stuff on my lunch break sometimes! But I’ve bought pregnancy tests & ovulation sticks recently from Amazon so somehow google knows!

What’s your worry with adverts? No-one else can see an advert on your Facebook page? Just scroll on & ignore the them! And Emma’s Diary & Bounty aren’t exactly the devil? The little bags you get in Boots were a nice gift.. they don’t seem to be awful companies?!

Bol87 they really aren’t it’s not a gift, it’s marketing and they just want a hold of your details to pass on to others.

@Bol87 It's not an advert I'm seeing (if it was I could block it), it's an actual notification about their post. And I'm still getting them despite blocking their page.

Absolutely agree @guest8989 they are marketing companies who ply people with small samples to obtain personal information.

Go to settings in facebook and find privacy shortcuts.
Go through all the settings and turn off what you can about targeted ads.
It will explain how all sorts of companies can target you via other companies who have your email. You can turn this off. It won't eliminate it completely.
You also can look at your 'interests' which is the info it collects on you based on your browsing history, cookies, stuff you like on fb. There is no way to avoid them collecting this really unless you are prepared to go to a few extremes (setting up a fresh virtual desktop session to browse with, not using google services, using a search engine like duckduckgo).
So if you are not tech savvy easiest is to just periodically remove the data they collect. You can remove the interests on your profile and then it should stop targeting those ads. It will still target ads based on your demographic though, age, location. You could remove all this info from facebook too.
You can also go into google and delete ALL the data they have collected about you. It's fiddly to do but more thorough and permanent. It's not possible to do that cleanly with facebook. When I get fed up of it I create a new Facebook account on a new email and delete my old one from existence.

Oh and just a note that though this wasn't an 'ad' but a friend interaction being highlighted to you, it's still happening because you are targeted based on your interests.

Emma’s Diary & Bounty aren’t exactly the devil? The little bags you get in Boots were a nice gift.. they don’t seem to be awful companies?!

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/12/companies-emmas-diary-pregnant-women-new-mothers

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/12/bounty-fined-400k-sharing-14-million-peoples-data-unlawfully/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45128677

www.mumsnet.com/campaigns/bounty-reps-campaign-index

Emma’s Diary and Bounty are not nice fluffy charities who only exist to give out goody bags. They are businesses who make money by selling the very valuable data of new mothers to marketers. Bounty are also paid by HMRC to distribute the child benefit forms and consequently have access to mothers on postnatal wards.

GDPR should help but they can still gather and use your data if you consent. Be very sure that you know what you are consenting to if you choose to sign up with him.

@tumbletwit it's not friend interactions that I'm getting cone through though - the users whose comments are coming through I have no idea who they are - they aren't friends or even friends of friends.

I'm pretty up on clearing interests on Facebook targeting already. None of my interests have anything in them to suggest these pages would be targeted, and I've not actually seen any ads from Emma's Diary before this notification came through in the first place. This is why I find this whole episode bizarre.