Quote:
Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby
Sounds to me like his settings need to be changed. If you set your cell phone to "check in" (location services), you're giving those locations permission to a) know that you're there and b) remind you to come back. If you don't want that to happen, you have to set your privacy settings to prevent it. I have -never- had an advertisement targeted for me from local businesses that I didn't intentionally sign up to receive.
I do get random spam from strangers, but that's because the person who had this phone number before I signed up for the cellular service was of dubious moral fiber (opportunities to "date" strangers, offers for loans, collection notices, etc etc). But they're all looking for Simone, and I'm not Simone. She's the one who had the phone number before it was assigned to me (yes, phone numbers get recycled).
In any case, it's nothing the stores and businesses are "doing" actively. They have their ads out and available, and those ads will automatically tag you if you've set your cell phone up to receive them. Turn off that feature, and you won't get the ads anymore.
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Well, a couple of points. You are being tracked. PERIOD. I guarantee if you purchase something (almost anything) online you will start seeing ads on websites advertising those items. There are NO settings that will prevent that.
Where you get emails from is more complex, and you can certainly set settings to cut down on letting your email address out, but there are places online that in order to do business (like our vet office, bank, Facebook, Twitter, etc) that require you to give them your email address. Those businesses can/do sell your email address. Many give you the option to not sell or distribute it, but not all.
And even if the site you are doing business with promises to not distribute your email address - sites are hacked daily - every single day, and sometimes very large numbers of accounts are compromised. That results in YOUR email address being circulated on the "dark web" and being sold to people, who then validate that your address is valid and active and in turn then sell it at a premium to advertising companies.
And I see you qualified your statement with "local" businesses. A lot of so-called "local" businesses are not local. And second, companies advertise on the internet. Almost NONE of them do it themselves. They simply provide ad content to an advertising company and pay some amount per "hit". A hit being someone responds, either by clicking an email, or visiting a targeted IP address, or many other ways.
I expect your email service provider is doing some amount of spam blocking for you.