Coincidence? or is Willy Wonka Stalking Me?

[flourgirl]

I was helping my little guy on the computer today because he wanted to play a willy wonka game that he used to play a long time ago - probably the last time we visited the Wonka site was over a year ago. So we go to the wonka site - where we were presented with an advertisement for some new candy they must have come out with recently. The games were no longer there, so we swiftly exited the site.

A couple of hours later I go to Shop-Rite and out pops a coupon at the register for Willy Wonka candy - for the exact same product that was also advertised on their site today. The ONLY coupon I received today too.

In the first place, I hardly ever get coupons from Shop-Rite because I don't buy that many processed foods etc. And I almost never get any for candy - and have never once in all the years I have shopped at this store (which is about 16 yrs now) recieved a coupon that I know of for Willy Wonka candy.

Is it just me or is that too much of a coincidence? I mean, I know there's almost no such thing as privacy anymore & my expectations in that regard are, sadly, rather low. But still, this just struck me as really creepy and just pisses me off. I'm no computer expert though - is it even possible that my travels online could have been connected that quickly to my shopping trip at the grocery store? (I do use a customer rewards card....)

[almond9090]

Hi,

I don't think you are being paranoid, but it was probably a coincidence. If you have ever bought candy at that store, it was probably enough to trigger the willy wonka coupon.

If you visit a website, they will see your ip address, but that is not enough to uniquely identify you, because the ip address belongs to your ISP provider, and you get slightly different ones randomly assigned to you. If you have previously registered at a website, then they will have access to any info you have volunteered, because it will be stored in a cookie on your computer. You can delete cookies via your web browser if you are worried about that.

The ability to make the connection between any voluntary personal information divulged in cyberspace and other sources such as store incentive cards does exist, though. There are information brokerage companies, like ChoicePoint, that could probably write out a dossier on your personal life that would shock you in its level of detail, but so far they haven't noticeably abused that capability for two reasons:
1) The information is so valuable, they won't release it without a dear fee, and it probably isn't feasible for a marketing/advertising campaign to pay a high fee for a broad consumer base.
2) There is a risk of abuse of the information and a liability issue if part of the information is mistaken. When the use of this connected information becomes more prevalent, and it will, the public will demand regulation on a similar level as is currently done with financial credit records. For now it is more profitable for companies like ChoicePoint to guard the info and stay below the radar in terms of government regulation, although hacking incidents sometimes throw the spotlight on them ( see this story from over 4 years ago: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7024899/ ).

In the information age, personal info is like gold, and anytime you give out personal information, you have to decide if you are getting a fair value return on that info. Often, online access to things like games and contests are a cheap way to gather data without having to pay to much for it. Grocery store incentive cards give identifiable benefits via discounts, but the amount if probably a pittance compared to the value of the consumer info gathered. The only way to truly opt out is to establish a sham online identity, and then to pay cash for day-to-day purchases and forego any discounts. But by now there is probably so much info about you out there, it is probably too late to alter your consumer profile. The one saving grace is that most people don't consider their behavior to be deviant as part of a large statistical sample, so we shrug off the harm if somebody is keeping track of our free behavior. All personal info is equally valuable, and there is no human judgement applied. For example, a mom buying her kids frozen pizza for dinner every night for a week might not want that fact to be advertised, but there is no crime in it, and getting a "buy 4 get 1 free" coupon for frozen pizza might be helpful. The machine printing that coupon and the IT infrastructure behind it doesn't raise an eyebrow at her buying habits.

Sorry for the overly long answer, but it is an issue I have thought about. Your experience might benefit others, so if you like, you can post it on answers.yahoo.com and get a larger audience to notice, and hopefully benefit from your experience. You are welcome to connect to me there as "Steve Polychronopolous".

Best regards,
Mark

[flourgirl]

Thank you so much for your reply! I knew about some of this but your very informative answer filled in a lot of blanks for me.

For example, I knew about the reason why stores offer customer rewards cards - but I have to admit that I never thought that much about why a company like Wonka would offer games etc. (Although I've always been wary about signing up for access to too much stuff on-line just on general principal.)

It must have been a coincidence because I regularly delete cookies and I hadn't logged into the site either. A little weird though...