I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

Not coincidence. Not "bank purchase history" shared with google- in most cases banks and credit cards don't know item level detail.

Lots of ways this data flow could happen, at least in the US. Happy to go through specific details I have seen if you want to share more about this, but two high level points

1. Remember that when you purchase something, the data about the purchase is BOTH yours AND the entity from whom you made the purchase. Most of those entities have data sharing agreements of various kinds for all sorts of legitimate business reasons

2. It isn't google who knows about the purchase, and even the advertiser doesn't "know" you made a purchase. Advertising is zillions of two sided marketplaces, with an enormous ecosystem of data packagers and conveyers and linkers, with lots of concern about recency and freshness of data. Your purchase landed some key about you in a bucket that was mixed and repackaged with many other keys that the advertiser knows as "keys recently interested in Voltaren." Some of those keys are related to people who bought it, or who searched for it, or more indirectly who lingered while reading a page with an ad for it...and in most cases are very short lived. So give it a few weeks and many of those buckets of keys will have been completely remade.

Opt out of VISA marketing

https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do

Second, disable GPS, and cellphone tower ID reporting (root needed.) So Google can't correlate you with sales records.

At the moment, there is no way to disable Google AGPS spying on the stock Android.

Third, block Google apps from reading your IMEI/IMSI/serial number, so they can't get AGPS data from your cellphone provider if it sells it.

Better, get a de-Googled ROM

March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb memory-stick attached to the key-chain would be destroyed when being washed. I dried the keys along with the usb-stick, sat down at my table, opened up Facebook only to be greeted by an ad on top about water-proof usb memory sticks. I felt a chill ran down on my spine.

Did you search for "pain" or "arthritis" or "migraine" or something like that? Visit a page devoted to your condition or symptoms? Could be whatever led you to get Voltaren in the first place also led you to issue search queries or visit sites in a way that let Google infer you might be interested in Voltaren.

I suspect all the people putting this claim on the same level as "my phone is listening to me" conspiracy theories are living outside of the USA.

One of the first things I noticed after moving to America was that I was being served ads for oddly specific in-store purchases. I checked my bank's terms and discovered that, sure enough, they were sharing my transaction history with "non-affiliates" so that they could market to me.

From memory, they did offer opt-out methods for limiting the amount of data that they shared. Maybe you could see if your bank offers the same?

Tangentially related, for the first time ever I saw Gmail losing its anti-spam game. We were doing some home-modeling and we went to Home Depot sometime early this month. And... some entity somehow discovered this. And then all of a sudden I started getting spam emails related to Home Depot's/home rebuilding. The spam emails successfully pass through gmail's filter because they seem to emanate from aol,gmail,hotmail,yahoo etc. email addresses.

Here's an image: https://i.imgur.com/KqIN6oB.png

I'm about as impressed as I am mortified. I thought I had my opsec down, I was using noscript, I use throwaway email addy's where I suspect I'll be spammed.

But I was had too.

This Hecatoncheires entity is getting ever-larger. It knows a lot. It knows me well. I have seen evidence that it knows about the medication I take, the insecurities I have, my half-baked aspirations and plans. I feel defeated at times when I see its knowledge of me manifested in the ads I am shown, I feel confronted because at the time of this writing I don't know where this leak occurred, I don't know at what vector exactly I'm being had.

It might be that you are just noticing the ads now that you bought the product. I read about similar observations recently. Might be a cousin of frequency illusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfti1

In America, some stores seem to share rewards member information to product companies so they can target their ads on other platforms. For example, I paid for a very specific candy from CVS using my credit card, but used my partner's CVS rewards member number and they got ads on facebook for that candy while I haven't seen a thing.

> How does google know I bought Voltaren?

> Is my bank purchase history shared with google somehow?

Google buys Mastercard (if not more) transactions and ties them to your Android location history.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...

I would like to contribute an anecdote which turned me from a "google is listening" skeptic to someone who turns their phone off as often as possible, especially during any kind of sensitive conversation. I'm one degree removed from this anecdote, but I have no reason to doubt its truth.

A group of friends were on a road trip, driving for several days cross-country. These are university-aged young males, 20-23. None have any interest in starting a family any time soon.

At the beginning of the trip, they agreed (verbally) to test if google was listening by discussing "nappies" intermittently, loudly and jokingly. They would only discuss nappies in person - everyone agreed not to mention this on any digital channel whatsoever, not to look up nappies for any reason, etc. That is, they deliberately excluded nappies from their online lives.

They chose nappies specifically because they're completely irrelevant. None had ever to their knowledge been delivered an ad for nappies. None had ever purchased nappies or any baby product.

Sure enough, end of the trip - ads for nappies.

I would love an explanation more plausible than their phones were listening.

Today I browsed Google from my desktop PC about "Gundam" (the japonese anime) for about 1 hour. Pretty niche topic.

Then when I was done, I closed all browser tabs, I unlocked my smartphone to check Instagram, and the second ads I get is a Gundam ad. I have no idea how my shadow "desktop" ad profile and shadow "mobile" ad profile matched. I share no accounts between my desktop and my smartphone :

  - I use different Google accounts on my phone and desktop (although I occasionally log in one or the other in private tabs)
  - The internet connections are different : 4G for phone, fiber for desktop
  - On desktop, I use Chromium with Ad block Plus
  - I do not use facebook nor instagram on my desktop PC

So how the f. did Instagram know about my Gundam browsing on desktop.

This must stop.

Because you aren't using an adblocker. Seriously, you should really consider uBlock Origin or similar. Google doesn't honor Do Not Track, so you should feel no obligation to honor their desire for you to look at their ads.

I have no sources at all, but my memory tells me that I've read that Visa, Mastercard and similar sell "anonymous" transaction info and that Google is their customer. I've been living under the assumption that Google could de-anonymize practically all that transaction info when they match it up to all their other info they track us with. Maybe I'm wrong?

Usually when this sort of thing happens someone searched for something or a related term in the previous 30 days (typical retention period in “hot” storage for such features) and doesn’t remember doing the search.

Most people, myself included, do so many searches so casually that we don’t remember doing it much of the time.

Source: FB Ads and IG ranking for 7 years.

Did you take your phone with you to the chemist, and did it have GPS or Wi-Fi enabled? That wouldn’t explain the exact match but the product category, and choosing Voltaren feels like a pretty plausible coincidence given the category.

Don't you use an adblocker? I could be being targeted with all sorts of stuff but I'd never know.

As others have explained, this is most likely your credit card purchasing data being sold, by your credit card issuer, to any interested party willing to pay for it. Yes, the data sold includes detailed product information linked to your identity.

What I'd like to know is if the same happens when I pay with Apple Card, or when I use Apple Play with, say, a VISA card?

I see Voltaren ads a lot and I mean really a ton since about two or three months. I purge my browser sessions daily and I notice that they reliably come after watching fitness videos (Training Pal and similar). I guess they target people with sports injuries.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/google-tracking-cred... -- that's from a quick Google search. Even though the article says "secretly" etc...there is really no conspiracy theory-like secret to this and it's well-known that everyone sells data to whomever they can make money from. It's more like what user jonahbenton has explained in another comment. The makers of Voltaren are able to broadly advertise to anyone who might be interested in Voltaren -- they don't know specific users. But Google (or any other advertising provider) has access to info on who might be interested in Voltaren at present -- which might be decided based on various factors including your credit-card purchase data. If Google does wants to dig down, they probably can use various info to drill down to you specifically and that is what makes people rightly uncomfortable, but what I am trying to say is that in general they are not specifically targeting you for the ad -- but a broad category/bucket of "people who might be interested in Voltaren at present". One might say it is the same thing...

I guarantee this type of tracking is going. And I'm sure that the marketing industry is aware that these tactics are running on borrowed time. Once the mechanics of how it's being done are collated by EFF type activists it will turn into a political narrative and action will be taken. Right now people are too confused by their strange experiences, doubting themselves and swayed by less outlandish alternative explanations. Sometimes the hooves you hear are in fact zebras not horses.

The players in the surveillance ecosystem have shaped themselves into narrow forms that allow for plausible deniability. App makers, device makers, the monetization SDK providers, the re-targeting platforms with their Orwellian forecasting & optimization calculations and especially the data brokers each play their part in a division of labor as powerful as Adam Smith's pin factory.

The pushback will come from the EU in my opinion. The U.S Big Tech file is going to be taken up with tackling the monopoly power of platforms for the next few years.

In the meantime beware of free apps on your phone and look up how to opt out of marketing on your smart TV. Pay for sensitive items with cash. If your phone is Android use the Firefox browser with the uBlock Origin plugin.

Prescription data, at least in the US, is not very private. Many entities know that you met a doctor and they know when the doctor prescribes. Between PBMs, subrogation, wholesalers, and other factors, marketers are easily able to de-anonymize your identity for targeting purposes.

In my family’s case, my wife’s hospital admission and prescription was sufficient to correctly identify her as likely 10-12 weeks pregnant. Their confidence in that was sufficient to yield us a Fedex’d box containing congratulations and starter kits of enfamil, on her due date. Since they don’t read your records, just infer from events, they didn’t know that she had miscarried, and nearly died in the process.

I know this, because Enfamil identified the list used to target her, and I bought it for my zip code. I also learned that my neighbor 4 doors down has type 2 diabetes, and has expressed interest in a BMW or Audi at the end of her then-current lease. (She went Audi btw)

When people lecture you about various observational biases, you’re being paranoid, etc, they are full of shit. The marketing machine is way more wired up into everyday life than you can imagine.

It's credit card purchasing data, which is sold and cross linked to your identity for advertising re-targeting.

It is deeply invasive and should be blocked.

It works like this. You go to a store and buy, say, a sexual wellness product. You then get targeted with ads online (search result ads, facebook ads, news media ads, amazon sponsored results etc) for the same product, or something related (let's say something embarrassing that you might not want other people to see). Other users on your same network or IP may also be re-targeted with the same ads.

Credit card data tracking is a levelling up of surveillance capitalism. It is deeply intrusive. Not all card providers participate, but it is a significant source of revenue for them [1]

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90490923/credit-card-companies-a...

[Edit: Removed specific reference to a medication as it likely triggered anti-spam]

It’s probably a coincidence or just the worst advertisers on the planet. Why would I show an ad to someone who literally just bought my thing?

Have you been googling about your symptoms, illnesses or anything else that can have a connection to drugs like Voltaren?

Maybe you saw the commercial unconsciously before, went out and bought it, and then saw it consciously. I‘d bet money on it that this is the case most of the time

I've heard stories like this multiple times. Both on Android and iPhone. I don't believe it's a coincidence. The chemist is probably sharing the time of purchase along with items bought with Google, FB (probably indirectly but data gets there). These services probably have access to your location, either via your phone or via network provider. They try to match. If the likelihood is high enough (e.g. chemist had few customers at that time), show ad.

It's possible they match using location but they might have other data that increases the matching like payment provider which has a lot of your personal data as well as knows your purchased something from that store at that time.

In this thread: people who assume ad targeting systems are sophisticated enough to know what you buy at the chemist, while still stupid enough to recommend something you've already bought.

OP probably googled something related before going out to buy the item :)

Crazy! I read this HN thread on Safari on my mobile that i never use to access Facebook... a few hours later I’m on Facebook on my laptop in Chrome incognito mode, and one of the first ads that shows up is for Voltaren...how in the world?!?

My guess is that you either searched for something (for example) related to a sports injury or some sort of pain, or you where nearby somebody that did it.

Many cases of this are just clustering.

Another option would be if they're integrating something like Close-Up data.

Close-Up is a company that collects prescription data and sells it to different marketing companies. They usually collect what doctors prescribe, so they can tell if pharma marketing efforts are working. I'm not sure how deeply entrenched they are in the US (or how HIPPA compliant they are).

I think that usually these things are actually just a symptom of the fact we see hundreds of ads every day. Most of the time you don't consciously notice them but then, when they trigger some recognition, you do and it feels like a big coincidence - which I find almost as disturbing as the idea that they were somehow watching.

The eerie feeling compounded by the fact that we are sometimes correctly targeted and there's no way to distinguish the two. Zeynep Tufekci writes a lot about the this type of thing if you're interested in it.

How do you know you didn’t see ads for it before? Isn’t it likely you’re only noticing the ads now because you just bought it?

Is it surprising that ads are targeted at someone who actually bought the product? Doesn’t this show that ad targeting works? You just happened to notice the ads after you made the purchase.

What products did you buy that you didn’t see ads for? Which ads did you see that you didn’t end up buying the product?

This is a case of you being aware of Voltaren because you bought it, saw the ads, and are now trying to connect the two.

It's probably just coincidence. This week I was only thinking about something and there was an ad about exactly that product on Facebook, like 5 minutes later. I laughed out loud, since it was impossible.

There were two explanations:

- they are stealing my thoughts with 5G.

- random things are random and I don't remember 99% of the ads where I couldn't correlate them to other events.

(yes, there's a middle ground somewhere that they know the subjects that I'm interested in and sometimes someone throws a bullseye)

Do you know companies actually send data to Google (and Facebook) to target ads?

Its common and help companies target clients with ads on the internet in general (YouTube, sites, etc).

It works like that:

- The Chemist wants to sell things online or physically.

- They pay google for ads for their products on sites related to its business lines or keywords about its niche.

Google then show their ads for people in general, people interested on those subjects or to people visiting sites about those subjects.

Interest is determined by search history and navigation (every google ad in a site (chemist or not) help google know you were there).

Then the chemist want to target past customers with more specific ads (like reminding people of items in theirs carts):

- They send google ads information about clients and past physical or online purchases / interactions.

Google then match the user with its own database and connect the sent data with its own data.

- Now the Chemist benefits from the google (because google can find you online)

- Now other google clients benefit from this data (because now your google hidden profile is more accurate about your interests and habits)

- Now Google benefits from that because it can use the purchase data to hone its models about ad-to-spend.

The chemist also want to pay google a fraction of the purchases if the client saw an ad.

- Google uses information sent in realtime by the Chemist and other companies, model this data and determine which people, sites and subjects have a bigger probability to turn an Ad into a sell.

I have myself done that in the past and Facebook was quite accurate at turning ads into course subscriptions.

I was seeing this happen in our household as well. For now, the only answer I have is using UBlock everywhere + having PiHole up and running. These two really go a long way for at least blocking the creepy ads, but I think we have passed the point of no return when it comes to preventing tracking itself. Everything is being tracked all the time by insanely advanced ad-tech.

The surveillance economy is too profitable for this to change any time soon.

Walmart is rolling out facial recognition across all their stores. Doesn’t matter if you pay cash. Pay with a card once and you’re identified.

I consulted for Axciom and the best way to avoid their reach is to move to a country with good privacy laws or to a country that’s too poor for these big companies to care about.

My money would be on coincidence. How often did you buy something and got irrelevant ads?

I had such a coincidence happen to me once. I saw an ad for a product I've never heard about online... and a short while later, I saw the same ad on non-smart broadcast TV, billboard, in print or some similar place where I could be sure that the ad was not targeted. Had it happened the other way around, I would have doubted it myself, but it was clear that this could not have been anything but coincidence.

Besides that, why would the company behind it spend money on promoting the very product that you already bought? If anything, the fact that you bought it would be used to not show you ads, at least until some time later when you'd be likely to buy another one. (Retargeting frequently gets this wrong because they see the interest but don't get the purchase information.)

Are there credit card companies which do not sell transaction data?

I say "" (turquoise skirt, hand truck) with iphone laying in radius 3m. Later on while browsing the internet with Safari on the device I see ads selling this product. Other than this, Whatsapp is scanning the conversations for keywords and brand names - there is no doubt even.

Why did you buy Voltaren and that's probably your answer.

If you bought Voltaren as a joke though an offline random process ( which is hard to do ) then you might have more evidence it's linked to the sale part.

The other day I watched Mosquito Coast again after 30 years. Afterwards I saw Apple are making a TV series. That's not a coincidence I just have no idea how it happened. It was not simple, a Ad or Article I would have read, it's an interesting premise I always remembered. It was downloaded from the torrents. It was after looking at a movie then director then actor then movies then the decision to watch. But something I don't know what, helped me stop there on the chain of browsing and watch it.

What I find surprising (and even mildly terrifying) is that such anecdotes don't even alarm people in many circles of the society any more. Lots of folks think this is what the future is supposed to look like and are completely ok with it.

I read this HN post. I did not buy Voltaren or search for it anywhere, or chat about it anywhere. I use Twitter a few minutes ago. I see an ad for Voltaren.

Initial Bayesian Conclusion Histogram:

- 33% Voltaren ad push just happens to be underway, and no spying was used

- 33% Google's Android Chrome knew I visited a HN link to today's post about Voltaren, somehow added this fact into my advertising profile, Android Twitter app used it to pick me an ad

- 33% like above, except that since in Android Chrome I'm logged into Twitter, somehow Twitter itself was the upstream source of the interest hint

Google and Facebook both have in-store conversion tracking: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en-G...

https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/help/1150627594978290

Wouldn’t be surprised if this data is used to refine which ad these platforms should show you.

Someone's tech salary was justified to develop (or refractor) a function to automatically crawl a digitally stored purchase history and waste potentially useful ad space on the suggestion of a product that is guaranteed to already be owned by the user.

Then they can put on their curriculum vitae that they worked as a "Googler" even though they added nothing to society (except confusion and paranoia).

Google may even allocate tax write offs because they "filled a seat" among their ranks.

I had a similar super-creepy and definitely not just a co-incidence experience a while back, which I shared on HN[0]. Short summary is that it was almost certainly the result of Google buying my credit card transaction data from Mastercard and using it to personalise my Google news feed.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884687

Curious about which country OP is in and which payment method was used.

I'm in Australia, and find when I pay by credit card, this same thing happens to me where I get ads for medicines related to precription medicine I've just purchased.

When I use cash however, I don't get the ads, so my best bet is that it's the credit card that's used to match the purchase to me in this scenario.

Slightly related fun story from 2014:

[1] http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...

Discussed on HN earlier:

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931

Never knew about the VISA thing most people mention here. That is some wildly impressive tech. I wonder how much google is paying them.

https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Look for activity related to Voltaren (it has a search function)

https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en

Tangential: a while back I bought a very specific cheese from Lidl. And the very same evening I got a Lidl ad for that very cheese on Facebook. I have never signed up as a member, the only things that connect me to that place would be my credit card.

I did bring my Android phone that has got Messenger lite installed, but that's stretching it tbh.

Somewhat related...If anyone shops at Kroger or their owner chains (Fred Meyer, Ralphs, etc) and use their rewards card...know that they sell your data. That use the revenue to subsidize their prices - which is why they are cheaper than other grocery stores.

You can opt out of it, or simply signup for a rewards card and not use your real info.

I think that Android phones can record stuff you say about marketings/ads purposes. Check if this happens for you here https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?pli=1&product=29

I have not done anything Voltaren related and have noticed a bunch of ads. So I think they just did a big ad buy.

If you purchased in the US using a discount card (eg: GoodRx), they get transaction level data from the pharmacy and can use that to retarget / market to you. It’s not PHI / HIPAA protected since it’s not flowing through insurance and is transaction data.

I have on multiple occasions tested talking to the google home without triggering it to see if it's listening.

"I wonder if I should buy X" but I dont actually want X and never search for it. That alone makes google ads start showing me ads about X.

This happens a lot and what I find the strangest thing is that the ads are for things I just bought: travel I just booked, freezer I just bought etc. I do not need anything again that I just bought and so these ads are even of less use than they normally are...

I haven't seen it in other comments, so I'll ask, do you use Gmail? If so, a confirmation email listing Voltaren could give Google all the info they need. I don't know if Google would use your email in this way, but it's feasible.

SaaS idea: a tool that monitors your advertising profile (keys, whatever you want to call it) and gives you the same information that your browser+adtech markets are auctioning about you. Also allows you to delete keys you don't want to share.

I did an afternoon of googling for information on the hospice industry to satisfy my own curiosity. Then I fired up my TV to watch some streaming television. Now I'm getting video ads for hospice services every time I watch TV.

I’m going to guess that the drug store sold your transaction information. Who they sell it to varies from chain to chain, but it’s common practice. For example, CVS in the states sells your purchase data.

If you want to avoid being tracked, use cash.

Did you get a receipt by mail to your gmail, by any chance?

Google analyzes receipts. When I still used gmail, it would automatically add flights to my calendar based exclusively on the receipt sent to my gmail account.

https://www.visa.com.au/legal/privacy-policy-opt-out.html

It could be worse. You could concievably buy Voltaren again soon.

Usually you make a 5-10 year purchase, like a TV or a large kitchen appliance, and they keep showing you ads for the exact same model.

Did you use a rewards/loyalty/points card? Did you google Voltaren before or after the purchase? Did you mention the product name in an FB or IG chat?

You might have “googled” the term or a related term subconsciously some time before you’ve made the purchase. I do this all the time even when I’m purchasing things offline.

If you mentioned it to anyone and they Googled or browsed to it where a Google embed or tracking pixel was present, Google could potentially infer your interest.

Did you pay with cash?

My guess is called Cruxification. Especially if you are not in EU there isn't much you can do (besides usual adblock, firefox, pihole etc...)

Are you sure that you have not done some online research regarding Voltaren, either before or after purchase?

Did you email anyone about it or receive any emails about it?

If so...

Your girlfriend googled it on the home wifi when she saw it in your medicine cabinet and your home wifi is also associated with your devices

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon: you were having ad-blindness until your purchase that brought up to your conscious level the "Voltaren" concept. As you cannot recall the previous cases where you saw the ad because it did not make it into your conscious mind, it seems that the ads started only after your purchase.

Your perception works in 2 modes - bottom-up (signal processing) - and the ad didn't make it through - and top-down (pattern recognition) - exactly the experience you report - you recognise a recent pattern.

> I guess it could just be coincidence?

Could it be? of the billions of items you could be advertised for, why then exactly Voltaren?

Do you have an android phone, by chance?

If they knew you bought this, wouldn't they suppress ads for it? Why market to someone who has already closed the sale?

How do you know it is not just a frequency bias? Just coz you bought the cream, now you notice the ads?

It's simple hygiene: clear out browser data after each session, use private browsing (fwiw), and a VPN.

My guess would be you searched to find the chemist to buy it from or searched for it in some way.

1. You are using Google logged in.

2. You are using a credit card and expecting not to be identified.

Everything else is details.

A housemate might have seen the Voltaren lying around, then Googled for it on your computer.

Everything you don't want to share with the Gaffas: Shutdown your cell, pay in cash.

Did you do searches related to the condition that caused you to be prescribed Voltaren?

My bet would be on “Level 3 credit card data” being sold and insufficiently anonymized

I use cash when I want anonymity. Despite what anyone says, it is still king.

Apps on your smartphone are (or were) listening you.

I guess it could just be coincidence?

Have you ever noticed how you don't seem to see much of X, and then all of a sudden you see one X. And then you can't stop seeing X.

Though, googles probably spying on you.

Please check if you allowed to record voice:)

Huh. Good argument for paying cash.

Maybe you researched it beforehand?

Did you bring an Android phone?

Did you pay with Google Pay?

What phone do you use?

Use cash.