Getting Weird Email Ads From Someone Obviously Using Big Data to Track Your Interests

Have you ever surfed around the Internet and noted that there were ads following you, ads having to do with what you had looked up previously perhaps at an e-commerce site? It seems a little spooky, when you get stalked by Internet advertising. But that's not the only spooky thing going on. If you are pretty in tune with the types of e-mails that you get every day, perhaps you are not surprised that big data is also tracking you, and that they have an army of folks using this information, along with personal contacts and personalized marketing to get you to buy their products.

Human sleuths being used by marketing companies to personally send emails to potential buyers who look up the buyer's email address after scouring the social networks for matches of interests and the needs of the marketing company's clients, these sleuths are then paid a small stipend commission when products are bought through the email they send out. Home based workers working for themselves engage in these endeavors to make money.

If you doubt what I'm saying check your own e-mail box some time and consider what you've previously looked at online, and what is popping up, the kind of people who are contacting you out of the blue. It is possible that they are getting a commission if they refer you to a product and you buy something. Often they will put a link in the actual e-mail, and when you click on it, it goes to an e-commerce site page, which also denotes where that click came from, and therefore it pays out a commission to the individual who contacted you and sent you to that website.

Now then consider this, a website is using cookies to find out who you are, then giving that information to someone to look you up on the social networks, get your e-mail address, and contact you. If you buy something they get paid. However this is problematic because they are contacting you perhaps under false pretense, promoting a product through a personal referral without notifying you that they get a commission. In many regards one could consider that a very blurry line perhaps under the heading of manipulative marketing and advertising.

The Federal Trade Commission might call this a "Shrill" tactic, and in reality that's about what it is, do you see my point? Why not keep an eye out for yourself, and when it happens to you then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe you can get to the bottom of it. Please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Internet Safety Topics. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/

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