Title: Apropos of the current discussion about dropping Google advertising [1], I&#x27;d appreciate HN&#x27;s thoughts on how a very particular product was targeted at me yesterday: a semi-obscure muscial instrument (which I won&#x27;t name, my paranoia is already piqued).<p>Yesterday morning at home I Googled the instrument, the name of which I didn&#x27;t actually know but Google came to the rescue. I browsed Google Shopping [2] but didn&#x27;t purchase one.<p>Later I went into work where Facebook displayed an ad for the instrument in its &quot;sponsored&quot; section and an inline &quot;suggested post&quot; for a manufacturer.<p>My home and work computers and networks are completely different. I typically use incognito mode and &quot;do not track&quot; in Firefox or Chrome. I sign out of all social media and Gmail. Yesterday I was working in a large building with tens of people all using wifi used by hundreds of people across several buildings.<p>I assume no outright nefarious activity, such as an illicit pipe of potential customer IDs between Fb and Google.<p>The best I can theorise is that I had an open Fb window at home, and one of the instrument manufacturers&#x27; websites had an embedded Facebook like button or similar tracker, and they are running targeted ads on Fb. But is this direct-to-an-individual targetting even possible on Fb? Perhaps the obscurity of the instrument meant that I was very likely to see an ad, and very likely to notice it.<p>I typically close Fb when I&#x27;m not using it, so this doesn&#x27;t immediately feel like what happened. I&#x27;ll be doubly-sure to close and log-out Fb now.<p>I can&#x27;t think of other ways that my Google activity could get to Fb. Browser fingerprinting, cellphone location etc would allow Fb to understand my location, but I can&#x27;t see how they&#x27;d match this against Google activity.<p>I&#x27;d be very interested to read how this is, or could be, achieved.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14094083<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;shopping
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