[TriLUG] Website Marketing question

[Chris Merrill]

I suspect it worked something like this:

The site he visited (siteX) was affiliated with an ad-click tracking company.  Let's say,
for illustration purposes, it was adclick.com.  The page for siteX embeds a URL that goes to
adclick.com.  The browser will pass along the cookies it has stored for adclick.com, along
with the requeest for the resource (typically an image or just a bit
of javascript/css) as part of the rendering of the page from siteX.  When adclick.com
gets that cookie, it can then correlate that with any other site you have visited from
it's stable of partners...let's call those site1-N. If he had ever entered personal
information into any of those sites, it could now (in theory) be correlated with his
visit to this site.  SiteX could now get that information from adclick.com and send out
the e-mail you have described.

This technique is fairly common, but the scope of information it can gather is limited
by the size of the network of affiliated companies. It is sometimes called a "web beacon".



On 5/15/2012 11:59 AM, Brian McCullough wrote:
> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:36:15AM -0400, Michael Kimsal wrote:
>> My first thought would be that he visited the site via a link someone gave
>> him, not directly by typing in the address.  If so, the link probably had
>> his info coded in it someplace.  Had he signed up at any vendors at a
>> conference lately?  They'll have your info there on file and can pass that
>> along to vendors.
> 
> Thank you all for the suggestions.
> 
> I will go back to him and see if any of your scenarios fit.
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, he was impressed by this, and now wants me to do the same
> for his site.
> 
> 
> B-)
> 
> 


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Chris Merrill                           |  Web Performance, Inc.
chris at webperformance.com                |  http://webperformance.com
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