Viewing post #1044788 by sooby

RickCorey said:A friend recently sent a private email (regular email, not TreeMail). She tlaked about a procudt in that PRIVATE EMAIL.

She never Googled, searched, or shopped for it. Just named it in a "PRIVATE" email.

Started getting ads on many websites for that product.

Google, Hotmail, or someone HAD TO have read that email and listed her as worth spamming.

She may have accidentally clicked on something that permitted this, but never to her knowledge.

Gmail automatically scans for keywords resulting in targeted ads. You can read about it in this Google page:

https://support.google.com/mai...

See also:
http://www.reuters.com/article...

This latter is dated 2014 and I don't know if anything has changed since then.

Websites can also detect where you are (unless, I presume, you're using anonymous surfing) - I read a British newspaper online but the ads are always Canadian!