I remember aroundca decade ago I think it was a Supreme Court Justice who “Does not know the difference between email and a pager”. ...okay one: pagers haven’t used since “Menace II Society” was in theatres. And two: the people who have the final word on the very laws and foundations of the country are THIS ignorant to technology?
A few days ago I checked out a link @binx bolling posted in the gardening thread, and it was really interesting. (Like I might have a new hobby next season kinda interesting.) Except what was weird is, I looked at that link on my phone, and now on my laptop, on my FB I'm getting advertisements from places with heirloom tomatoes and exotic vegetable seed websites. The phone is apple vs the laptop is windows, and as far as I know the only thing the two share is my connection to iTunes. (I know, famous last words, "as far as I know") Can someone explain this to me? I'm a little weirded out.
When you log into facebook it drops a lil ol' piece of data on your browser called a cookie. When you go to this e-commerce site, the site has included code that facebook provides which lets it access that cookie, and then later tell Facebook "hey, try to sell our bomb ass tomatoes to whoever this cookie belongs to" and Facebook dutifully puts ads in your face for a nominal fee. That's one way to do it, there are others. The long and short of it is that facebook tries to fingerprint you in some way, such that things you later touch can report back to facebook that {your fingerprint} touched it. Fingerprints can be anything that would remain constant between two things Facebook is trying to link together. IP address, device identifiers like MAC address/Android ID/UDID, email (if they can get it), and probably more complex and esoteric ones that I'm not aware of.