How did Amazon know that I'm a medical student?

Stompbox

Not sure if this is the right forum for this but here goes! I use Amazon, quite infrequently mind you, mainly to purchase games or DVD's. Strangely, I received an email today from them asking me 'Are you looking for something in our Science & Nature Books store? If so, you might be interested in these items.' The items all appeared under the category 'Medical Finals: Short Cases with Structured Answers'. Not once have I browsed for products of a medical nature on Amazon so it concerns me that they have access to this kind of information. Anyone know how they've done this?

BrianD

Were you on a medical site before you browsed Amazon?

http://www.ehow.com/how_5184083_rid-amazon-tracking-cookies.html

28064212

BrianD wrote: »

Were you on a medical site before you browsed Amazon?

http://www.ehow.com/how_5184083_rid-amazon-tracking-cookies.html

Amazon can't access other sites' cookies, only cookies they put on your computer themselves. Although if you clicked on a link to Amazon from a medical site, they could have that information

OP, is your amazon email login a college address by any chance? There could be a lot of people from that college looking for medical stuff at the moment. What's your Facebook (or other social network's) privacy settings like? Do you use the same email address? If you google search your name or email address, do you get anything linked to medicine?

It's not difficult for a company with the resources of Amazon to link the information you've given them with information publically available

Stompbox

28064212 wrote: »

OP, is your amazon email login a college address by any chance?

Ah, there we go! Never knew they were capable of this, cheers for the replies.

blatantrereg

I noticed that targetted advertising seems to be becoming uncomfortably specific and accurate recently. Apart from a Google ad inviting me to hire a private jet. Wrong demographic there really.