How does my Comcast cable know what I like?

[Briana Scott]

This might be a stupid question but..is Comcast connected to google or something? I have noticed these things before but, this was just a creepy example. I had went to Walmart and bought some organic eyedrops, not a popular brand at all, never saw or herd or it. I liked them, and so I went on amazon to write a review for them, and a couple days later I see a commercial for the same brand eyedrops. I didn't even use google I just went to find them on amazon and now I am seeing ads for them on tv. How do they know these things?

[Knight A]

Hello Briana,

A lot of large Telecommunication Companies (Incl. Comcast, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Etc) use services like Google's AdSense, which helps targeted ad placement. However there is always the possibility that the advertisement you saw was purely coincidental and was not targeting you specifically.

Also please note that Google's AdSense is not the only intelligent advertisement targeting service that these companies use. The world of Ad Placement and information sharing is very technical and sophisticated.

Hope I helped,

Knight A

[Isabel]

That's adware and tracking cookies - every time you look for something online, the site you visit saves that information and sends it to your browser and that information is used to show ads related to your searches.

You can change your browser's privacy setting and remove permission to use cookies - some sites won't allow you to visit unless they can leave cookies. The ads usually disappear in a day or two - it is quite an annoyance but one learns to live with it or make changes so you don't have to see them. I also clean my browser history and cache regularly to remove the searches.

Here's some info on cookies - http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Inte...ookies.asp
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#...8Sg4W6-djY