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Comment by r721 | Hacker News Reader

This all is actually puzzling, because ghostery should theoretically protect you even if Safari doesn't block all third-party cookies. You can try to switch to uBlock which is similar in functionality.

Are you sure you don't have some shady/little-known extension/plugin/app? Those can share browsing history with advertisers. Some freeware firewalls/antiviruses can too (just googled an example: "AVG, the Czech antivirus company, has announced a new privacy policy in which it boldly and openly admits it will collect user details and sell them to online advertisers for the purpose of continuing to fund its freemium-based products. This new privacy policy is slated to come into effect starting October 15.").

Maybe try to communicate with someone from Criteo (not support, but somebody higher) and describe your weird case?

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I went to confirm that I only had the three extensions (ad block, ad block plus, and ghostery) and when I clicked into the ghostery settings, it turns out that none of the trackers were selected to be blocked!!! Not sure how long it was like that, or how, but it's fixed now. Do you think this explains how they got my personal email address? I am still not seeing the connection, but there are obviously many things I don't understand about this space.

I don't quite understand how Safari's third-party cookie blocking works :( According to the link I posted it's more relaxed than Chrome/Firefox's third-party cookie blocking, so some cookies are allowed. But how is that decided?

Theoretical possibility then:

You still use that personal email in the same browser? That means you visit Yahoo website, which can set some cookies identifying you, including third-party ones (advertising/tracking), if those are not blocked by Safari. The same tracking cookies can be used by Tradesy, so that site can tie your visit to your Yahoo identity.

I think you solved this!

I actually use the Apple mail client, so I get my spam mail and my personal mail in the same interface. My angry deleting of cookies and web history following the Criteo email would have cleared any log ins, but I haven't used the yahoo mail web interface for many years. However!! I remember going to flickr briefly about a month ago, and since it is a yahoo service, it would have been connected to my personal yahoo ID/email address (correct?). It's possible that I never logged out, so could it have mined my address that way? I am still incredulous and outraged that Criteo could use this to mine my address and spam me, but this could be how they got my personal email/yahoo ID.

Thank you so much for your insightful comments and for "investigating" with me! Even though this is still somewhat mysterious, I've learned from this and also discovered my ghostery settings were off which was very valuable. Now I just have to figure out how to block Criteo and similar invasive species. I may have to go off the grid after all.

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