Location-based ads are growing
wsj.com
wsj.com
I remember working on a feature for an ad network in the early 2000s where advertisers were demanding the ability to include the viewers city name in the copy text.
I created a fb page about my missing cat and used my ads credits to promote that page around the area I live. Second day after I did this, I got a phone call from one of my neighbors that she saw the cat and that evening I had my cat back home.
It turns out that my neighbor's daughter was visiting and saw the cat in their backyard. Then she saw the ad on facebook and told her mother to call me.
If there was a way to make all the ads actually display the kind of thing I like, even if it's via some network-specific checkboxes or something like that, I'd gladly disable uMatrix and any ad blocking.
But then I remember the ads with sounds, or the mining ads, or ads that don't even have anything to do with the websites I visit nor the one I'm currently in... no thanks.
Some websites use different ad networks, so ideally I'd like something like that but as a browser setting. For example some predefined list of topics (the same way there's a list of TLDs), and making the browser send a header like "Advertising: 1,20,6,78,9481" and then ad networks would adhere to those categories.
Of course that's way too idealistic and there's no way something like that will ever happen, but if people want me to disable my ad blocker, that's the only way I'd agree to it. Otherwise is an instant "no".
If for example you have some residual information (cookies etc.) on your browser or you've logged in to your account, google will probably continue to show your last location known by it.
Google might even query local devices as you suggested, who knows?
It is really aggresive on getting location data.
I think more likely is that we forget how many ads we're exposed to in a day. The odds of occasional eerie coincidences is high.
But one thing people often overlook with hyper-local geo ads are bluetooth beacons which are tracked at most major retailers these days. Doesn't help that Apple trying to help people use wireless headphones now likes to turn bluetooth on every day (the lock screen bluetooth button defaults to 'off until tomorrow')
unpaired bluetooth and unconnected wifi are gold for anyone wanting to track you around a space.
researchers found that "the overwhelming majority of
Android devices are not implementing the available
randomization capabilities built into the Android OS,"
which makes such Android devices trivial to track.
[...]
Apple, meanwhile, introduced MAC address randomization in
iOS 8, only to break it in iOS 10. [...] its network probe
broadcasts to include a distinct Information Element (IE),
data added to Wi-Fi management frames to extend the Wi-Fi
protocol.
four scholars from the US Naval Academy say they've
managed to track 100% of all test smartphones, despite
the devices using randomized MAC addresses.
[...]
The novelty in our method is that we are sending RTS
frames to IEEE 802.11 client devices, not APs, to
extract a CTS response message which we derive the true
global MAC address of that device.
Do you remember the other mail you got that day? What about other Steinway ads in the past? Are you 100% sure you never received one or are you just trusting your memory?
https://blog.mojonetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomization-analyze...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/android-6-0-marshmal...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/mac_address_randomi...
Relevant quote: Hardware Kill Switches for Camera, Microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and Baseband
Disclosure: Not affiliated, but am interested in the phone.