Home Depot sent my email, details of stuff I bought to Meta, customer complains
theregister.com
theregister.com
Man, they're skipping right past "just give them another consent button to click, they won't read it anyway" and going straight to "who cares if they consented, let's just do it".
Anyone else noticed a continued pattern in the last couple of decades of wealthy corporations and individuals getting really flagrant with their abusive practices as they get more and more comfortable with the idea that they won't face any real punishment for their actions?
Meanwhile, when I had Home Depot manage a kitchen counter installation for me, they called me on the phone and left me a voicemail telling me to call their installer people and tell them my email address. Some serious incompetence for a department that already knew my name when I gave them my number, and a company that has no problem sending me multiple emails after I buy a pack of screws.
I'm buying a product from your store, I might not ever set foot in here again. I certainly don't need your company to contact me for any reason, I don't need you building a profile on me, I don't need you telling ad networks who I am and what I bought.
Every now and then I get a pushy retail worker trying to convince me that I should just give my number or email or whatever and I usually make a note not to shop there anymore.
I tell them that I just moved and haven't set up my e-mail yet. That sees plausible enough to get me out of most situations.
For the phone number, I have the number of a payphone at the county jail memorized. It doesn't take incoming calls.
The reason the minimum-wage worker is hassling you so hard is because at some stores, if you don't collect enough customer contact data, you can get fired. I had a relative who worked at Macy's once, and this was a regular threat.
Yea, I know. And I do have empathy for their position. I've worked retail and I used to get in trouble if I let a customer buy a laptop without pushing extended warranties on them. So I get it.
I guess I just hope they don't hold it against me for not giving them my personal info just like I never held it against customers who didn't buy extended warranties
But since I needed to sync up with the installers and they already had the email, why not share it internally? Perhaps it was stored in some PII category that could only be used to advertise at customers but help them.
This system is available for other giants like TikTok and Snap, and to a lesser extent Google. For google you have to take extra steps to get around ad blockers.
I would be surprised if any retailer spending money on meta ads DIDN’T do this.
On a related note, I’m curious, why don’t ad blockers mess with the window datalayer? As far as I’m aware serverside Google Ta Manager tracking implementations rely on pushing to the datalayer on the client.
Facebook is highly likely tagging those users as "home improvement interested users" and targeting entities buying ad placement for home improvement goods/remodeling services (i.e. Lowes and independent remodeling contractors) who would compete directly against Home Depot itself.
Or at minimum its recursive because Home Depot's marketing side will probably at some point pay Facebook extra for this data.
The reason Meta became such an advertising powerhouse is its ability to target. Targeting is made much better through the passing of “positive” signals.
Real orders. Real stuff. HomeDepot doesn’t do a thing about this. Either a glitch and user data mixup or some advanced scam