Why am I creeped out by this, you ask?
— I was just at Home Depot two days ago, looking at exact model, because I'm thinking of replacing the faucet we have in the powder room.
— I did not do any internet searches or talk about faucets with anyone, either beforehand or afterwards. I was, however, standing in the faucet aisle for about 10 minutes with my cellphone in my hand, and did check my work emails while I was there.
— The email went to a work email address that is not affiliated with any social media accounts, and would not have been on any Home Depot mailing list.
I've had similar experiences in the past, but thus far they involved other email addresses that are tied to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, so a certain amount of "integration" (aka tracking) is expected. This was the first time my work email was targeted, and I am convinced that big chain stores like Home Depot have acquired the ability to track you using the GPS on your phone, right down to the exactly aisle you've visited in their store, and target you with ads for that product.
I'm not usually big on conspiracy theories, but I honestly can't think of another explanation for occurrences like these.
It reminded me of the scene in the 2002 movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise walks through a store and, thanks to facial recognition technology (which was not widely used back then the way it is now), he is bombarded with personalized pop-up advertisements that mention him by name.
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