Text adverts

[Anonymous]

Can you tell me if 02 read your private texts in order to direct the appropriate adverts to you? I texted a friend about a particular brand of coffee cup and then got an advert from that company, about their coffee cups (!) less than 5 minutes later from 02! Not happy!

[Cleoriff]

No they don't read your texts.

However you should go into My O2 and turn of marketing info http://www.o2.co.uk/myo2

[MI5]

Nice conspiracy theory though

[Cleoriff]

Find marketing preferences here (in My O2)

[MI5]

O2 "assure" us they don't pass details on to third parties though, so you will only be stopping O2 marketing texts by doing that.

[Cleoriff]

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@MI5 wrote:
O2 "assure" us they don't pass details on to third parties though, so you will only be stopping O2 marketing texts by doing that.

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Am I  totally 'reassured' by their 'assurances'??.....Ermmmmm...

[MI5]

I'm not

[jonsie]

Someone somewhere will be reading your texts apart from the recipient.....:smileywink:

[Fellwalker]

If you have previously searched for, or looked at the web site of, those coffee cups, then your computer/phone/tablet may well have led to your "Advertising ID" being linked to those cups as actively interested.  This is a cookie placed on your computer that is just a code number, linked to a central database.  The data linked to that Advertising ID might in turn might be looked at by O2 when their system is about to send you a marketing text.

You accept the placing of cookies on your computer when you ignore or click OK to the pop up that appears ON THE FIRST TIME that you visit a particular web site.

You may also find that such adverts about coffee cups turn up on Amazon, Google, within Facebook and Twitter feeds...

Some sites have settings to turn off personalised adverts, though likely well hidden. Their logic is that you'd rather read adverts about things you have an interest in than things you never heard of.  Oh, and perhaps things that you might actually buy so that the advert is worthwhile.

You can turn on "Do Note Track" in moist web browsers, but it is a request not a must to the sites you visit.

It is one of the marvels of technology; the way that you can be tracked in your meanderings across the web.  And how that can be used for or against you.