How do the advertisements know that I am newly interested in something if I never typed it but casually talked about it around the house?

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I just got fired a month ago. I have not been doing ANY research on the next move but casually talk to my partner about going for a coding boot camp. I haven’t even updated my LinkedIn or anything like that.

Suddenly, I am served coding Bootcamp ads on Youtube, they show up on the little dedicated ads banners on websites and so on.

I am not referring to the more predictable situation where I search for true crime shows or so and have all these streaming services serving me ads based on my search history.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You never went online for a job search.

But maybe your spending has been curtailed. That kind of information is tracked. Why would you suddenly be spending less? Maybe you lost a source of income.

Maybe you’ve looked into refinancing a mortgage. Maybe you’ve looked into lower-fees credit cards.

Maybe you stopped buying the name-brand mayonnaise, and are going with economy-brand things a lot now.

Maybe you did a search for “best cheap meals you can cook at home”.

Maybe you’ve done NONE of these things … but those are examples of how the system can derive things from unrelated things.

[Read this article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=63400d236668). Target figured out a girl was pregnant before she told her parents.

It’s almost scary, if you ask me.

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