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I doubt it in this case. Unless you typed in any personal information that you're not telling us, I don't believe this company would be that sophisticated in obtaining information. It was probably just a coincidence.
Nope, not holding back info in my question. No personal information typed in whatsoever. Using cognito mode in Chrome. Just surfing on various Holiday Inn sites looking at rates.
....on a Holiday Inn site to an unsolicited call from the IHG reservations center (IHG owns Holiday Inn).
It's not stretch at all, it doesn't have to be the Holiday Inn site specifically. When you visit a site that content can be coming from anywhere. Suppose there is ad on there from ad service, your browser makes the request for that ad and the ad service knows what site it is that request is coming from. That ad service may be on multiple sites. They are the ones that can connect the dots.
Sure they can. You only need enough meta data that was shared or sold amongst sites/services and connect the dots. This is basically what the NSA is/was doing. It's not 100% but if you can connect enough of the dots you can ID someone with almost 100% certainty.
If you have browser fingerprint of 1 in 5 million, the traffic is coming from the same IP and that can be correlated with data from another site/service that has your phone number who else is it going to be?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Holiday Inn would already have my phone # from a prior stay in 2014. The disconcerting part is that by surfing on the HI site, looking at rates in specific locations, somehow the IHG reservations center may have known that I was in fact looking at the HI site and it generated a phone number associated with my surfing, and then called my phone #.
By the way, I have never received a call from the IHG reservations center before, ever. You had mentioned cross referencing data, and this is most likely what happened, but somehow IHG reservations knew I was surfing on HI sites a few days ago, unless it's a coincidence, which I doubt. Even though temporary cookies are deleted when I quit the browser, during the surfing session on HI, cookie data can be collected during the surfing session, and that's probably where the info was likely transmitted to IHG.
Just found this info online:
Permanent cookies are not deleted when browsers are closed.
"Permanent cookies can be used to identify individual users, so they may be used by web sites to analyze users' surfing behavior within the web site."
Since permanent cookies are not deleted when the browser is closed, this may have happened in my situation. Prior permanent cookies were deposited when I surfed on HI sites a year ago, and when I surfed last week, the individual data was communicated to IHG, unfortunately. I didn't realize there were permanent cookies that are not deleted when browsers close. Thanks for your posts and info. I appreciate it.
Sure they can. You only need enough meta data that was shared or sold amongst sites/services and connect the dots.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skinsguy37
I don't believe this company would be that sophisticated in obtaining information.
I promise you Holiday Inn is not:
A) anywhere close to "sophisticated enough"
or
B) Stupid enough to risk making a lot of people very mad by cold calling people who browsed a website.
I promise you Holiday Inn is not:
A) anywhere close to "sophisticated enough"
or
B) Stupid enough to risk making a lot of people very mad by cold calling people who browsed a website.
They don't have to be because there is other companies that can provide those services. Don't put anything past them, JCPenney a few years back employed a company right before Christmas that used very deceptive SEO techniques to place their products prominently in the search results. It was so effective sometimes even above the the manufacturers page. What made them think that they were going to get away with it is beyond me.
Whether HI or a company they are employing did what I'm suggesting is unknown, I'm just pointing out it's possible and not that difficult.
I'm telling you it IS that difficult. It is by NO means easy.
Paying someone to ensure high ranking search results is different then cherry picking a phone number... from where I wouldn't even begin to guess... through your browser while you surf a site.
Where is your phone number on your PC? If you give it to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or Facebook they don't share it with anyone else. It's not stored in your browser cache. Even if you have contacts in your local email with your number, it's still going to be very hard to get it from there w/o your knowledge.
The source of that could be anywhere, it doesn't even have to be web based. You only need to connect some dots.
The OP said they stayed at HI last year. They have his phone number and perhaps the IP used to make the reservation, email address, browser fingerprint and whatever else. If they are able to match two of those variable with his recent visit what are the chances it's him?
Taking this a step further suppose HI is employing a service on their site where they are sharing this data. This service is doing the same thing on 1000's of other sites.
Do you know why fire trucks are red?
Well, fire trucks have 4 wheels and there are 8 people on a fire truck.
4+8= 12
12 inches in ruler.
Queen Elizabeth was a ruler.
There was also a ship named Queen Elizabeth.
The ship sailed the seas, and the seas have fish.
Fish have fins.
People from Finland are also called fins.
Finland and Russia were in a war along time ago...
Russians are red, and fire trucks are always Russian around...
Do you know why fire trucks are red?
Well, fire trucks have 4 wheels and there are 8 people on a fire truck.
4+8= 12
12 inches in ruler.
Queen Elizabeth was a ruler.
There was also a ship named Queen Elizabeth.
The ship sailed the seas, and the seas have fish.
Fish have fins.
People from Finland are also called fins.
Finland and Russia were in a war along time ago...
Russians are red, and fire trucks are always Russian around...
Based on your response I don't think you quite grasp how many specific points of data can be gathered from someone visiting a website. Just to name a few there is the IP, geolocation, OS, browser and the browser fingerprint. None of these things by themselves provide much information and none are 100% especially if the user is trying to hide them but most people aren't trying to hide this information.
You only need a few pieces of the puzzle to fit and correlate it with other data to identify someone. It's really not that difficult if you have the data.
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