Why did my wife see adverts for items I looked at?

摘要

Q I don't have any social-media accounts. I use a Windows 10 PC with Firefox, while my wife has a laptop and uses Google's Chrome. We're both connected to the same router and have the same external IP address; to the outside world, that's all we share. Recently I was searching online for decking boards and a specific mirrorless camera. Later that day my wife, who does use social media, logged on to Facebook. She saw adverts for decking boards and the same camera I searched for. How can my browsing jump to another machine and be hijacked by Facebook? A The sites you visited probably use advertising services connected to Facebook, which have recorded that a user with your IP address may be interested in buying decking and a camera. By default, Facebook serves personalised adverts to its users, basing its customisations on recent behaviour - in your case, picking up on the browsing activity from your IP address. It's important to note that, while Facebook may know a lot about your wife (depending on her settings), it's not sharing this information with the advertisers in question. Instead, advertisers pay to have their adverts shown to the most relevant audience, as determined by Facebook's data.