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Yesterday I took a train to return back to home and after a long trip, I finally arrived in the station of my town. While I walked to my parked car, a notification of my favorite delivery food app appeared on the screen of my smartphone, saying: “Back in town = big sales, open your app and face the homecoming in the best possible way!” My first reaction was to look for the camera or the food delivery driver. Are they spying on me? And then, I looked back at the phone and I discovered the spy!
Spy yourself
Our smartphones and PCs have become objects that allow us to "sell" our lives to someone else. Every time we access a website or download an app, we are almost always offered to accept a slew of terms and conditions that would take you two days to read. Here we are, everything starts on that agreement. I did a cross-check and I noticed that the train website on which I booked my trip used Facebook Pixel. To do this check, I used a Google extension called “Google Pixel Helper”.
Facebook Pixel
What is this? Facebook Pixel is a “piece of code” that can be inserted into a website. This little string permits the website to communicate to Facebook that a certain user has visited that website and has done certain actions (or not). For example, having booked the train X arriving in Milan at a certain time.
Retarget yourself
This mechanism is called "retargeting" and is the main cause of the fact that, if you visit certain websites to buy red shoes or to find the perfect hotel for your holidays, Facebook will continuously offer you advertisements for those red shoes or for the hotels in the cities you want to travel to. In our case, the train company will be able to improve its Facebook Ads by offering me its destinations. But another main point is: This information is useful for Facebook since it can “resell” it to those who need it, such as the delivery food company.
Profiling
Returning back to my case, Facebook allowed the delivery food company to "profile" me and to know that I was returning home from a trip at a time when I could think about having dinner. All of this puts me in Hamletic doubts about how free I am with deciding about my life. But in the meantime, I had already opened the app and ordered my favorite pizza. I'll think about it later, with a full stomach.
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