Coincidence or something more sinister?

Not a coincidence, but not capital S sinister. The advertisers likely got the data from the store, not the credit card.

 

Bi-mart is a membership store, so they had your personal information. They may have even passed along the unique customer number that the major cellular companies tag onto all your data packets.

Coincidence? Nope. "
https://www.propublica.org/article/somebodys-already-using-verizons-id-to-track-users

 

Don't use a coupon either. Companies track where those were used too.

 

If you want something more sinister...

There is a device (Stingray) used by police to intercept cell phone conversations. They can only use it with a warrant. Police are so paranoid about the use of the device that they have been known to drop all charges against a criminal to avoid admitting that the Stingray was used to gather the evidence.

This applies to THIS thread because... Some businesses use a similar but less sophisticated technique just to figure out where you are in the store. They can track the source of your blue-tooth transmissions to see that you are in the liquor aisle, or that you are at the checkout stand... where you use your credit card.

Knowledge of what you shop for can be very expensive for the customer.

Consider The ultimate salesman story:

A young guy from North Dakota moves to Florida and goes to a big "everything under one roof" department store looking for a job.

The Manager says, "Do you have any sales experience?"

The kid says "Yeah. I was a vacuum salesman back in North Dakota ."

Well, the boss was unsure, but he liked the kid and figured he'd give him a shot, so he gave him the job. "You start tomorrow. I'll come down after we close and see how you did."

His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came down to the sales floor. "How many customers bought something from you today?"

The kid frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, "One".

The boss says "Just one?!!? Our sales people average sales to 20 to 30 customers a day. That will have to change, and soon, if you'd like to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here in Florida . One sale a day might have been acceptable in North Dakota , but you're not on the farm anymore, son."

The kid took his beating, but continued to look at his shoes, so the boss felt kinda bad for chewing him out on his first day. He asked (semi-sarcastically), "So, how much was your one sale for?"

The kid looks up at his boss and says "$101,237.65".

The boss, astonished, says $101,237.65?!? What the heck did you sell?"

The kid says, "Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn't think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4x4 Expedition."

The boss said "A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?"

The kid said "No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife, and I said, 'Dude, your weekend's shot, you should go fishing.’

 

Sinister my butt!!!
If there was a store that sold boat, motors, trailer, and a 4x4 Expedition for ONLY $101,237.65 (especially after Bidenomics!) then they would not need to advertise!!!

 

That article is 8 years old. Is Verizon's "header enrichment" since active? ProPublica's "Does Your Phone Company Track You?" tool says that my mobile device is not so tracked.

Though they might be using other methods now. There are plenty of potential hooks to use.

 

There are sooo many ways for an ISP (or cellular company) to tag your data stream with an identifier. I have not looked into their current activities, but a quick scan of data passed to my server when my phone is in hotspot mode shows nothing out of the ordinary.

 

Hope I'm not too late to join this threads party. If I thought it would make a difference I'd write a first hand account concerning strange co incidents, I could but I doubt it would be a very interesting read, at least for most people living ordinary lives. I liked the Ultimate Salesman too. From my perspective, I can remember when someone, not me, but someone could get into a early 70's Eldorado for just under 7 grand.
I think the Ultimate Salesman is not a story one is going to hear circulating around the gen X Y or Z crowds circles.
If you lived in NYC tri state area (NY NJ CT) in the 60's and had a transistor radio at the ball park or the beach you could hear a few thousand times a day one advertising genius campaign called Instant REPLAY REPLAy REPLay REPlay REplay etc etc etc followed by the same song that had just finished playing a couple of seconds pryor.
I doubt anyone listening even thought twice about it either. Cousin Brucey WABC AM NYC.

 

I don’t believe so. I think it is explained by parents with kids tend to know other parents with kids.
I know some of my neighbors. When I was a kid, I knew lots of other kids, and my folks knew all their parents.
In the last neighborhood I lived in, most families had kids. We had neighborhood pot-lucks and many other events.

We moved into a neighborhood with fewer kids, and we have fewer of those type of events.