E-Mail spam content related to browser history?

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I have experienced some strange things about an email address which is in use for about ten years. The address is connected to all of my shopping accounts and Paypal; getting 1-2 spam mails per day is not unusal and does not annoy me.

Most of the spam contents has no direct relation to me (sex contacts, drugs and homework).

However, for the last two weeks I intensively researched about the main topic finance and, in detail, stocks. Now 50% of the spam is related to stocks, investment or simply contains some keywords like "Buffet". These aren't nessecarily keywords I searched for, in the case of "Buffet" I simply followed a link in a forum thread to a news article about Warren Buffet.

I just cannot imagine that this is happening by accident, and I wonder how this relation (research and this mailadress I never used for the research) technically could have been made. For the research I mainly used Google + Chromium on a Linux machine, but the mailaddress affected is not a gmail-adress. Maybe I was tracked by cookies, but, I have disallowed 3rd-party-cookies.

Does somedbody know how this could be possible and how to protect against?

Edit: I would like to make some things clear(er):

  • I read emails in thunderbird, never use a browser for that
  • I have about 8 email-addresses, but it's only spam@mail.com which is affected by spam related to my browsing history
  • the affected mail address is a free mail offered by one of the biggest german email provider
  • I know that paying no $ to email providers means paying with my personal data
  • but: spam@mail.com contains no emails or addresses related to the topic stocks
  • question: how could this email-address be connected to my recent research about stocks? (if I'm not simply paranoid...)

32bitfloat

Posted 2015-09-14T23:30:41.117

Reputation: 131

Answers

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There are many ways you can be tracked on the internet, even if you are trying not to be. Super Cookies, browser fingerprinting, and many other ways are used to snoop on your activities.

As for being truly anonymous, that is hard. You can try browsing with Tor, or try other programs designed to hide your tracks.

Keltari

Posted 2015-09-14T23:30:41.117

Reputation: 57 019

1That doesn't explain how the spammer would get hold of the tracking/search data though. – DavidPostill – 2015-09-15T12:23:02.117

@DavidPostill Exactly. Simply being tracked - okay. Tracking someone and find out his/her email-address? Strange and for me unthinkable. – 32bitfloat – 2015-09-15T18:15:03.363

I've added some facts to my question to make clear I am not looking for absolute privacy/anonymity but for an explanation about this happening. – 32bitfloat – 2015-09-15T18:30:12.687

Asked: 2015-09-14T23:30:41.117

Viewed: 1 487 times

Active: 2015-09-15T18:26:56.290