Do you ever get the feeling like you’re being watched?

The other day, I was thinking about buying this blanket online.

I put it in my cart, but then kinda waffled 'cause it was expensive, and then I got distracted and did something else.

I just received a personal Facebook message from the company reminding me that it's in my cart!

How did they do that?

I don’t even use the same email addresses for these accounts!

Is Facebook listening to me?

Don’t go getting fit for your tinfoil hat just yet.

There isn’t any hard evidence that Facebook is surreptitiously accessing your phone’s mic, and even if they could, the volumes of data they’d have to analyze to eavesdrop on just their American users would be about 20 petabytes per day… 33 times more than their total daily data consumption.

Besides, online tracking technology is so advanced these days, they don’t really need to.

You’re dropping bread crumbs everywhere you go.

Imagine if you went to a shopping mall and had an employee follow you around upselling the entire time: Don’t you just love that shirt?

Give me your email and I’ll give you $5 off right now!

Hey, remember that yoga mat you looked at last week?

Well guess what, 5 other people just bought it and say it’s the best ever!

10% off if you buy it right now!

Hey, don’t forget it’s your mom’s birthday next week.

She’d love this hilarious coffee mug!

Or maybe this fancy candle?

Three for the price of one if you just use this code!

No one likes being badgered by an overly excited employee.

But that’s basically what’s happening when you shop online.

And it can take a serious toll on our bank accounts.

So let’s get clear on what companies are really doing and what we can do about it.

The main tactic that e-tailers use is called Online Behavioral Advertising.

It’s pretty darn sophisticated and getting more so every day.

Here’s how it works: First, a website will implant a small piece of data on your computer known as a cookie.

Sounds cute, but this cookie comes with strings attached.

It tracks how you maneuver around a website.

What pages you click on, how long you hang out there, what you search for, what you add to your cart.

It then harvests this data and uses it to build a profile.

It tries to guess things like your age, your income bracket, your likes and dislikes all in hopes of serving you ads that are the most likely to capture your attention.

As new parents, we do most of our shopping online, which makes us prime targets.

Julia was recently served up an ad for baby-booties that don’t slip off.

If you didn’t know, keeping socks or shoes on babies’ feet is basically impossible, so of course my attention was captured.

I clicked the link and wouldn’t ya know it...5 minutes later I was checking out.

And now, those dang shoes pop up on EVERY SITE I’M ON!

I feel like I can’t escape!

Thanks, cookies.

This is a textbook example of “re-targeting,” Only 2% of users will become a customer on their first visit, so a cookie’s job is to quietly follow you around cyberspace, waiting for the right time to invite you back to their store.

If a retailer has gotten access to your contact information like your email, you will be also barraged with personalized ads and offers.

Amazon is the absolute king of this tactic.

Say you buy a yoga mat, they will assume you probably need this awesome yoga shirt, oh and you gotta have yoga blocks and what about yoga socks?!

These approaches are super effective.

A re-targeted ad is 70% more likely to become a paying customer than a randomly served one.

Amazon is also famous for leveraging something called “social proof,” our tendency to copy the actions of others because we assume they know more than we do.

This is why 87% of users report that they use customer reviews to decide on a purchase.

Of course, because this is the internet, this has led to an entire hidden economy of sellers paying people to write fake reviews for their products.

Amazon claims that the percentage of reviews that are fraudulent is “tiny,” but they don’t really have much of an incentive to crack down on them because the more good reviews, the more sales.

There are websites that will analyze a product page and tell you how many of the reviews are suspect, but the methods these sites use are not proven to be 100% accurate.

All this wouldn’t be so bad if going online was something you did every once in a while.

But according to a recent Nielsen study, Americans spend approximately 11 hours PER DAY staring at screens.

That’s like spending half your life in a shopping mall.

It’s no surprise that one out of every three dollars of discretionary spending is being spent online.

While avoiding online shopping altogether probably isn’t realistic, there are things we can do to minimize the creepy stalking from retailers so we can shop more deliberately.

First, set up an email account for your online shopping.

That way, all the spam and promotional offers won’t be clogging your primary inbox.

Next, you can regularly delete cookies and “un-remember” your credit card numbers from your browser’s memory.

I know, I know, this will make online shopping less convenient because you’ll have to keep re-entering your info, but remember, we’re trying to fight brainlessness and make purchasing as intentional as possible.

E-tailers want shopping to be effortless, because they know that the more steps involved, the more chances you’ll have to realize that you don’t really need those fancy yoga socks.

If you’re not sure how to do this, just google, "How to erase cookies in..." The name of your browser And lastly, we strongly recommend setting a hard cap for online expenditures by opening a separate checking account or online wallet that’s only for shopping online.

Top it off with how much you want to allow yourself to spend per month, and when it’s empty, well, you’ll just have to wait till next month to get that that 4K Blu-Ray of The Matrix.

I admit it, I love seeing those packages show up at my door as much as the next person, but for most people, shopping online is a luxury.

The vast majority of necessities like groceries and household supplies are still purchased at brick and mortar stores.

E-tailers want us to treat online shopping like a normal, habitual part of lives, but any discretionary spending should still be a special, deliberate decision.

You probably can’t ever get away from online advertising, but you can at least be aware of how it’s trying to influence your behavior.

And that’s our two cents!