How Did Staples.ca Track Me?

Either the option wasn’t set or the app isn’t doing what it says it’s doing. Or there is a temporary pass to a browser that has a cookie with your account into already there.

The last time you visited Staples, you logged into your Staples account and a cookie was set on your device. The option to automatically clear cache and cookies means for CURRENT session cookies and Internet cache once you leave, not past ones. Use CCleaner to delete cookies and Internet cache BEFORE opening the Staples Web site.

Temporel wrote: ↑ The last time you visited Staples, you logged into your Staples account and a cookie was set on your device. The option to automatically clear cache and cookies means for CURRENT session cookies and Internet cache once you leave, not past ones. Use CCleaner to delete cookies and Internet cache BEFORE opening the Staples Web site.

I think you are actually right about this. It seems really misleading the way the settings are shown in a privacy-focused browser like Adblock Browser.
Turns out it did have a lot of other old cookies and other data saved in there, even though 'automatically clear cache and cookies' was enabled.

Jucius Maximus wrote: ↑ I think you are actually right about this. It seems really misleading the way the settings are shown in a privacy-focused browser like Adblock Browser.
Turns out it did have a lot of other old cookies and other data saved in there, even though 'automatically clear cache and cookies' was enabled.

CCleaner is not 100% effective though at preventing Web sites from "knowing" it's you. When THEY really want to know, there are probably other programming ways to track you. I don't know exactly how but I remember a while back there were some Flash cookies that were hard to get rid of even with CCleaner. Some browsers might have serial numbers, etc.

Temporel wrote: ↑ CCleaner is not 100% effective though at preventing Web sites from "knowing" it's you. When THEY really want to know, there are probably other programming ways to track you. I don't know exactly how but I remember a while back there were some Flash cookies that were hard to get rid of even with CCleaner. Some browsers might have serial numbers, etc.

There are other utilities to clean Flash cookies. But these days I don't think it's an issue, since Flash itself has been EOL'd and most browsers don't have it.
But yes there are still other Browser Fingerprinting methods.
I think this Staples.ca tracking caught me offguard because I was on mobile and didn't have the typical protections I enable on my desktop browser - NoScript, Cookies Autodelete, and some other extensions. I must've logged into Staples at some point on my phone, and a residual cookie was lying around.

If I can ever get my hands on a Raspberry Pi board (chip shortage,) I'll set up PiHole for fun and more protection. (Yes I know that PiHole can run on other hardware. But I want to have another 'project'.)