How do online shops know ...

. that I've bought enough penis enlargers and kitchens, got all phone numbers from escorts in India and know where to stay there, but do need some body cream and healthy food supplements?

And why do they offer it to other A2K'ers as well?

Don't know, but I'm not sure we all see the same things. I've noticed that anything leading from my yahoo home page often contains ads from vendors I've used before.

I know such, roger.

But what really would interest me is why such offers are made here on A2K in certain loops about the same or similar products.

I think it's really a mindless activity. That is, I suspect they get paid a few pennies to post their stuff in as many places as possible, with the goal of getting someone's website higher up on some search engine or other. Someone would probably be very surprised to make a random sale this way.

Not sure what they get out of posting phone numbers and unlinked web addresses.

No-one ever complains about my kitchens, as they are such superb quality.

Do you want the details of what offer I have on at the moment in Aberdeen?

You'll be sorry if you miss it.

Imagine the "con" lines used to these "poor people" that probably think they can make a fortune from on-line advertising........ More so when the Moderators on sites delete their attempts over and over and over and over and they realise they wasted hours upon hours for nothing....

Spammers spray their shots and send to everyone. It's the very definition of spam. Their emails and whatnot look like crap because they are trying to catch the bottom feeding lowest of the low, the most gullible among us. Then they sell those names to sucker lists, and keep trying to sell them other stuff (enlargements, timeshares, fake vitamins, Nigerian prince garbage - they don't give a ****. It's all the same to them). The people who inevitably bite at the bait are not you and me. They are very vulnerable people - the elderly, immigrants who don't understand the subtleties of the language, people with Down's Syndrome who are integrated into society, the semi-literate, etc. Get righteously angry at spammers, folks, for they will gladly take your early-stage Alzheimer's mother's pension without a second thought. They don't care if she eats cat food.

The other group are legitimate advertisers who participate in advertising setups where a cookie is pulled from your computer and passed throughout the network. Hence if you have been looking at shoes on Amazon, you might see those same shoes showing up in ads on CNN.com or the like, whoever is a part of that network. It takes a good 7 or more online notifications for people to start thinking about buying (on average), so the network slips in a few more of these notifications in order to get you further down what's called the sales funnel. There is nothing sneaky about this - it's a lot like seeing a billboard on the highway for our shoe example, and hearing an ad on the radio, seeing one in the newspaper, and another in a magazine or just seeing the storefront itself. Or even seeing the storefront repeatedly because you walk by it during your commute. Those folks are legitimate. Please don't lump them in the same category as spammers.