NORFOLK, Va. - You might not like thinking about it, but a lot more people have your personal information than you realize.
One Norfolk woman learned that the hard way. She didn't want to be identified, but felt inclined to share her story so others could be aware. For the purposes of this report, we'll call her Ms. Allen.
Ms. Allen was doing a little online window-shopping recently. She was looking at a website that she has never bought from and didn't end up buying anything that day either.
A few days later, she checked her mailbox and had a physical mailer with her correct name and address. She asked the News 3 Problem Solvers to investigate how this happened.
Ariel Pinto, with the Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering at Old Dominion University, said cookies, or small pieces of data, are collected about you online and often times are given to others.
"[They] could be selling it, using it for marketing strategy, or scraping away any identifiable information and then providing it to third parties," he said.
Pinto said at one point, Ms. Allen likely used the computer to buy something from another website where she provided her name, address, phone number, etc. He said that information was then sold to a third party who used her address on file to send the physical piece of mail.
To stop this from happening, Pinto said to "manage" your online cookies.
"Most of the time, [the website] will have two buttons. There's 'accept,' which means [you] consent on everything, and then there would be a smaller, less conspicuous button, which would say, 'manage cookies.' So I would suggest click on that," he said.
If you use Google Chrome, click here to see how to clear, endable, and manage cookies.
