# How is McDonald's detecting me?



## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

At the top of every McDonald's slip is an offer to authorize a, "Buy one, get one free" promotion to any customer who goes to mcdvoice.com and completes their satisfaction survey. Each day, for breakfast, I have been getting two Egg McMuffins for the price of one

I had been doing that for months, but starting a week ago, after completing the first page of the survey, the one that identifies the transaction, I got blocked from proceeding, saying that someone from my household had recently already done so. That seems reasonable, but I don't want reasonable, I want more free food.

I considered the possibilities that they had gotten feedback from my laptop "cookie", or detected my home IP address, or maybe even tracked the credit card, or perhaps they noted that the sales receipt I was attempting to validate had a, "1P" promotional giveaway incorporated into it.

My first few workarounds worked. I paid cash, I connected with McDonald's at their restaurant rather than from home, and when I connected with them, I used Mozilla Firefox's "Private Viewing" window, and I even made sure that my initial connection and log-in to their internet service was done at a time when I had no open, unblocked windows. In fact, I went so far as to disable my Wi-Fi before opening Windows. I had previously discovered that if I clicked McDonald's post-connection, bubble that said, "Additional log-in information required" in the lower right corner of my screen, it would automatically open a non-private Firefox window, but I avoid that by instead, entering mcdvoice.com in my address box or whatever you call it at the top of the screen.

Unfortunately, they detected me again today. I own another laptop that I might bring here tomorrow, or I might even finally learn how to use my new Android phone, but that looks clunky and probably would take me longer than the free sandwich is worth. Any ideas on how they are detecting me, and how I may further block their detection while using this same laptop?


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

The way our phones and computers are tracking us is getting crazy. Apple iPhone has a setting (general-privacy-location services-system services-frequent locations) that track everywhere you have been for the last three months. It will even tell you the dates and times you were there. I wonder if Android does the same?

I notice McDonalds now has scanners to scan your phone for coupons from their app. Who knows what all they are tracking?

I know millennials don't care but it freaks out the older folks.

BTW, I like free food too and my wife has to borrow my laptop sometimes when Wendy's won't accept her surveys, one every thirty days!


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

I've been spooked a few times. I bought an Android phone a few weeks ago, though haven't learned how to do any more than make calls with it, but when I left an AutoZone Store last week, within one minute, a message from Autozone, beconing me to come back to the store, popped up on my screen.

A couple of years ago, a friend and I went to a Home Depot store to pick out a flexible showerhead, and when we then went to his house, which I hadn't visited in a year, I connected to the internet using my laptop and his router, and some Home Depot ads for that showerhead and similar ones started following me from unrelated page to page.

It turned out that my friend had searched Home Depot for that product before he left his house to rendezvous with me, and so it was reacting to the router's IP address.


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## trh (Nov 3, 2007)

Yes, Google Location tracks you, but you can disable it. 

And Cookies will customize some of your advertisements to what you've previously searched. It too can be turned off.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

It could even be much simpler than this... I have some Wendy's gift cards now, so I've been using that instead of McDonalds.. but I too was on the b1g1 plan for a while. I'd go in for dinner and get 2 chicken biscuits, get the survey, fill that out, and go back the next week for more b1g1.

It always made me wonder, though... why when they entered the promo code to give me the free sandwich, why the register wasn't smarter and not print a survey code on that transaction receipt. It seemed like an unintended freebie loop that I was sure they would close at some point.

So... maybe it was easier to close the loop on the survey end, rather than the register end... since the codes you enter identify that particular transaction... it would also "know" that on that transaction you had used a promo code from a previous survey. That alone could be identified and used to kick back the process.

To verify this... you'd have to try making a purchase without any promo codes on it... and trying that survey. Or maybe you've already done that?


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Ads? What ads? I set up a Pi with Pi Hole and use that as my router DNS and then uBlock Origin as a Chrome extension on my PC.

Downside is when I go to sites on a relatives system, my first thought is their infected because they have ads where I don't see them.


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## trh (Nov 3, 2007)

I am seeing more and more sites that say 'you're using an ad-blocker and until you turn it off, you can't visit our page.'


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

trh said:


> I am seeing more and more sites that say 'you're using an ad-blocker and until you turn it off, you can't visit our page.'


My local and regional newspapers are both on subscription models now, with one allowing 3 free views a week and the other five a month, but that limit is readily circumvented with "Private Viewing" mode. Realistically, it is just a matter of time before they block that renewable, freeaccess.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

That's the thing... people want to get paid, but don't want to pay for anything... at some point, that has to change or a lot of things will just go away. Lots of stuff isn't worth paying for (my opinion) but a lot of content out there is worth something, so if we want to encourage the good content, we might have to get used to paying for more things in the future.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

I prefer sites that are either totally open or have select free articles (no counted limit) and possibly a subscription section for "all the stories".

I respect the sites need to make money. Except for the "all we do is regurgitate other sites news" sites most sites need to create content. Where their online content cuts in to their normal distribution (for example, newspapers that lose sales because they put their content online) they either have to cut back on the online feed or monetize it.

Sites that make it difficult to read don't get my visits. And while that may seem like a win for them since I am not getting something for nothing THEY are not getting me. They lose influence. They lose my, and I assume other people's viewership and they become irrelevant. And when they become irrelevant they might as well close down.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

James Long said:


> ...Sites that make it difficult to read don't get my visits. ...


"START SLIDESHOW" - I hate those. And they usually force the reader to scroll up and down to access the "next" arrow.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

An slide shows (or forums with only a few posts per page) are a "good" way of causing page loads which boosts advertising display statistics (and page load statistics). Some sites manage to take content that would nicely be delivered as one or two pages and turn it into 20-30 pages - padding their statistics.

But I digress ...


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Yeah, poor site design OR intentional extra clicks just to boost page reloads are things that will drive me away as well. I agree also that a site that wants to make money charging for "news" that really isn't their news, is also a sore point... especially if the other sites are hurting as a result of people not going to them as the original source.

I don't pretend to have all the solutions either. There has to be a balance found somewhere, though, between value for content and high-quality content... or else we run the risk of the higher quality content ceasing to exist some day.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

James Long said:


> A slide shows (or forums with only a few posts per page) are a "good" way of causing page loads which boosts advertising display statistics (and page load statistics). Some sites manage to take content that would nicely be delivered as one or two pages and turn it into 20-30 pages - padding their statistics.


That's what I figured. I had found a way to jump through the successive page loads when there was a list of the twenty best/worst of this or that in reverse order, by editing the URL page number, but recently some of the teaser best/worst lists I have accessed now append a person or place name on the end, so that doesn't work anymore.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

That McDonald's where I regularly eat and internet surf from closed today for remodeling, so I went to a nearby onr, and a forty-ish year old guy who was there with his family pulled out the trashcan and was picking customer receipts out of it. There was another customer behind him, waiting for access to dump his tray, but the dumpster diver said he was pulling out Promo slips. I guess he either has the system beat better than I do, or he is new to this and hasn't been detected and shut off yet. I was able to get my Promo slip validated there this morning, but their internet connection, which had been down for months, was so slow that the time I wasted by using it was worth more to me than the free sandwich I was going to beat them out of.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

For eternal slide pages, there is a Deslide! bookmarklet that works some of the time. The code is:

javascriptfunction(){window.open('http://deslide.clusterfake.net?o=html_table&u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href));})()
More and more sites are coming up with ways to defeat it, though.


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)




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