The browser SRW Iron has an incognito window facility. The search engine Duckduckgo has a private browsing facility. Use these two and you won't have to worry about MAC, BOOTS or GLOVES (OK, I'll get me hat . . .)

I doubt if the remote site is looking at your MAC address.
I would be surprised if it were using your IP address.
It may be using a cookie to detect a repeat visitor.

The more likely scenario is that it's like some companies I deal with (the local railway company is one) where they offer so many seats at "not a lot", then some at "a bit more" and so on, until on the day of travel you pay the full fare.
If I book to go to London in a month's time, I can probably get a ticket for £8 to £12. If I book for next week, it will be around £20. If I pitch up at the station on the day it will be around £60.

If the memsahib sees a price increase from site visit to site visit, I would suggest it's probably to do with the date and time of the visit.

With 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999% confidence, I can tell you it'll be number three.

Number one is not technically possible, at all, ever. MAC addresses are OSI Layer 2. So we can rule that one out 100% guaranteed.

Number two is technically possible, but rather pointless to do, because of the effects of firewalls hiding multiple independent users (e.g. people at work surfing behind the corporate firewall).... hence most e-commerce websites will only use IP addresses as part of their fraud prevention measures at payment stage.... they are unlikely to use it during pricing (other than perhaps to automatically try to figure out which country you are in).

Hence we're left with number 3, cookies ( or their HTML5 equivalent, local or session storage).

[ Hence we're left with number 3, cookies .......]


So ....... do we deny cookies, and are then denied further progress, or immediately delete cookies at the end of the visit ?


Isn't the latter choice pointless anyway, having had to allow cookies for the visit isn't that then recorded against us, and when we next visit, and have to allow cookies again, they say Ah! Hah ! here they come again, we'll screw them now ?


Dunno, it all smells of sharp practice to me, if the first "not a lot" price gives them the operating profit that they require, and I don't believe that they will operate at a loss, "Loss leaders" not withstanding, then all the future increases are just usuary in my book. Bar stewards.

Cookies are stored on your PC, not their server.

SD

I think my number 4 is the most likely. As time passes, the "special offer" prices fade away. It depends, of course, on what the product is...

[As time passes, the "special offer" prices fade away.]


Agreed, my point exactly.


I doubt that Loss Leaders are actually a "loss", more likely a "Less Profit Leader", but then I've never been in retail marketing, so don't know, and don't really care, all I know is that if "they" are prepared to sell at the initial price, then that is the right price as far as I'm concerned and anything higher is just screwing me, like trying to get me to buy the "Large economy" size at a greater price then two half-sized packets, but I'm on to that. I'm on to this other practice as well, but not yet worked out how to beat it.


"Sometimes" - I have a choice, but sadly not always.


Life's a constant battle. "All 'tWorld's queer 'cept thee an' me, an' I'm none so sure 'bout thee" !!

As you rightly say, don't deny cookies because 99% of e-commerce websites these days rely on cookies for some degree of functionality.... its vary rare (if not technically impossible) to find one that doesn't because HTTP is a stateless protocol, so to make things like shopping carts work, cookies (or a technical alternative) are very much required.

So what you should to is have your web browser configured to automatically delete cookies upon close. Then that's done for you, and if you have the need to delete your cookies sooner than browser close, then you can do that yourself manually.

[...........then you can do that yourself manually.]


Thanks, I think the price hike is probably not necessarily specific to ones personal visits, but is a reflection of the overall interest, as in "hey, looks like we're on a winner here, so let's sock it to them " in which case removing ones' own cookies is like a drop in the ocean to the result.


Still, every bit helps.

There's confusion about the MAC address. My original reason for mentioning it is that changing it is a quick way of getting a DHCP server to give you a different IP address when you reboot or at least restart your network interface and request an IP address. It's extremely unlikely that anything outside your local network knows anything about your MAC address.

Now, if you're using IPv6 that might not be true...