That call wasn’t random.

If a company can connect a casual web visit to your real phone number, browsing stops being as anonymous as most people think.

One person looked at Samsung phones, never logged in, never filled out a form, and still got a follow-up call the next day.

The likely reason is identity resolution:

ad-tech systems that match browser signals to real-world identifiers

Once you see that layer, a lot of creepy marketing stops feeling mysterious.

The article breaks down how that matching works, and why it changes how you should think about every phone number field online.