Paranoid Much?

I just got an email, not even spam, a legit email apparently, from DFW Airport, “Clean, Safe and Ready for the Holidays.”

Okay.

Aside from their need to use the Oxford comma, I have to wonder why I’m getting this. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never subscribed to anything asking for information on DFW. Yes, I’ve flown through there many times – who in this country who’s flown more than a handful of times has not? It’s a hub for just about every major airline except Southwest. And while it’s possible (I guess?) that at one point when I was there I logged onto a public wi-fi network or looked up a terminal map (that place is freakin’ HUGE) and inadvertently gave permission to get notifications and ads, why have I never seen anything from them before? I didn’t check, but I don’t think I’ve been through there in at least three or four years.

So maybe it’s random. Maybe it’s innocent. Maybe they bought the subscriber database from Aviation Week & Space Technology (I’m a subscriber) and they’re doing a spammy email blast. Maybe.

Or maybe…

I got a phone call this morning from one of my co-workers about something I needed to look into since she’s gone. She was at DFW, transferring planes. Does the cell phone + computers + internet + Amazon/Apple/Google/IBM group AI know the origin of that call and flag it with that data in turn being cross referenced with advertisers and spammers?

Probably not. PROBABLY not. I know there are a lot of whacked out conspiracy theories out there and all, but c’mon! How paranoid do you want to be?

But if we have our family Zoom Thanksgiving and one of the kids mentions a video game and I don’t even have a game console and don’t play video games at all and I’m not researching it for any gift ideas or anything else even remotely connected to it and then I get an email from them…

I might start to get suspicious.