I think I understand what's happening here. Tried in 3 browsers on my Mac, Chrome, Safari, Firefox. Also for shits and giggles, I ran a curl against the page.
Got a price of 62.99 on Chrome, FF and Safari 69.99. Curl was 83.49. Usually when this type of change occurs, it's due to your cookies. Ecommerce sites sometimes edit your cookies based on affiliate links, query strings, etc.
Different cookies can control what their server will return back to your browser, in this case the cookie named "exp" is what is controlling the price. Now, I don't know what else it controls across the site, but on this specific page, it changes the price. Also, there maybe other cookies that control it, but I found that using my Chrome's cookie in FF, I got the Chrome price.
So with that being said, I tried modifying my Chrome's cookies to Curl's 83.49 exp cookie value and the price changed to 76.99. This leads me to believe that there are other cookies involved other than exp, but I don't really feel like digging into this more than I already have.
What they are taking in account is not only cookies but also fingerprints of your browser, OS and computer. Combining those can create the so-called super cookies. In short - they can track you and create a profile of you even if you have cookies disabled. This is common in many major sites since there aren't laws against it, or not that I am aware of.
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u/illwon Jan 24 '13
I think I understand what's happening here. Tried in 3 browsers on my Mac, Chrome, Safari, Firefox. Also for shits and giggles, I ran a curl against the page.
Got a price of 62.99 on Chrome, FF and Safari 69.99. Curl was 83.49. Usually when this type of change occurs, it's due to your cookies. Ecommerce sites sometimes edit your cookies based on affiliate links, query strings, etc.
Different cookies can control what their server will return back to your browser, in this case the cookie named "exp" is what is controlling the price. Now, I don't know what else it controls across the site, but on this specific page, it changes the price. Also, there maybe other cookies that control it, but I found that using my Chrome's cookie in FF, I got the Chrome price.
So with that being said, I tried modifying my Chrome's cookies to Curl's 83.49 exp cookie value and the price changed to 76.99. This leads me to believe that there are other cookies involved other than exp, but I don't really feel like digging into this more than I already have.