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Amazon has spent years turning customer surveillance into a business model, and now we discover it apparently keeps detailed records while insulting the very people funding its empire. Nothing says customer obsession quite like treating customers as data mines and punchlines. Bezos built a trillion dollar machine that knows your shopping habits but apparently never learned basic respect.
Here’s how to check yours.
Look inside.
Article does not contain instructions on how to check yours.
It’s sort of buried in the middle:
If you’re curious what kind of haphazard observations Amazon is keeping on you, you can pull up the page by clicking on the “Account” link under the Account & Lists drop down menu. Scroll to the bottom of the page you land on and click a small link that says “manage your information” and there you have it. On mobile, you click on the profile account icon on the bottom bar, hit “Account,” then “Shopping preferences,” and then “About you.”
It does
If you’re curious what kind of haphazard observations Amazon is keeping on you, you can pull up the page by clicking on the “Account” link under the Account & Lists drop down menu. Scroll to the bottom of the page you land on and click a small link that says “manage your information” and there you have it. On mobile, you click on the profile account icon on the bottom bar, hit “Account,” then “Shopping preferences,” and then “About you.”
If you’re curious what kind of haphazard observations Amazon is keeping on you, you can pull up the page by clicking on the “Account” link under the Account & Lists drop down menu. Scroll to the bottom of the page you land on and click a small link that says “manage your information” and there you have it. On mobile, you click on the profile account icon on the bottom bar, hit “Account,” then “Shopping preferences,” and then “About you.”
It doesn’t tell you. You have to read the words.
My account has no such link…
It’s not available in every country
/u/[email protected] posted the link and that works.
I was hoping to find some saucy info on myself, but instead I got things like “prefers premium coffee brands with consistent flavor profiles” and “likely has a workshop”
I’m a professional carpenter. I buy a fair amount of tools on Amazon. But I don’t have a home workshop, I just use this stuff at work. I live in a tiny apartment haha. I just think it’s funny that amazon thinks this is all a hobby for me.
It was a boring dud for me, just that I prefer grey ELEGOO filament for my 3D printer.
I don’t buy much on Amazon, but it should be more than just filament. No notes about headphone choice or random one-of items I have bought?
It has to be looking for trends, rather than one-offs, otherwise the list would be endless for some of us.
The one I find interesting is “prefers premium shampoo brands”. My first thought was: what? But I buy “salon size” so I don’t have to buy frequently, and my kids apparently like nice stuff, so technically true but may not mean what they think it does
I’ve bought sooo many sex toys on Amazon, they definitely didn’t engage with that part of my uhhh “legacy.”
I think my favorite was “Systematically building electronics component inventory”, but pretty much the same, mostly just my brand preferences and the stuff I tend to buy.
I’m also really deliberate in how I shop Amazon though: sift through my options in a private window and once I narrow down to what I want, copy the link, remove the tracking garbage, open it in my regular window, add it to my cart, rinse and repeat. It’s probably a paper shield at best, but good to know it helps curb the “[spends an inordinate amount of time comparing items, two thirds of which are also available on Ali Express]” inference.
Systematically building electronics component inventory
Possible goal: self-hosting, possibly webshop. Possible future competition.
Concussion: nip in the bud.
Action: sending black ops team…
concussion indeed
Dammit. My AI needs work.
I got “watches diverse films extensively”
I mostly use Amazon to order stuff my tech-illiterate dad wants so everything it thinks about me is wrong.
Mine was pretty bland too. “Has 1 cat” and “reads fantasy”. I wanted to get insulted.
I’m sure the devs did a quick search for sexual keywords to clean it up after the news came out
That’s a disservice to all of us 😆
Yeah mine was super bland too which surprised me given I’ve bought stuff off them for 15 years or so. Really only references last couple of years.
I’m sus that they may have closed the exposure that is being reported
Dude, there are so many places online you can get free insults from, I mean you are already here so why not post about the Ukraine war on lemmy.ml or mistake Star Trek for Star Wars or something.
mistake Star Trek for Star Wars or something.
One’s got space magicians and the others got space wizards
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This is funny.
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As an avid fan of both, I’m not sure which is supposed to be which. Star Trek has all the pazzaz of a magician, psuedo science and technobable explainations. But it also has characters who are literally magical. Meanwhile, Star Wars has old people in secret societies performing rituals in robes - all very wizardly. However, in universe, their “magic” is very well understood, continuously studied, is testable, and even reproducable. They use their well established abilities to trick people, and that’s very magician.
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Yes.
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Yes!
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mistake Star Trek for Star Wars
I’m all about Stargate 😉
Is that the one with the gates deep in space? Deep gate 9 or something?
Your rage-baiting skills are impeccable 😆
Look, they found a way to connect to faraway regions of space and shortcut the journey, and decided a facility was necessary to protect against hostile intrusions and be a hub. Also something about returning control to the natives. Religion / religious zealots bad.
mistake Star Trek for Star Wars
There is a difference?
waits for the incoming storm
I was impressed by how many categories I made about cheese.
It thinks I really, really like Japanese curry.
And it’s goddamn right.
Maybe I’m just too honest with Alexa…
Congrats on the sweet new mood lighting for your farts
might wanna get checked for lactose intolerance then
People discovering their apps watch them.
Amazon is definitely going to plug that hole.
It’s not a hole they see it as a service. You can even give feedback on their notes about you.
I wonder if they already did… my account has no such link.
Yeah they have removed it - between when I looked at it on my phone this morning while procrastinating about getting out of bed and now it has been removed from the UK website - the below link still works (modified to .uk)
Yeah… I think the link is still sanitized and not what everyone else was seeing…
There’s the ticket… thank you!
Either that or they "haven’t collected any data on me yet… "
Seems to be a US-thing. I see the preferences, but they’re all empty.
Same for me.
So the question is, is the data not collected on you, or is it not presented to you?
The second interpretation seems more likely given the context.
It might depend on which country you’re in as to what they’re allowed to actually collect. Personally I suspect that they’d have built a profile on me, but they just haven’t rolled this out to Australia yet.
Since we can still request data
Its definitely the latter
The “manage your information” section doesn’t exist where I’m at.
(Yes, I did a text search)
Instead, we have “request your data” which likely would give you complete files of all data they have on you. I’m not going to crawl through that right now.
Even though I’m on desktop, I had to follow the article’s mobile directions to find the relevant page. Here is a direct link that may work.
“useAiMode=1”? Really?
It’s what triggers the page the article’s about. Take it off and you get a totally different page.
That is all that I’m finding, too… I wonder if they already ‘fixed’ it.
I was able to find it by following the mobile app instructions. Mine was pretty boring. It had stuff like “Likely lives in (city where I ship my orders)” and “Likely favors (brand of thing that I’ve bought multiple times)”. I guess the most invasive thing is that it guessed I live alone, or rather that I “likely has one adult.”
Look for “About me”
Oh that’s it. I did not see it as described in original article.
Mine shows nothing wildly wrong or insulting(which I was hoping to see). It knows I grill, fix household stuff, (“Systematically maintains homes systems”) thinks I have a singular child (I have many), that I am “invested in the Apple ecosystem), what brand of car I drive and that I have a GE stovetop. Alll things I have bought items for off Amazon.
Honestly I expected to see a lot more.
I selected the request to get advertisement related. Theb they sent a freaking email with a confirmation link. I decided to go through.
After selecting that, they say something like, “it should be completed in a month, but it can take more time because of high request volumes.”
Yeah a database query is going to take a month.
I’ve done data requests to Google to get all my YouTube and Google photos data in the past. Both took less than a few days, despite the latter covering over 100GB of data.
The former I did so I could get all my subscriptions into a third party client, the latter was so I could easily get all my photos with their metadata into an alternative hosting platform. These data request tools can be useful.
It took reddit a month (to the day IIRC) to send me my data as well (like everything I’d ever written on the site) when I requested all my info just before I left. Must be some law that says a month in it somewhere.
Yeah, I’m not seeing the exact link either as described in the article.
I found the “About You” link at the top of the “Ordering and shopping preferences” section.
It also claimed someone kept a “seasonal rotation of decorative goose outfits,”
Now I’m interested
That reminds me that I need to get some new seasonal outfits for MY decorative goose…
This whole thread is just astroturfing for big seasonal goose and you fell right into their trap!
And here I was looking to dress my goose in decorative outfits…
One of the items on my profile is “Probably lives in [my city], [my state]”. They have my shipping address, shouldn’t they be a bit more confident about it?
They were wrong about me on that one, though it is a place I’ve shipped a good deal to.
Amusingly mine had probably lives at [previous suburb] and an item for relocation stuff but they should know my current address…they ship to it regularly
ITT: lemmy the billionaire hating hard working communists check their billionaire money giving app for a bit of cheeky fun based on all the money they’ve given them
sure buddy, enjoy your starbucks
Mine just says I might like brands I’ve bought repeatedly and might own items I’ve bought accessories for.
My first item “uses Linux”… But does it know I use arch btw?
This definitely seems to be US-based at the moment. The relevant page doesn’t exist on the Australian site, but if I log into the Amazon US site, it is there (albeit blank in my case, which is interesting).
Same in France
It’s in the UK version. On iPhone: You --> Account (along the top) --> Your Shopping preferences (under Personalization) --> About You (at the bottom).
I can‘t find any of that in the German/EU version. Instead I can select interests if I want to. I‘m going to assume they don‘t have any of that heavy profiling here.
I live in the UK and used the UK web version, it has nothing. Maybe because I have almost entirely stopped using Amazon?
The UK web version definitely doesn’t have any such link for me.
I found it on the UK web version but I had to use the browser’s search function to find it on the page.
It had nothing, which I’m hoping because I’ve previously opted out of analytics?
I used the search (the ctrl-f search) and found nothing
- Side bar --> You Account (see all)
- Scroll down to Account Settings --> Shopping Preferences
It was pretty accurate about my interests which I saw no problem with (“prefers reliable open source ecosystems”), but took issue with it guessing the size of my family, so I updated it to say that I live in an underground bunker with 10 others in a polycule.
I also updated my halloween decoration preferences to suggest I fight crime at night
Can’t wait to see what my next searches are like 👀
There’s no “account settings” in the “your account” page. There’s no “see all”, and there’s also no “shopping preferences”. I assume you’re being served a different page to me.
that one worked thanks :)
About You (at the bottom).
Now we know how you like it
The moment that Amazon not only blocked my account from ordering after some payment hiccups, but also that of my girlfriend, who was living at a different place at the time, was the moment I disabled my Amazon account completely.
I at the time also had a look into what I could find in the settings about what they still stored about me:
They still had my detailed order history dating back to 1996, when I first used the service to buy books, giving a nice, very personal overview about what topics I had been interested in over the decades.This has been in 2011 already, so unfortunately nothing new.
Looking through the info they have on me, it seems entirely made up of information regarding past purchases and shipping locations. It mentioned having 2 people at my address, but said other person has an account linked to mine and with the same shipping address, so it’s all relatively shallow information. I didn’t see any deep dive “HOW DID THEY GET THAT??” stuff that would otherwise be alarming.
Edit: I should add that I don’t own or use any of their Alexa products or any related technology. Those might spy on people a little more thoroughly.
