6 ms·

I think the creepy feeling comes in that you don't realize the merchant is profiling you. At least not until they tip their hand a little too much (like sendin

by ben1040 15y ago

I think the creepy feeling comes in that you don't realize the merchant is profiling you. At least not until they tip their hand a little too much (like sending you an entire booklet of nothing but maternity stuff). You get a Safeway club card and you know full well that they're tracking you, because you hand them the card every shopping trip. Or you use Amazon or Netflix, where customers really want to be tracked -- the tracking and data mining are part of the draw, because they have such good suggestion engines. I had LASIK a few years back and bought dry eye drops from Target - a lot of them, over six months time. Then my eyes healed and I quit buying it. A month later I get a coupon generated by a Target cash register for Systane drops, the exact brand I used to buy. I guess they thought I started buying them at Walgreens instead? It was only when they gave me a coupon for a specific brand and product, that most of the population would likely not buy on a typical weekly shopping trip, that I realized all my purchases were being tracked and linked by my credit card number. All that time before then, their prediction engine was selecting coupons for completely unrelated products, and I was using the coupons not even thinking about it.

maxerickson 15y ago
The register printed coupons I get have plenty enough digits on them to be individually tracked. I imagine they are, but I haven't tried to figure it out. Several uses do come to mind, tracking the campaign, linking credit cards, things like that.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  If you pay cash they can give a coupon to have a second go at adding purchases to your history, what's better is they're things you thought you'd kept off your history - it's cool in an evil overlord sort of way. I find that Tesco give coupons for whole cart discount at a purchase price of about 25% above our average spend. That's a good tactic too.
brigade 15y ago
Amazon's been annoying me lately because it somehow got convinced that I'm a 30 year old woman and won't stop showing me dresses and jewelry on the front page, neither of which I have ever bought. What can you even do when their core profile of you is completely off-base? Amazon at least lets you fine-tune a little bit, but not enough to say, "no you're completely wrong" short of starting over with a new account. Which is a lot harder with physical stores...
- zecho 15y ago
  Yeah. Sometimes the stats get it horribly wrong. I recently purchased new stove plates and burners and that's pretty much all they've been recommending to me for a few weeks. As though it's some kind of oft-recurring purchase or something? It seems to me, at least in my case, that they're missing a crucial piece of data (frequency of purchasing a particular product), and I expect it to eventually correct itself. But in your case, I have no idea. Maybe try contacting them?
- wmf 15y ago
  Check out http://www.amazon.com/gp/history/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/history/ and https://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/iyr https://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/iyr where you can delete stuff that Amazon knows; this may fix recommendation problems.
  - akeck 15y ago
    Note, also, that Amazon has a checkbox along the lines of "this is a gift" in the purchasing workflow. I think this keeps the item out of your history.
  - jerhewet 15y ago
    Thanks for both of those links -- and for scaring the crap out of me when I clicked the second one and got to the bottom of the page. "1 - 15 of 534" Five hundred and thirty-four purchases. Like having a cattle prod jammed into the back of my head.
- a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
  "What can you even do when their core profile of you is completely off-base?" Shop logged out, don't log in until you've decided.
  - zuppy 15y ago
    It's not hard to track you even this way, if you're using the same browser. You already have a unique code assigned to you (the session id) and they can make a permanent cookie too, so it will be the same the next time you open the browser. When you login, they just link everything together. I'm not saying they're doing it, but it's not hard to do. Of course, there are ways to avoid that, like using different browsers or removing cookies. And even this way, they can link your data with pretty with high accuracy if they use your ip and time (how many people that are on the same IP, that is known to belong to an ISP and not a corporate ip range shop on the same time on the same site?).

by ben1040 15y ago

maxerickson 15y ago

The register printed coupons I get have plenty enough digits on them to be individually tracked. I imagine they are, but I haven't tried to figure it out. Several uses do come to mind, tracking the campaign, linking credit cards, things like that.

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
If you pay cash they can give a coupon to have a second go at adding purchases to your history, what's better is they're things you thought you'd kept off your history - it's cool in an evil overlord sort of way. I find that Tesco give coupons for whole cart discount at a purchase price of about 25% above our average spend. That's a good tactic too.

brigade 15y ago

Amazon's been annoying me lately because it somehow got convinced that I'm a 30 year old woman and won't stop showing me dresses and jewelry on the front page, neither of which I have ever bought. What can you even do when their core profile of you is completely off-base? Amazon at least lets you fine-tune a little bit, but not enough to say, "no you're completely wrong" short of starting over with a new account. Which is a lot harder with physical stores...

zecho 15y ago
Yeah. Sometimes the stats get it horribly wrong. I recently purchased new stove plates and burners and that's pretty much all they've been recommending to me for a few weeks. As though it's some kind of oft-recurring purchase or something? It seems to me, at least in my case, that they're missing a crucial piece of data (frequency of purchasing a particular product), and I expect it to eventually correct itself. But in your case, I have no idea. Maybe try contacting them?
wmf 15y ago
Check out http://www.amazon.com/gp/history/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/history/ and https://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/iyr https://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/iyr where you can delete stuff that Amazon knows; this may fix recommendation problems.
- akeck 15y ago
  Note, also, that Amazon has a checkbox along the lines of "this is a gift" in the purchasing workflow. I think this keeps the item out of your history.
- jerhewet 15y ago
  Thanks for both of those links -- and for scaring the crap out of me when I clicked the second one and got to the bottom of the page. "1 - 15 of 534" Five hundred and thirty-four purchases. Like having a cattle prod jammed into the back of my head.
a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
"What can you even do when their core profile of you is completely off-base?" Shop logged out, don't log in until you've decided.
- zuppy 15y ago
  It's not hard to track you even this way, if you're using the same browser. You already have a unique code assigned to you (the session id) and they can make a permanent cookie too, so it will be the same the next time you open the browser. When you login, they just link everything together. I'm not saying they're doing it, but it's not hard to do. Of course, there are ways to avoid that, like using different browsers or removing cookies. And even this way, they can link your data with pretty with high accuracy if they use your ip and time (how many people that are on the same IP, that is known to belong to an ISP and not a corporate ip range shop on the same time on the same site?).