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They don't need apps to do this. I sat in a meeting with a data broker in 1998 where one of their managers was chuffed that they could determine menstrual cycle
by kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
They don't need apps to do this. I sat in a meeting with a data broker in 1998 where one of their managers was chuffed that they could determine menstrual cycles by analyzing purchasing records. And it wasn't hygiene products. Various foods and other spending patterns pop out after a 28-day correlation over groups of women that are artificially "synced" into cohort groups.
This invasiveness will continue so long as there are no consumer data protection laws.
- beAbU 1y agoJoke's on them, my wife likes ice cream every day.
- em-bee 1y agodoes she eat more ice-cream during menstruation or pregnancy? does she change flavors? there may be patterns that you are not aware of. only a steady ice-cream subscription would be able to hide that.
- msdrider 1y ago[flagged]
- creaturemachine 1y agoWe see where you're going with that, and you really shouldn't. Besides, some men are really into it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- giantg2 1y agoThis is interesting though. How would these sorts of correlation be protected against? We already know that anonymous health data can be traced back. Gather enough data in any domain, and you can pinpoint someone.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 1y agoCan you elaborate? Because even with hygiene products, people buy them before they need them and stock up. And with food, you're often shopping for a week and for the whole family. You put things on a shopping list and don't buy them the same day you're using them, or even the same week. I suspect that even if the manager thought they could determine it, their actual "results" were entirely random. After all, how is he going to check? Call two hundred of the women and ask? Also, periods are irregular. They're not a perfect 28 days each time. They vary month to month. I don't doubt the manager thought he was doing that. I doubt it actually worked at all, though.
- creaturemachine 1y agoYou think the data brokers aren't aware of varying spending habits? You might be surprised to learn the number of people living day-to-day, cheque-to-cheque who don't have the ability to stock up on much of anything. These are the consumers who are "ripe for the picking" in marketer's eyes. Back in the late 90's this would have been much harder too, probably working with not much more than cash register receipts.
- kstrauser 1y agoFrom an advertising POV, isn’t that even better? Then they’d know when to advertise to someone to increase sales. That is, the marketers wouldn’t actually care about a woman’s cycle, but at which points they could monetize it. (Good lord, I need a shower after just typing that.)
- titusjohnson 1y ago> Because even with hygiene products, people buy them before they need them and stock up. One would think so, but in my experience this is not the case on average. Of the half-dozen long term relationships I've had, only 1 partner was ever prepared for the monthly inevitable. For everyone else it was always treated as a surprise. Suggesting to my current partner that she stock up on the products she just used was dismissed with an "oh I don't need that stuff for weeks". The trope of guys not wanting to go get tampons, or uncomfortably navigating the feminine hygiene isle, did not just appear out of nowhere.
- 1y ago
- duxup 1y agoAssuming purchase history has that clear a pattern (I'm doubtful) doesn't that mean that purchase history alone would ... what? Not be allowed? Because it could be used to determine other things? I'm not sure what consumer protections could really do much here if the pattern is obvious and the data exists.
- em-bee 1y agoread up on that case. it clearly did have a pattern. that was no random guess. i never pay with card and i don't join any member programs to avoid creating a purchase history. pattern or not, a lot can be gleaned from what i buy.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoThis theme of anecdote has been trotted out for more than a half century. In the 80’s the yarn was that a supermarket could tell when a woman was pregnant before her doctor from her purchase patterns alone. To this date, no supermarket has ever produced this result - or any thematically similar.
- areyourllySorry 1y agotarget
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoTarget’s able to confidently estimate that a woman is pregnant from 20 weeks from their purchase history, if they’d purchased pregnancy tests. A doctor can tell you 70+ days earlier. They’d probably have an equivalent outcome if they just looked at cctv footage and guessed based on weight gain.
- yieldcrv 1y agoGiven recurring purchase subscriptions from Amazon Prime, perhaps this data is different from 27 years ago
- Nasrudith 1y agoDoesn't that assume Just In Time purchasing practices on the behalf of women? Granted it depends upon the type of food. You usually don't buy restaurant food to stock up on it, but you might buy say, three tubs of ice cream because of a buy two get one free.