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Would you like a rude, and perhaps slightly humorous, reminder of how much data surveillance Amazon conducts on its customers? Have we got the thing for you!<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, one customer shared<\/a> how she accidentally stumbled on an obscure section on the Amazon<\/a> website that most of us overlook. It contained, to her horror, a \u201cpage of assumptions that\u00a0Amazon has made about me based on my purchases and I\u2019m literally speechless.\u201d<\/p>\n In a screenshot she provided, she highlighted one standout. Amazon, with brutal objectivity, asserted that she \u201chas flat buttocks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI mean it ain\u2019t wrong but damn did you have to call me out like that?\u201d the customer wrote in the Threads post<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post quickly went viral, racking up well over a million views. Soon, others were sharing the strange dossiers that the e-commerce giant was keeping on them \u2014 some of it invasive, some of it funny, and some of it bizarre.<\/p>\n A few examples were also downright insulting.<\/p>\n The Amazon page said that one woman \u201chas no friends\u201d \u2014 in addition to describing her as a \u201cfifty-year-old man.\u201d Another customer\u2019s page said she hasn\u2019t \u201cworn a medium size in anything in years.\u201d And another said the customer \u201chas a stomach that hangs over their vagina.\u201d<\/p>\n Some got creepy. \u201cUses phone in the shower to read Kindle books,\u201d Amazon said of one customer, who confirmed that the habit was true. \u201cI mean yes but wtf,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Injecting some levity back in this topic, there were also plenty of inane and silly inferences.<\/p>\n One customer was baffled that the Amazon dossier asserted that they liked \u201cbrunettes with muscles.\u201d It also claimed someone kept a \u201cseasonal rotation of decorative goose outfits,\u201d and that someone else \u201ccannot keep real plants alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes, the dossiers tell a story. \u201cLikely prefers Ben & Jerry\u2019s for premium ice cream,\u201d one asserted, before expanding in the next section: \u201cExplore premium ice cream flavors in a concentrated period.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re curious what kind of haphazard observations Amazon is keeping on you, you can pull up the page by clicking on the \u201cAccount\u201d 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 \u201cmanage your information\u201d and there you have it. On mobile, you click on the profile account icon on the bottom bar, hit \u201cAccount,\u201d then \u201cShopping preferences,\u201d and then \u201cAbout you.\u201d<\/p>\n In all likelihood, Amazon could have more dirt on you than it\u2019s letting on. And it certainly isn\u2019t the only company keeping this much data on its customers, though the post is a recent humorous example of how more people are coming face to face with these practices. It recently came to light via a Wired investigation<\/a>, for example, that McDonalds was keeping hundreds of pages worth of intel on its customers<\/a> and using the data to predict stuff like how often the customer is expected to stop by.<\/p>\n