Slashdot Mirror
Online Purchases Can Give You Away
Abhishek writes "New Scientist reports that Retailers could guess your age, sex, birthday and wedding anniversary simply from the types of gifts purchased for you online and their timing, according to a patent granted to online retail giant, Amazon.
The information could be used to remind your loved ones of an impending special occasion and offer gift suggestions.
Currently Amazon makes personalised suggestions to customers based on previous purchases by that customer, previous web pages browsed and comparisons between customers who have bought similar products. But the company may vastly increase its predictive capability in the future."
Demographics can be reversed!
... that if it's from a man it's probably being given/ordered late?
Stop buying me those Barbra Streisand DVDs for God's sake!
Amazon.com: "It's time to purchase Rocco's true anal stories 29!"
Wife: "WTF?"
Your purchases of:
1. Childrens clothing (young female)
2. Childrens Videos (Mecha fighting robots IV)
3. 'Fairy' Wand
4. 'Young Princess' wings and headband.
Indicate that you are a 40yr old Male, Single... probably naked right now...
I wonder if the potential benefits would outway the possible embarrassments - I can think of lots of cases where a wrong guess could alienate customers, from reminding you to purchase a birthday gift for a loved one who has passed on to assuming someone is older than they really are. I wonder how good the software is and how subtly their guesses will be manifested to the customer.
Safeway has been doing this for years. Some friends of ours got a card in the mail shortly after they had a baby, congratulating them on their new addition, and offering them these fine baby products, available at Safeway. A year later they got a "happy birthday" card for the baby with some coupons and such.
Do not read this sig.
... Or just ask them. As long as retailers don't ask for my social security number or other vital information, I don't mind giving up my gender, zip code, or whatever.
/.ers visited Amazon and said "Hey, I'm a [computer|history|physics] geek" then I'm sure Amazon of all people would go: "Hey, let's pitch him SnowClash, Digital Fortress, or tech books."
I know the power of data collection, and how it can influence markets. If a bunch of
I personally don't want my potential anniversary date posted online (I have a female compatriot, just happen to be 17), but hell, if Amazon is willing to say "Hey numnuts, your anniversary is in a week. You better get her something!" then I'd be glad.
--
Help a poor high-schooler?
If someone buys a casket for you, will they stop spamming you ?
What keeps me going is my inertia.
The patent describes software that automatically guesses ...
I got birthdaycards from several companies who also guessed my birthday by looking in the database. Also some emails from companies that did the same.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
They dont have me! I don't have a wife or a girlfriend hahahahaha!!!
Haha!
Ha...
ha...
Oh. Dammit. I don't 'any' either.
I want to change demographics now.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
1. Buy an expensive gift?
2. Buy a really expensive gift?
3. Spend $50 for the special "have the invoice dated last week" HubbySaver(tm) feature?
4. Cringe in abject terror?
5. Sleep on the couch?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Not only that, but try ordering a gift subscription of "Zoobooks" for someone else's kids. I now get mail for every child's product under the sun. I'm single, and childless, and it's annoying.
However, it's only slightly less annoying than the mailing list I'm on where they've confused me with my Dad, and I get AARP and health care mail all the time.
Put them together, and somewhere, there's a database that thinks I'm a 70 year old that's having tons of kids.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
Dear short, fat, balding, over-the-hill, poorly-dressed, divorced and lonely couch-potato. We have some wonderful discounts to fit in with your special life-style....
Table-ized A.I.
If you read the article a little deeper, the general idea is that the software system described is used to guess the purchasing habits of friends and family based on stereotypes derived from information gathered from these messages.
This is no different than someone assuming that if you are some random black guy who happens to like rap music that if you send a message to another friend with the keyword "rap" that it assumes that the recipient of that message must also like rap music.
When marketroids are allowed to segment human beings into every imaginable stereotypical group they can think of, it may be useful for making those advertising dollars a little more efficient, but the cost to society is huge in that people stop sharing similarities as they are encouraged to go retreat to their own little islands of likeminded thinkers.
It is almost like politics in America right now, where pollsters and political pundits have managed to reprogram much of the American electorate into foolishly believing that they are part of some narrowly defined group like the "religious right", or "extreme left" or that they are a "Reagan Republican" or a "NASCAR Dad".
So, instead of society being encouraged to try to create art, ideas, products, services, government programs, etc. which try to serve the public good in a general way, the only thing you see nowadays is ridiculous levels of customization in everything around us that divide people rather than unite them.
It is like people can now go to whatever news outlet they want whether it be the Communist Broadcasting Service or Fox News not to get an objective view on what goes on around the world, but rather to hear news with a distinct political spin to make themselves feel better about "being right" when it comes to their position on any given issue.
This is just another step in the corporatization of America where people voluntarily give up their freedom and rational minds by being fooled into believing that allowing corporations to create a virtual caste system through modern marketing methods is actually a good thing.
I'm buying Christmas cards tomorrow....
...that'll throw them off my trail...
I had a similar experience with HP. Somehow I got subscribed to a newsletter from visiting their website. It was mostly worthless, but I'd scan them every once in a while to keep up with their products and things.
After a time the newsletter was re-vamped, and I got something saying they would now be suggesting articles and things to based on my "preferences". Somehow I remember it was an exciting new HP AI technology they were testing, and HP would be offering it to their business customers.
At first, the suggested articles weren't very "personalized" and wading through a bunch of suggested articles that seemed to have nothing to do with my interests made me want to unsubscribe.
All of a sudden, though, I began getting suggested articles like "Don't you think Linux sucks? Click here to read more" that would actually link to articles on the HP website talking about how Windows had a better ROI or something. Although the articles were real, the "suggestions" that pointed to the articles were obviously computer generated or pieced together from a list of pre-generated phrases.
Needless to say, I've since unsubscribed to this most unhelpful service. I'd like to take this opportunity to give an obligatory "fuck you, Carly".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I ordered a gift from Victoria's Secret once. Now they send me their catalogues all the time. I really don't mind.
My dot-com experience was with a company that administers a loyalty program. We would collect data from all of our partner businesses, and attach them to persons using the credit card numbers.
From there we had simple heuristics to look for paterns (activity at a catering establishment and a purchase at a bridal shop?) and sell these profiles back to partner businesses for targeted advertisement.
Outside of only paying in cash, and never using your legitimate information except where absolutely essential, I can't see much way to avoid it. Way things are going, it'll only get worse unless we enact legislation to prohibit that kind of activity.
I think we're all missing something important, here: It's a patent.
This means that ONLY Amazon is allowed to ruthlessly invade your privacy.
So all you have to do is not shop at Amazon and you'll be safe from the data miners forever!
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
I think that's why tech people like here at slashdot tend to be anti-technology when everybody else thinks it's great....basicly we're sickos that have already explored where pervasive stuff like this goes...but we're so far out there nobody will listen to us till it's too late. The biggest "oxymoron" I've had in that department was trying to explain why this type of techo-spying is so bad for employers and workers and such to a HR manager who has a religous Phd in administration and was a baptist minister... That showed me that even the brightest most well-intentioned people really don't understand just what they're giving away in the electronic/information era! When even the most scholared religous people don't "get it" how can you expect all the grandmas and grandpas out there to understand that we may have to stop using the internet for "everything" because to make it "safe" requires giving up too much of the personal freedom and responsibility we enshrined in the Constitution. Too many people don't really understand how and why the Constitution was written...it was written by a bunch of left-wing nut jobs...even for their time... but it was that radical thinking that made it stand the test of time...remember the politicans first attemept at the US didn't work!
I hate to say it like this, but so? Amazon could have most of this information if they wanted by just running a credit report. Of course they don't want to pay for that, but it isn't exactly difficult to get one's information these days.
Listen, if having my age, sex, birthdate, anniversary, purchasing history, and websites I A9'd for on file allows them to push the crap down and let float to the top only those things that I want, more power to them. If they could have known for example last week exactly what I happened to be looking for, and popped it up on their home page when I visited, I'm sure I would have bought my castanetes from them. Their price is only 2 dollars more than the place I bought them from, and that was after hours of searching. If they're willing to remind me that my friend's birthday is coming up, I could probably use the reminder anyway.
A problem could arise if, say, there were something in there that were both incriminating and about to be used incorrectly in a court of law. But at some point we have to accept that this is not a public body and if it were that the courts wouldn't use circumstancial evidence lightly. But the risk of the government seraching my amazon records and deciding that I'm a criminal who is friends with other criminals is very low. I see a lot less risk there than, say, what they're trying to pull with the TSA.
If amazon can put something in front of me that I have to have every time I go to their site, more power to them. I want things that I want, and I'm kind of tired of having to wade through the junk to find it.
The ______ Agenda
Amazon makes personalised suggestions to customers based on previous purchases by that customer...the company may vastly increase its predictive capability in the future.
Given Amazon's unerring ability to recommend only books that already own, I imagine this means that they will begin recommending the ones that I have just added to the cart.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.