Is Amazon spying on us? Please hear me out before alerting a "kooky" post..

[question everything]

In general I dislike Amazon. I think that it followed Walmart in driving small retail stores out of business.

But spouse, in addition to getting Kindle books, is always searching. When I despair that regular stores: Target, ACE, no longer carry items that I used to purchase, or just every day items like 12 oz water glasses or small desert plates (at reasonable price), spouse scrolls the screen showing me many choices.

It happened again this weekend and today I agreed to go with Amazon.

Earlier today I noticed that I am using the last pair of Nitrille gloves, they are better than plain rubber gloves. Last year we purchased them from Amazon because the local hardware store did not carry size Small. But we decided to wait with placing another order.

Now, before retiring, spouse got an email notifying him of when the order will arrive and at the bottom of the email was a "reminder" of previous orders... the Nitrille gloves!

How does Amazon know that we are thinking of ordering these gloves?? No, we do not have Alexa nor a similar device. Spouse speculates that this is Siri. Both our iPhones were around but, still??

[Tetrachloride]

1. I will summarize 2 ways of tracking

1. cookies, tracking pixels, your ip address,your phone number and probably a kind of device ID. The combination of these builds what the tracking companies (any e-commerce company) knows.

2. Suppose that most of the above isn’t possible. each link we click can be made into another link, packed with tracking info. link upon link


it takes skill and vigilance to block tracking. and not worth the effort to go all out . but some of us try.

some of my paragraphs above is overly simplified in order to be concise and because i have not been in the heart of e-commerce to know all.

dozens of companies might be tracking you from a single click . amazon especially

[question everything]

2. Thank you. I agree it is not worth it. Just be more careful

I even wonder whether, absent minded spouse did search for the gloves..

[Skittles]

12. do what I do

do several bullshit searches a day so they don't know which ones are real

for example, I searched for "gay crocodiles" today

[question everything]

13. LOL. How many hits?

[happybird]

3. Phones are always listening

I have microphone and camera access blocked on every app that i can but it’s still not enough.

Things my coworkers and I talk about (and we talk a large array of random shit, things I have never googled) will pop up on my phone as ads or amazon suggestions or on my YouTube home page. When I am speaking a lot of Spanish at work my YouTube ads will be in Spanish for a few days.

I think it happened today. Yesterday I was telling a friend about Black Star, the David Bowie song. Today it was in my Top Picks in YT Music. I’ve only ever watched the video, never played it on the music app.

I’ve got Siri disabled. Supposedly she is very very nosy. She’s probably your culprit

[Tetrachloride]

5. check your privacy settings under microphone?

[question everything]

9. Thanks. Where can I find it? I am relatively new to this. Someplace in Settings?

[Tetrachloride]

10. we find it in:

1. Settings / Privacy / Microphone

I turned off most apps for microphone.

Similarly for camera. Mostly off.

2. Settings / Privacy / Camera


I keep messaging apps on. Safari and most anything else : off.


start with those and we’re better

[question everything]

11. Thanks. All I have is for messenger and WhatsApp. Also App Clips where there is nothing

I don't use the Messenger and rarely WhatsApp

[question everything]

8. Thanks. Yes. I have often seen ads for things that we talked about

As a matter of fact, I once posted here, we were watching a TV program about WWII and I asked why Hitler decided to invade the USSR and spouse replied: because he was an idiot. Next thing, Siri next popped in "That's not nice.."

[NJCher]

4. Here's a weird one

Not Amazon but…

One morning the school called me and said they were really shorthanded and could I please come over to help? I said sure.

They asked if I would help out a particular teacher and they pointed out that they knew I would like her.

When the teacher opened the door of her classroom, I did a double take because she was wearing a dress that was popping up for me as an ad as I clicked around the net.

Sure enough, this teacher and I worked very well together. We learned that we had a number of common interests and at the end of the day I knew I had made a new friend.

The school knew we were a type, advertisers seemed to know we were a type.

How does that happen?

[halfulglas]

6. As to the gloves, if it's not the first time from Amazon, they keep

Track of the interval between previous orders. I sometimes get reminders from past purchases even though I don't have it as (I forget what they call it) on the list for frequent purchases. My ex in olden days before everyone had a computer used to keep what he called a Tickler file. It kind of reminded him when to contact a customer even if they didn't need anything. It's an old sales tool, but Amazon can get really annoying, always recommending things I've already bought or something similar to it. I know I can just delete it, which I usually do, but it's uses time, because I often check it out just in case before I delete it.

[Scrivener7]

7. Yes. They are. In so many ways.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016346626