The more and more we rely on and use technology, the more and more we put ourselves in a position of being “known.” And the proof is in the Amazon pudding; it’s now being suggested that depending on how much you shop, watch and read with the huge internet company, they may know more about you than any other company on earth. And it’s even more than you might realize.
Besides knowing about what you’ve browsed or bought on their site, they know what you’ve asked Alexa, watched on Amazon Prime, and read on your Kindle. And now, thanks to their ownership of Whole Foods, Ring, Eero, Twitch, Goodreads, IMDB and Audible, they know more than just that. (As if that wasn’t enough!)
Amazon.com: Everything you have bought, plus the things you have just put in your cart, or searched for, or added to a wish list, or just browsed on Amazon (and Amazon-owned sites like Zappos and Diapers.com). And they know all of your addresses and the names and addresses of anyone you’ve ever sent stuff to.
Kindle (digital books) and Audible (audio books): All the books you’ve read, plus how far into the book you got. Amazon also knows which books you have browsed or sampled, and what passages you’ve highlighted in Kindle.
Fire tablets: Amazon’s tablets run a custom version of Android, providing the company with lots of data since it, not Google, powers the browsing and app store on the devices. For search, users have a choice of Bing, Yahoo, Google or DuckDuckGo.
Prime Video (streaming video): What you’ve watched, browsed and search for.
Twitch (streaming game videos): What you’ve watched, browsed and searched for.
Ring (smart doorbells and security gear): For customers with a paid recording plan, Amazon stores videos for 30 to 120 days depending on location, or until a customer manually deletes the video. Recordings for those who don’t subscribe to a plan are deleted automatically unless a customer posts a video to the publicly available Neighbors app.
Eero (wi-fi routers): One of Amazon’s most recent acquisitions, Eero sells a mesh wi-fi router system. To do its job, like any home router, Eero’s device knows every Web site you go to, but the company says it doesn’t collect or store this information. (Eero detailed its practices in a blog post after the Amazon acquisition.)
IMDB (movie and TV database): Although this is probably one of the lesser privacy concerns in Amazon world, your taste in movies can say a lot about you.
Goodreads (book-centric social network): The focus may be on books, but Amazon is also building a social graph of the service’s bookworm members, in addition to getting more details on what sort of topics members are interested in.
Whole Foods (grocery store): Now that Amazon owns the upscale supermarket, if you shop here Amazon knows your grocery list, too. Whole Foods already offers deals to Prime members, linking the purchases of its best online customers with those buying offline.
Last but not least, the following services are also collecting data and information on you:1
Key by Amazon: An optional delivery service for Prime members that literally invites the Everything Store into your home, car or garage to deliver goods ordered online. Amazon stresses that no one enters your premises without explicit permission, that delivery personnel don’t themselves get access codes, and all of them undergo background checks.
Amazon Go: The company’s cashier-less stores rely on deep surveillance of its aisles to allow customers to buy products without a formal checkout process. To do that, Amazon uses an array of cameras and sensors to determine who is taking what off the shelves.
Advertising: One of Amazon’s fastest-growing businesses is serving up ads, a testament to just how much it knows about you. (They even “sometimes” include third-party audience information to increase the relevance of their ads although they do give customers the option of opting out by selecting “do not show me interest-based ads from Amazon” on its advertising preferences page.)
Amazon Web Services: Amazon’s cloud-computing service leads the market, capturing 32% of the global spend.
How can you protect yourself against this behemoth? Make sure to always delete your browsing history, mute Alexa and delete any recordings on the device, and use other stores. Although no one else is as big, you can make the decision to first shop local. In fact, whenever possible, for the health of your city and its inhabitants, shop local. By doing so you will also protect your information.
Do you use Amazon? If you’ve stopped using them, who is your new goto?
Erin Elizabeth is a long time activist with a passion for the healing arts, working in that arena for a quarter century. Her site, not even six years old cracked the top natural health sites within the first year of its inception. She is an author, public speaker, and has recently done some TV and film programs for some of her original work which have attracted international media coverage. Erin was the recipient of the Doctors Who Rock Truth in Journalism award for 2017. You can get Erin’s free e-book here and also watch a short documentary on how she overcame vaccine injuries, Lyme disease, significant weight gain, and more. Follow Erin on Telegram, Twitter, and her other social media platforms.
