Amazon Launches Program To Pay Consumers For Their Data On Non-Amazon Purchases (techcrunch.com) 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon has launched a new program that directly pays consumers for information about what they're purchasing outside of Amazon.com and for responding to short surveys. The program, Amazon Shopper Panel, asks users to send in 10 receipts per month for any purchases made at non-Amazon retailers, including grocery stores, department stores, drug stores and entertainment outlets (if open), like movie theaters, theme parks and restaurants. Amazon's own stores, like Whole Foods, Amazon Go, Amazon Four Star and Amazon Books do not qualify.
Program participants will take advantage of the newly launched Amazon Shopper Panel mobile app on iOS and Android to take pictures of paper receipts that qualify or they can opt to forward emailed receipts to receipts@panel.amazon.com to earn a $10 reward that can then be applied to their Amazon Balance or used as a charitable donation. Amazon says users can then earn additional rewards each month for every survey they complete. The optional surveys will ask about brands and products that may interest the participant and how likely they are to purchase a product. Other surveys may ask what the shopper thinks of an ad. These rewards may vary, depending on the survey. The program is currently opt-in and invite-only for U.S. consumers only.
The report also notes that Amazon "will delete any sensitive information from the receipts users upload, like prescription information." Importantly, Amazon "doesn't delete users' personal information, instead storing it in accordance with its existing Privacy Policy. It will allow users to delete their previously uploaded receipts, if they choose."
Program participants will take advantage of the newly launched Amazon Shopper Panel mobile app on iOS and Android to take pictures of paper receipts that qualify or they can opt to forward emailed receipts to receipts@panel.amazon.com to earn a $10 reward that can then be applied to their Amazon Balance or used as a charitable donation. Amazon says users can then earn additional rewards each month for every survey they complete. The optional surveys will ask about brands and products that may interest the participant and how likely they are to purchase a product. Other surveys may ask what the shopper thinks of an ad. These rewards may vary, depending on the survey. The program is currently opt-in and invite-only for U.S. consumers only.
The report also notes that Amazon "will delete any sensitive information from the receipts users upload, like prescription information." Importantly, Amazon "doesn't delete users' personal information, instead storing it in accordance with its existing Privacy Policy. It will allow users to delete their previously uploaded receipts, if they choose."
Consumer Privacy Advocates Rejoice (Score:3)
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Pervert?
Doesn't matter, your dildos are graph points (Score:3)
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nothing could be more anti-sexual
Your garden isn't lush enough to screen your patio from the street then. Sex outdoors with people walking just a few feet away can be awfully stimulating.
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Or contacting the police. That is perfect gear for burying a body off the beaten path.
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"What irks me so much is why they even want this data so much. "
They want to know what you buy where and what you pay for it. It's pure gold for them.
And your shops won't exist anymore in the near future.
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The Subject seemed promising, and it wasn't AC, so I wanted to congratulate you for an FP well played, but then I tried to figure it out. What is your point supposed to be?
Now I'm wondering if your FP helps explain so little activity on a potentially interesting topic. On the one hand, getting paid for my personal information (to be held in safe custody until such time as I want it back) is actually a business model I started advocating many years ago. On the other hand, Amazon is doing this for ulterior re
OK but (Score:5, Funny)
Do they accept panoramas, or videos? Otherwise I can't send them my CVS receipt.
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I know it's giving the spammer some prominence, but just to note that the site/s that these shortened links lead to have been scanned and are total shit-shows in terms of unpatched software etc. so do expect your PC and/or credit card to be compromised if you do use them.
I don't have a problem with this... (Score:2)
So long as it's opt-in and they're up front with what data they're keeping.
If you use their cloud drive service to store photos or emails you're ALREADY storing personal info that they're not going to delete anyway.
Not that I'd sign up for it (although I do have a gas card for my regular gas station where they pay me "points" and give me discounts for using my card when making purchases which, I'm sure, gets linked to my Credit Card # and then my name and address and then I'm naked on the internet...)
What is the price of privacy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the problem. We have the cost of products reduced, if we agree to give up some personal information, some companies will give us money if they are allowed to look at our information.
While we know that they will be looking at the information, they are not saying how much and what in particular they are looking at. How am I suppose to figure out if I am getting a good deal, if I don't know how much I am really paying for.
Is Amazon just seeing what I buy? Or are they seeing how much attention I put on the cost of a product. Is the fact that I buy Brand Named Frozen Vegetables over the Store Brand a factor. If I am going to get paid for my data. I really should know what data they are using so I know if I am being properly compensated for it or not.
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Amazon doesn't know from your receipts why you bought what you bought, but they will be able to get some idea from the survey data. But you'll know what survey questions they're asking you, because you'll be answering them. (Or, you know, not.)
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Still trying to figure out the joke in your previous post (moderated funny), but on this one I feel like you're kind of missing the point. They don't care about "why" or "how you think" as long as they can control or at least influence "when" and "what" you buy. In a sense these corporate cancers are tying to know us better than we know ourselves, and (to me) the point of this story is that Bezos is "confessing" how valuable that data is when he offers to pay for more of it.
I do not have any details about t
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I gotta work harder to stop typos. *sigh*
s/tying/trying/
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They don't care about "why" or "how you think" as long as they can control or at least influence "when" and "what" you buy.
They can't, except through pricing, because I am [relatively] canny. I don't just buy shit because it's "Amazon's choice". Their own reviews usually tell you why you shouldn't! Doing literally the least bit of homework (read the Amazon reviews, then if they don't give enough data, go read some other reviews, which I do regularly) will help you make intelligent purchasing decisions.
Amazon is most likely primarily figuring out what to carry so that they can beat the competition on price. And their surveys wil
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Well, I'd refer you to Harari for the topic of Amazon knowing you better than you know yourself, but on Personality Insights it sounds like you used relatively unrevealing text, something that you wrote with a specific purpose and audience in mind. I think you'll get more interesting results if you use more personal stuff. Did you look at the graphic representations? They are modified pie charts, but they give additional insight into how the vector space is structured. And don't forget that this is only a s
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I'd refer you to Harari for the topic of Amazon knowing you better than you know yourself, but on Personality Insights it sounds like you used relatively unrevealing text, something that you wrote with a specific purpose and audience in mind.
That may be. I was looking for a large enough sample to be useful. I do however tend to use a similar voice in most contexts. The only big difference is when I'm writing professionally, which I wasn't doing there; it was just something I wrote to condense my thoughts, and help people who are looking for information not designed to sell anything. I posted it to my blog, which has no ads.
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Sounds like contemplative text, which definitely gives me a different tone. Also sounds unlikely that it was long enough to give strong results. I remember one time I pasted in about 30,000 words from various email messages...
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If they're giving you $10 be assured they get at least $100 out of you.
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Who sets the price? (Score:2)
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Are you telling us that you don't know how data mining works? Your individual data is close to worthless, unless you're a big shot of some kind. It's only in aggregate that analysis of it is worthwhile. If you use a credit card you've already sold your data in exchange for nothing more than the convenience.
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Basically concurrence and I wish I had a favorable mod point for you, though it appears you don't want anyone to read your comment. However I have a few follow up questions.
(1) What if you could tell Amazon to delete your data at any time?
(2) Would you trust Amazon to delete it?
(3) And what about the backups?
Of course I think it's moot. If it is valuable data, then the corporate cancer Amazon has already sold copies. PROFIT!
Dear Amazon (Score:3)
If I refuse to get paid to give you my data, will you take it anyway - like you're doing now?
Yours truly,
Someone who values his privacy.
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Of course they will, it will just cost them a minuscule amount more.
As Scott McNealy said in 1998, "You have no privacy. Get over it." The man may be an ass, but in the subsequent 22 years I've never seen any indication to the contrary.
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No, I disagree. There are certain kinds of data that they can't get without your cooperation. However, (per my other comments in this discussion) you (and Scott McNealy) are correct about the larger framing.
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Every large retailer's goal was to drive pretty well every other retailer out of business.
FTFY
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So you're defending it? You don't think it will be a problem when Amazon succeeds?
I think there is a solution approach. It involves considering human freedom to have some value, even if it's hard to price. But according to Homo Deus by Harari, I'm an anachronistic fool for that obsolete viewpoint. And yet I can't refute him... Maybe I've read too much SF?
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No, I'm not defending it (even though I work there). Just clarifying that it's not the vice of a single organization but an innate failing of capitalism. Still, if there is to be a "winner" the model of Amazon, where over half of all sales are made by third party vendors and absolutely everyone can particpate, is better than that of Walmart.
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Still sounds like a defense of Amazon, but of the lesser-evil variety.
So do you have a solution approach for this ill of capitalism? Just asking for a friend who thinks he has one (or more). (Since it would involve cutting Amazon into pieces, I doubt you'd approve.)
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Lesser evil? Definitely. Certainly lesser than Walmart (which deliberately destroyed the downtowns across North America) or Target, and certainly better than Kroger (who didn't even give their people masks to wear until some time in April, and still don't require customers to wear them in some areas).
Not a hint of a solution, to be truthful. At least not without dismantling the current economic system, and I'm not naive enough to believe that to be even remotely possible.
I actually think that Amazon is g
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Well, at least you seem to understand the scope of the problem, though your suggestion is cutting the wrong way. The competition needs to be at the same level, and it doesn't matter if AWS is split away from the retail or logistics operations. The choice and freedom to choose needs to be between retailers.
My favorite solution approach is not dismantling the current economic system, but rather to change the priorities so that bigger is not always better. I think the path to higher retained earnings should le
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So essentially like the Bell Telephone split up? Now most of the Baby Bells have bought each other again . . .
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Similar idea, but buying daughter companies would be counterproductive, since it would put you back into the higher tax bracket as your market share jumped up. If a particular daughter company becomes too successful and too large, as long as the same tax incentives are still in place then the company would naturally become incentivized to reproduce again. Of course some smaller and weaker companies will naturally go out of business, too, but that's part of the price of progress.
However, there is also a diff
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Amazon's delivery routes actually wouldn't be natural monopolies, as the actual deliveries are done by independent small businesses under contract (most people don't realize that). Amazon has spent a lot of money building out this network by financing thousands of small companies, getting them super-deep discounts on equipment, providing them HR "templates" for their recruiting and employee management, creating an entire bookkeeping application on AWS for them, etc. It's allowed them to build the equivale
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Ad you note, my general solution approach would not kick in there because Amazon's market share would be small. However I am a bit surprised in that I thought Amazon had made significant investments to build up its internal delivery capacity for the most profitable routes. You make it sound like nothing came of those investments? I had the impression Amazon was the 500-pound gorilla that slept where it wanted to.
Also, I'm unsure if Amazon's solution approach here is actually supporting choice or freedom. Th
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Well, you're kind of right. They've built up Amazon Air, a fleet of cargo planes that they use between major hubs. They have fleets of trucks, some of them leased, some of them owned, some of them contracted, to do long-haul work. That's a huge chunk of money, getting stuff from area to area. They've also dumped a huge chunk of money into subsidizing the delivery contractors from the hubs to the end customers. They've apparently more than replaced the FedEx capacity that they lost when the severed that
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At this point it seems you are just engaging in defensive rationalizations to defend Amazon no matter what. I think the objective should be the OTHER way around, finding ways to get the good stuff without the giant monopoly in the loop, whether or not the monopolist is abusing the monopoly. (Yet.) (And yes, in the case of Amazon it is more monopsony power than monopoly.)
On that basis I think it is kind of pointless to point out that the choice among competing delivery companies doesn't have to be the final
What a great opportunity to poison the well (Score:4, Insightful)
Do some dumpster diving outside big-box retail stores, get other people's receipts, scan them, send that bullshit to Amazon, get paid to mess up their database.
What's not to love eh?
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That is still going to give the Bezos Mafia data on what people are buying and where. That will allow them to target other companies directly and drive them to the wall.
Don't give old baldy basically free marketing data.
There is competition and there is Amazon. Totally different. Amazon is a behmoth hell bent on ruling the retail world, all over the world (apart from where banned)
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Fair enough. Then make a small script to generates fake scan of fake receipts. Should be simple enough.
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And Walmart, Target and Kroger aren't?
To be truthful, of the four I personally think Amazon is the least-objectionable (and I've worked at Target).
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Translation: (Score:3)