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Amazon Snooping Your Surfing For Targeted Ads?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Sep 04, 2006 01:56 PM
from the shoulder-surfing-retailers dept.
Privacy
Jewfro_Macabbi writes, "Recently after browsing major online retailers for Bluetooth adapters, I went to Amazon.com to find front-page ads for, you guessed it, Bluetooth adapters. Disable cookies, the ads go away; re-enable cookies and the ads re-appear. The EULA is ambiguous as usual. Try it for yourself and see."
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Amazon Snooping Your Surfing For Targeted Ads? 50 Comments More /

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  • not the same experience (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yagu (721525) * <yayagu@Nospam.gmail.com> on Monday September 04 2006, @01:57PM (#16039145) Journal

    I too tried to shop for bluetooth devices at a major online retailer... then I went to Amazon.com. Not a single reference anywhere to any bluetooth devices. For me the experiment ends there. I had cookies turned on (always do), and was logged into both sites with an account login.

    Aren't "other" cookies supposed to be invisible to a domain application? I thought so. So, is there a possibility you are surfing at some retailer that has a partnership of some kind with amazon (many do), and hence the information is shared in a partnership, but not across the proscribed browser boundaries?

    • Known issue (Score:5, Insightful)

      by XanC (644172) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:05PM (#16039188)
      He's not claiming Amazon hacked his browser. It's been known for ages that if two sites both use the same ad company to display ads, that your activity on both sites can be linked. He's saying Amazon is using these data to target ads on their front page.

      • I was looking at this the other day... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Lord Prox (521892) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:25PM (#16039284) Homepage
        I am building a website on website traffic tips n tricks and stumbled upon this...
        Retargeting [retargeting.com]
        I am 90% sure that this is what they are doing or some variation thereof. Inexpensive service that should work well.




        Place a curse in the RIAA/MPAA. [i-curse.com]

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jrumney (197329)

          Inexpensive service that should work well.

          Step 4: The consumer returns to your site to complete the sale.

          Now you have the ability to send visitors directly to your "here is where we close the sale" page by doing some or all of the following:

          * Send them directly to the ordering page of the product they looked at before leaving.

          That should work well... if your intention is to make your potential customers think you are stalking them!

          • OK, yeah. It is kinda creepy. But most of your average joe's won't get it and most folks that are looking to buy something won't/don't look that hard. Especialy for stuff less that 20-30 bucks. Impulse purchase range. Having the stuff they are looking for right on the front page is good for your business and easy/useful/valueable for the average Joe as well. What he was looking for came right up.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by cduffy (652)
                Individual americans are going through tough economic times in large part due to a culture of irresponsible debt spending. Having a comparatively high ceiling for impulse purchases is part and parcel.

                (Obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone).
        • I see the retargeting banner ads all over my traffic analysis site and was wondering if anybody here had actually tried it and what, if any, their results were.

      • I would go to sites that had some code or other that would go to amazon, they would read my cookie and then feed a message to be displayed on that non amazon site. I don't think the site ever got any information but I suspect they got some sort of kickback from amazon.

        I ticked me off enough I just have their cookies deleted automatically when the session is over.

    • Amazon hosting? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rosyna (80334) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:18PM (#16039239) Homepage
      It seems more like amazon is hosting these major retailer's websites. For example, if you go to target.com it says on the bottom right, "Powered by Amazon.com". Amazon has their hands in a lot of retailers pockets. Mostly because it is just easier to pay amazon to do it than it is to set it all up yourself. Especially when amazon.com is a "proven" website.
      • Yeah, amazon has pretty amazing fulfulment and warehousing. They carry almost everything so why not ship from them and make more money?

    • Aren't "other" cookies supposed to be invisible to a domain application?

      Right. But not all cookies from a given web page necessarily come from a single domain. For example, if you browse a page from bluorus.com that contains a graphic served by amazon.com, you'll get cookies from both domains. Often the graphic is a "web bug": a 1 pixel by 1 pixel file whose only purpose is to create a tracking cookie.

      Obviously this isn't going to happen unless the web sites you browse have an affiliation with Amazon (or

  • How long did it take you? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones (18351) * on Monday September 04 2006, @01:58PM (#16039152) Homepage Journal
    How long did it take you to figure that out Jewfro_Macabbi?

    To my end user (of Amazon.com) knowledge, they have been doing this for at least a couple of years. Of course, the problem with the EULA is that the cookie is set as soon as you visit unless you explicitly disable cookies.

    Of course being anonymous is getting harder and harder these days (especially if you are surfing from a place that is having packets sniffed by someone like the NSA. (for kicks do a traceroute (*NIX and OS X, tracert on Windows) on NSA.gov from where you are and look for the AT&T hub that is splitting the traffic (The AT&T hub for my traffic is tbr1013801.dvmco.ip.att.net). I know my packets are sniffed coming from an edu domain as well.......

    • Re:How long did it take you? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cuban321 (644777) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:30PM (#16039304) Homepage
      Yeah cause you know... AT&T couldn't just be their upstream provider or anything. /tinfoil
      • Actually, this is from a story that was broken some time ago and is commonly known about. See this article [wired.com] on Wired or this article [slashdot.org] on Slashdot.

        • Re:How long did it take you? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cuban321 (644777) on Monday September 04 2006, @03:34PM (#16039614) Homepage
          (Offtopic, but oh well I couldn't resist)

          You seem to have a lack of understanding about how the Internet works. I go through qwest to get to /.-- that doesn't mean qwest is "sniffing" my traffic. It simply means qwest is a provider who is peered with speakeasy (my ISP) and savvis (apparently Slashdots' provider).

          Do you really think the NSA wouldn't use transparent ethernet taps [snort.org] anyways? And do you really think the NSA would have all that traffic dumped back to "nsa.gov"?

    • Re:How long did it take you? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Afecks (899057) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:37PM (#16039335)
      Wow, you mean when I go to www.nsa.gov my packets can be sniffed by AT&T and then given to the NSA? What kind of twisted Orwellian nightmare has this world become?!

  • How was this accepted? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The only way amazon could know you were looking for an item would be if they themselves set the cookie. I think you'll find one of the retailers you visited was an amazon shop or the like. I don't use these 'one-click' pioneers myself but this is just bullshit!

  • A9 or Alexa Toolbar (Score:5, Informative)

    by HTMLSpinnr (531389) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:13PM (#16039221) Homepage
    I wonder if the original submitter happens to browse with the A9 [a9.com] or Alexa [alexa.com] toolbars enabled? Both are subsidiaries of Amazon.com [amazon.com]. One would need to review their EULA's though to see if said info can be used to target shopping ads from their own site.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by fermion (181285) *
      While toolbars are the logical explanation, it could be that this person normally runs with cookies wide open. This means that the web usages is being tracked by the affiliate cookies. Though cookies are set up to be read only by the site that set them, most sites get around this by having double click, 2o7, etc set root tracking cookies. Therefore the average person, lets say the majority of the majority that still run IE wide open, is well tracked. It would be trivial to expand this to coded shopping

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Technician (215283)
        While toolbars are the logical explanation, it could be that this person normally runs with cookies wide open.

        Running AdAware and having a good hosts file go a long way in keeping the advitisers from setting tracking cookies.
      • it's that they obviously are

        Why is it "obvious"? They're doing something that's not feasible unless they own or are affiliated with the retailers you visited. When I read what you said, that was my "obvious" conclusion, not "OMG, they're snooping, it's obvious".

        • I went and visited foreign based Islamic web sites for products, and Amazon recommended Islamic books and films after. I'm not seeing it as likely Amazon has partnerships with these companies....

  • Buy It On.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DynaSoar (714234) * on Monday September 04 2006, @02:18PM (#16039244) Journal
    While searching a bit torrent site for old episodes of La Femme Nikita, I was regaled by an ad which read:
    "Can't find La Femme? Buy it on eBay!"

    Really. Just a rental as per usual, or an all out purchase?
    Can I take it for a test drive?
    The shipping would probably be horrendous. I'll bet they sell them "pick up only". Which is, after all, the usual way. So who needs eBay?

    • "While searching a bit torrent site for old episodes of La Femme Nikita, I was regaled by an ad which read: "Can't find La Femme? Buy it on eBay!""

      Of course this is Google AdSense (or possibly Overture) trying to provide keyword-targeted ads, based on your search term. The ads probably aren't even placed by EBay. If you click, some EBay affiliate pays Google some small fee, and you go to EBay tagged with an affiliate code. If you buy anything on EBay, they get a piece of the listing and final value f

  • It's actually... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ericdano (113424) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:20PM (#16039253) Homepage
    It's actually a Ninja named Roger [askaninja.com] who's pissed at him. He's waiting for the author to click on the wrong link.

  • my test (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:27PM (#16039293)
    After clearing my cache/cookies/etc, I closed and then reopened Firefox. I went to google and did a search for "bluetooth adapters." I middle clicked on everything on the results page except the amazon.com link. I then opened a new tab and went to amazon.com. They wanted to sell me LCD TVs, an electric toothbrush, some DVD box sets, iPod and cell phone cases, purses and messenger bags, and some watches. No bluetooth devices at all. Go figure...

      • Re:my test (Score:4, Informative)

        by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Monday September 04 2006, @02:47PM (#16039379)
        I tried it again cos I like repeatability. This time I also clicked on all of the google "sponsored links." This time amazon wanted me to buy a Creative Zen, a smattering of sandals (guess it's time to clear out all those summer sandals), some Sony hifi stuff, pants and dresses, more shoes, and some more watches. Still no bluetooth stuff. However, if I click the amazon link from my bluetooth search and then open a new window and go to amazon.com via the address bar, the front page is chock full o' bluetooth adapters (with some sandals and watches at the bottom). Clearly Jewfro clicked on an amazon or target link earlier in his journeys in the tubes.
        • This is actually a) very useful, b) very clever on Amazon's part, and c) not at all slimy. IMO at least. Kudos to their web developers for making a relatively simple (technically speaking) mod that dramatically increased their store value to most people... at least, if you ignore the ultraParanoid amongst us.

          • Kudos to their web developers for making a relatively simple (technically speaking) mod that dramatically increased their store value to most people

            Yes, because heaven forbid that people should objectively evaluate their own needs and use basic research skills to find the products and services that are most likely to meet those needs. Much better to have a bunch of bought-and-paid-for messages screaming at us to tell us what we need and what we should want and how we should spend our money. Oh, and ta

            • Damn! Overreact much? All he's saying is that it's nice that if you looked at something on Amazon, that when you go back to their site the next day, they present you with some of the things you looked at before (isn't that one of the purposes of cookies in the first place?). As for Jewfro's claim that Amazon is sniffing other site's cookies, I'm ridiculously skeptical of it, mainly because I've tried the exact test I've outlined above several times on different machines (different OSes and browsers) and con
        • Were you totally offended and disgusted because they showed you stuff that you were just looking to buy (hypothetically) a few minutes ago?

          I don't get it... we all love computers and the Internet until they do something useful? I understand the scare, but it isn't there. The scary part would be if Amazon just sent you a bluetooth device and charged you for it. "We knew you'd be wanting this!"

          I just wish they would sell these technologies to porn marketeers. I know someone, somewhere already has a database o
          • Ummm, nope, not offended in the slightest. The final result was that the Amazon page is behaving EXACTLY the way I thought it would. It's not sniffing cookies from other sites. They're simply tracking (via their own cookie) the stuff that I looked at previously. They've even gone so far as to include a "Your recently viewed items" section at the bottom of the front page. If I clear out my cache and cookies and go to their page, they present me with a random sampling of various items that they sell. It's exa

  • A browser feature to block cookies that either: a) originate from a different domain than the top-level page or b) ignore cookies sent with non-HTML pages. I got the latter idea from CGIProxy.

    Firefox doesn't seem to have anything like this. Internet Explorer can be configured to block all "third-party" cookies. Opera doesn't appear to have anything like this either.

    Of course with Firefox you can get rid of the cookies as a side effect if you use Adblock or otherwise block ads.

    • Firefox doesn't seem to have anything like this. Internet Explorer can be configured to block all "third-party" cookies. Opera doesn't appear to have anything like this either.

      You know, it's amazing what you can find when you check the Cookies options/preferences when looking for Cookie settings.

      Firefox 1.5: Tools, Options, Privacy, Cookies, "for the originating site only" checkbox

      Opera 9: Tools, Preferences, Advances, Cookies, "Accept only cookies from the site I visit" radio button

      • I didn't say Firefox 1.5. Firefox 2 lacks the options you described, and I can't figure out what the about:config variable name for it is. I managed to look right over that Opera one (didn't realize it was what I was looking for).

  • What, are you new to this whole internet thing? Of course online marketers store your browsing information and sell it, that's how they exist. Are you also suprised at where all those 2o7.net cookies came from, and confused as to why some sites need to load images from dozens of different servers?

    Of course, it could also be that you're the kind of person who shops for things like bluetooth adapters on amazon and other sites in the past. So when you went back to amazon during this session they were using y

  • Okay, so I don't necessarily like having records of my browsing habits stored by databases that can later be subpoenaed by the government, but it's basically unavoidable -- I know I keep extensive records of my site's visitors. And the privacy issue is largely secondary -- Amazon isn't interested in stalking you, they're interested in learning your buying habits to improve their own profits. The funny thing is that the best way for them to improve their profits is to sell you more stuff, and that means o

    • I can't wait for TV to catch up with my online experience.
      Too late, we already moved away from that with Tivo. And thank goodness for that.
  • I went to Amazon.com to find front-page ads for, you guessed it, Bluetooth adapters. ... At which point, you immediately died from the terrible harm that this caused you?

  • Coincidence? - I had one hit and four misses. Looked for HDTVs and amazon matched, but they failed on cellphones, laptops, my textbook for this semester, the godfather dvd collection. Went to google each time, searched for item, went through a few links (4-5) and then went to amazon. Went to bestbuy for everything but the textbook. Cookies are accepted for session until I close firefox. JS and flash are blocked but I doubt that matters. Need a lot more data before can conclude anything one way or another.

    An
  • Your claim definitely scores high for tapping into paranoia of cookies. Unfortunately, the only way Amazon knows you are looking for bluetooth adapters is if you visit their site first. This may have happened by way of a search result. Is this supposed to be surprising?

    Nice try though. Cookie paranoia is a bit worn out for me.

    • If Amazon is high up on the results list and Firefox is doing prefetching on the top few links, might that be how the Amazon cookie is getting set?

  • Welcome to the internet.

    Amazon uses ATDMT.com to serve ads. The sites you were searching for Bluetooth gear on were also using ATDMT.com to serve ads. It's not Amazon that knew you were looking for Bluetooth gear, it's ATDMT.com.

    That's why they're called "Tracking Cookies."

  • This helps me (Score:3)

    by a_greer2005 (863926) on Monday September 04 2006, @04:07PM (#16039754)
    I can clearly see the bad implecations here, but as a responsable user, this has helped me over the past few months: I look for an item on Target, walmart, froogle, whatever, then go to amazon and it is right there, no searching needed. This is not good privacy wise, but pretty conveniant for those of us who delete cookies at responsable intervals (read weekly or more).
    • No commerical ever interests me. When I am making a purchasing decision, I seek out unbiased sources of information. All commerical fail that requirement.

      The only thing that amazes me is that people respond to advertising so well as they do.

    • Surf tracking and targeted ads are a way of life. There is no privacy online. Get used to it.

      Did it ever occur to you that this "lie down and take it" attitude is mostly responsible for the current situation? For every measure there are countermeasures. Adblock and its companion Filterset Updater are two (of many) which happen to be very effective, especially when combined with restrictions on cookies. And remember that at the end of the day, it is we who buy things from companies which employ these

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