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Businesses Privacy

Amazon Offers $10 To Prime Day Shoppers Who Hand Over Their Data (reuters.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the hunger-for-data dept.
Amazon.com has a promotion for U.S. shoppers on Prime Day, the 48-hour marketing blitz that started Monday: Earn $10 of credit if you let Amazon track the websites you visit. From a report: The deal is for new installations of the Amazon Assistant, a comparison-shopping tool that customers can add to their web browsers. It fetches Amazon's price for products that users see on Walmart.com, Target.com and elsewhere. In order to work, the assistant needs access to users' web activity, including the links and some page content they view. The catch, as Amazon explains in the fine print, is the company can use this data to improve its general marketing, products and services, unrelated to the shopping assistant. The terms underscore the power consumers routinely give to Amazon and other big technology companies when using their free services. In this case, Amazon gains potential insight into how it should tailor marketing and how it could stamp out the retail competition.
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Amazon Offers $10 To Prime Day Shoppers Who Hand Over Their Data More

Amazon Offers $10 To Prime Day Shoppers Who Hand Over Their Data

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  • Thanks (Score:5, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @11:39AM (#58934212) Homepage Journal

    Thanks for the tip. I just signed up. I got the $10 and already spent it on Amazon (it is Prime Day!). I just bought a Amazon Ring Doorbell and a Amazon FireTV!

  • What could possibly go wrong?

  • One-time? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If it was $10 per month, I think a lot more people would consider it. But a one-time payout for all of my history from then forever? Nah, my history is worth more than that.

  • For $20 I would do it.
  • they'll track what you're likely to buy and use that knowledge to display higher prices to you.

  • As hard as it might be to believe, Amazon doesn't actually profit off it's market services. Amazon Web Services is apparently where all their profit is and they run Amazon marketplace at a loss. The reality is that when it comes to selling things online, there's not that much profit to be had so it shouldn't be surprising that Amazon's continually trying different ways to try to net a profit but in the meantime just end up stomping their competitors out of business. It's a business model similar to Micro

    • I have heard this and what I don't understand why it operates at a loss. We give them 15% of our sales in exchange for appearing on their website. Not their fulfillment service or anything, just to appear on their website and also to manage payments. So take out whatever they have to pass along to other financial entities for processing payments, and what is leftover is ... for the website. And if they are so profitable on AWS, surely there is some synergy with hosting their own marketplace and AWS?

      I'm sur

      • Their online store division is paying their AWS division for data processing. So all the profits appear on AWS. Great way to inflate your position with AWS. That doesn't mean none of the money is coming from physical goods sales.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      Maybe this was true in the past, but I seriously doubt this is still the case. Also Amazon marketplace is a third party platform and just one part of their sales. They certainly do not lose money selling things online if we're talking about amazon.com in general. And their sales are still going up.
  • I would actually consider... ah no I won't.
  • Add this to a browser that you never use other than for Scamazon and tentacle hentai.
  • They've done this many times in the past. You simply install the Chrome extension, they give you the $10 credit, and then you uninstall it immediately.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      Or, you know, have some personally integrity and don't install it in the first place instead of basically saying that you *WILL* share your data, and then turning around and not following through just because there happens to be no way that it can come back to bite you.

      It's one thing if you install something by accident and then uninstall it because you realize you don't want it there, or hell... even uninstalling after reconsidering the implications

      It's quite another to enter an arrangement of any kin

  • Does Amazon require a cookie to be present in order to opt-out?
  • This basically translates to it's cheaper or more efficient for them to get your data directly than paying an external source. Either way, for %99.9 of people this has no real significance, since they are already tracking your web activity.

  • I just don't think it's worth $10 to have their probably crappy software on my system.

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