None of Your Business!
You’re being watched. When you enter a search term, fill out a profile, or order a freebie, someone is watching. And not just online. When you use your customer discount card at the grocery store, a computer is recording what you buy—ostensibly to help the store track inventory, but also to deliver you customized coupons and offers for similar products.
Spam
There are some things that web forms ask for that makes one want to reply “none of your business!” Unfortunately, in too many cases, collecting such information is exactly the business these websites are in.
And then they sell it to other businesses to send you “targeted” offers. Spam.
That’s been happening for years. And if you don’t believe me, just answer a few magazine classified freebie offers and use a different middle initial each time. Then start watching for the different initials in your junk mail! And they do it because it works. Because people respond to “offers” by “buying”.
But online is different. It seems even more intrusive to receive spam email than to receive a mailbox full of catalogs and flyers. We worry about what information is being collected and how it’s being used. Once it’s in someone’s database, it’s subject to all kinds of interpretation.
If I buy tiny plastic bags to hold beads, will that purchase signal “drug dealer” in someone’s database?
I’d like to think that store that wanted to know my birthdate is planning to send me a gift card for my birthday, but the avalanche of life insurance emails in the interim tells me otherwise.
Many Source of Shopping
So what can we do about it? Well, for one thing, we can realize that most products online are available from more than one source. And if a seller asks too many personal questions, we can click the little x up in the corner, take our credit card, and go elsewhere. Despite what the website reads, the fields marked with an asterisk are NOT mandatory. And since there’s seldom an option to click to say “none of your business”, we can say “none of our business” and leave.