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Comment by txcwpalpha | Hacker News Reader

Not in most (all?) online shopping scenarios, and I don't really see any uproar about privacy concerns with those.

AFAIK many retailers (Target, for example) use an identifier derived from your CC number and don't even need your email or phone number to build a profile on you.

I totally agree with being concerned about your privacy, but I don't understand the increased harshness on this service specifically as opposed to the already-pervasive services that already collect your data on a daily basis. Is it just because this one is Amazon and it's fun to hate on them?

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> Not in most (all?) online shopping scenarios

But this is real-life shopping, not online. Online shopping is 100% optional. Real-life shopping is not.

> Is it just because this one is Amazon and it's fun to hate on them?

No, my criticisms and concerns about this would be no different regardless of what company was doing it.

>But this is real-life shopping, not online. Online shopping is 100% optional. Real-life shopping is not.

What? Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to go shopping? I don't understand this statement. "Real-life shopping" is just as optional as online shopping is. Hell, "real-life shopping" is more optional in this regard because you can always pay with cash and escape the aforementioned privacy concerns. You can't do that online.

Unless you operate your own farm, sooner or later you need to eat, and that implies you're buying food from somewhere.

> "Real-life shopping" is just as optional as online shopping is.

Really? And how do you get your food if you don't go shopping? Most people can't run a self-sufficient farm.

Gotta eat. Some kind of shopping is essentially non-optional unless you grow all your food.

And using cash isn’t opting out of real-life shopping, it’s just opting out of one payment method.

Even if you grew all your own food, there’s plenty of other things you will need.

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