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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I heard stories about how super advanced invasive surveillance let's people like Target know that you're pregnant before you actually know yourself. But I just don't buy it.

I get insane advertisements, even from places like YouTube that know me well. I get advertisements for Bumble featuring what looks like a teenage boy telling me you'll never know what you'll find on Bumble, which is weird considering I'm a married straight dude. Sometimes I even get ads in different languages.

If the most advanced ad network can't figure out the language that I speak, I'm less worried about Kmart doing some nefarious profiling based on my stride.

I like technology that targets fraud, because I like living in a high trust society. I'm annoyed that people abuse the system and that's why we can't have nice things. You could probably just target the worst 1% and basically go back to deodorants not being locked away behind glass.

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> I heard stories about how super advanced invasive surveillance let's people like Target know that you're pregnant before you actually know yourself. But I just don't buy it.

I believe it. But it wasn't super-advanced surveillance. It was, as I recall, 2010's "machine learning" basically drawing inferences about purchase history to determine what sorts of personalized advertisements to mail to you or print on your receipts, or whatever.

I believe it because I worked at another large American retailer similar to Target at the time and though I was not directly involved, I was aware that other departments in our company were working on similar things. It wasn't that advanced or outlandish, it was just finding trends in the huge amount of historical purchase data we had. I can absolutely believe that it was similar at Target. People who bought these things typically bought baby-related stuff 3-6 months later, so lets send them some coupons for that baby-related stuff in 2 months. It's unlikely the fact it was baby-related was actually relevant, it probably just sent coupons for whatever the predicted purchases were.

An individuals purchase history was probably correlated either by rewards program membership (preferred) or credit cards used. If you just paid cash and didn't use swipe your membership card, it was unlikely the purchase would be associated to you.

The story behind how Target found out a teenager was pregnant before her dad was is very interesting, and really gets me thinking what will happen when they monitor my behavior in-store.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

Kmart secretly knowing that you are pregnant or you have colon cancer or whatever is not what I'd be worried about.

I'd be worried that they will either collaborate or get infiltrated by hackers, cops, and agencies. Then, one day I like a post on social media promoting wrongthink, and I'll be picked up.

> If the most advanced ad network can't figure out the language that I speak

The ad network absolutely knows you down to minute detail, but the only thing that matters is who bid the highest. Maybe the winner is the one with the most VC cash to burn?

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