What does Amazon know about you?

BBC News article includes extensive history, narrative, graphics, photos and insight into how and why Amazon collects massive amounts of data Amazon on users through multiple channels of e-commerce and devices – by Leo Kelion –

“You might call me an Amazon super-user. I’ve been a customer since 1999, and rely on it for everything from grass seed to birthday gifts. There are Echo speakers dotted throughout my home, Ring cameras inside and out, a Fire TV set-top box in the living room and an ageing Kindle e-reader by my bedside. I submitted a data subject access request, asking Amazon to disclose everything it knows about me Scanning through the hundreds of files I received in response, the level of detail is, in some cases, mind-bending. One database contains transcriptions of all 31,082 interactions my family has had with the virtual assistant Alexa. Audio clips of the recordings are also provided. The 48 requests to play Let It Go, flag my daughter’s infatuation with Disney’s Frozen. Other late-night music requests to the bedroom Echo, might provide a clue to a more adult activity…” . . .

That’s the introduction to a difficult to read, white on charcoal scrolling screen.  It’s a very scary universe.

“We find ourselves being shot backward into a kind of feudal pattern where it was an elite, a priesthood, that had all the knowledge and all the rest of the people just kind of groped around in the dark,” says Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard professor and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”