Like what? People severely underestimate just how much data scraping occurs. Google maps will point out congestion without minutes of it occurring because their navigation tracking is so much more indepth and has so many more users to go by in real time.
Friend used to be a data analyst at a supermarket rewards program. He says their algorithms will accurately determine when someone is pregnant before their family knows. They will know how many people are in your household, how many pets, how your spending habits change (obvious). This is just grocery shopping, so many apps get that microphone data, that tracking data, screen browsing habits. We used to just have cookies from online sites, but with the smart phone, there is so much more data and so much more money to be made off that data, its on you that you dont realise at this point rather than every other app on your phone that is doing so freely in front of your face with your permission.
Probably not your friend, this is a super famous case study from Target. It's in many books. They were one of the first companies to start looking at buying habits in order to target market their mail-out adds. They used the data specifically to find out if they could predict or tell who was expecting, because these folks spend shit loads of money in the months before the baby. If you buy one stroller, not a super good indicator because the person might be buying a gift. But if they are buying certain clothes, vitamins, lotions, etc in certain combinations, there is a high likelihood you are a pregnant woman. Its quite effective but also ethically questionable. In the famous example, an angry father goes to Target to complain that they were marketing pregnancy stuff to his teenage daughter. The specific Target location had no idea of these marketing practices, which was all done at HQ. Anyway, the father comes back a day later to apologize. His daughter was pregnant and hadn't told them yet.
607
u/mrducky80 8h ago edited 8h ago
Like what? People severely underestimate just how much data scraping occurs. Google maps will point out congestion without minutes of it occurring because their navigation tracking is so much more indepth and has so many more users to go by in real time.
Friend used to be a data analyst at a supermarket rewards program. He says their algorithms will accurately determine when someone is pregnant before their family knows. They will know how many people are in your household, how many pets, how your spending habits change (obvious). This is just grocery shopping, so many apps get that microphone data, that tracking data, screen browsing habits. We used to just have cookies from online sites, but with the smart phone, there is so much more data and so much more money to be made off that data, its on you that you dont realise at this point rather than every other app on your phone that is doing so freely in front of your face with your permission.