Amazon has an uncomfortably personal profile on you

Amazon’s “About You” page reveals what it thinks it knows about you—and you can’t simply switch it off. Dexerto reports that one shopper discovered her profile included the observation: “has flat buttocks” She suggested this might relate to a previous purchase of “butt scrunch leggings.” Whatever the connection, buying clothes doesn’t mean you expect the retailer to start describing your body. What is Amazon’s About You? About You is a page where customers can review and edit the personal details Amazon uses to shape their shopping recommendations. Amazon introduced it in May as a way to make personalization more visible and easier to manage. According to Amazon, the information behind its personalized shopping experience includes: Your purchase history Your searches Items saved to Lists Product reviews you have written Conversations with Alexa for Shopping The resulting profile can contain categories such as “Home and Family,” “Interests and Hobbies,” “Brands,” and “Product Preferences.” Some entries describe straightforward shopping preferences. Others go further, making assumptions about how people live. Amazon’s information categories Amazon presents this as helpful. If you regularly buy non-dairy milk, for example, it might recommend other non-dairy products. But a useful recommendation and an accurate description of a person are not the same thing. After all, a purchase might be a gift. An item on a list might be something you’re researching for someone else. A product search might reflect curiosity rather than a personal need. Amazon has offered personalized recommendations for years. About You makes some of the information behind them visible and gives you a chance to see where its assumptions miss the mark. How to find your information To check what Amazon thinks it knows about you, log in to your Amazon account. Hover over your name above Account & Lists , near the top-right corner. Select Account . Find the tile Ordering and shopping preferences , and select Your Shopping preferences . From there, scroll to the bottom of the page and select Manage your information . In the Amazon app, it works like this: After logging in, tap You at the bottom Tap Account > Account Settings > Shopping preferences > About You Managing your information To remove an entry: Select a category to see what Amazon has listed about you, either because you volunteered it or Amazon assumed it based on your buying behavior. Select Remove . You don’t need to select a reason. Select Remove again in the confirmation prompt. Removing one entry from Amazon’s About You Buying something should not be treated as volunteering every personal detail a retailer can infer from it. It’s good that these assumptions are visible and that you can remove them, but customers shouldn’t have to correct a profile they never deliberately filled out. A meaningful privacy choice would let customers decline personal inferences, not merely delete them one at a time. It would also explain what deletion does. Is the information removed from Amazon’s servers or just moved out of your sight? Amazon says you can remove information you don’t want used for personalization. Its announcement does not explain whether that also deletes the underlying data, or whether similar assumptions could be made again as you continue shopping. Nor does it describe a master opt-out from About You. For now, checking your profile lets you see (and challenge) some of the conclusions Amazon has drawn about you. Browse like no one’s watching. Malwarebytes Privacy VPN encrypts your connection and never logs what you do, so the next story you read doesn’t have to feel personal. Try it free → About the author Was a Microsoft MVP in consumer security for 12 years running. Can speak four languages. Smells of rich mahogany and leather-bound books.