Wow, he's right. The item name no longer appears on emailed receipts I receive from Amazon as of about late 2019 or early 2020. I can't think of a plausible explanation for this change other than preventing Google from pilfering your detailed purchase history. Thank you Amazon, I guess.
I bought some lightbulbs from Amazon recently. I am quite sure I purchased some 7-8 watt LED candle bulbs. I received a package of 50 watt incandescents, which was definitely not what I wanted. I went to my Amazon account and it showed I had purchased the incandescents. I looked at my email receipt, and all contained was is a list of links to Amazon, which led to their site, showing I had purchased the incandescents. The lack of text in the email meant I had no way to determine what I actually purchased and whether the mistake was on my end, Amazon's or the third party vendor.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/shop-package-order-tracker/id1...
I thought they were blocking an action that is kind of "opt out" and you're saying they might be blocking an "opt in" action. Neat to hear this before I got too confident in my position.
So looks like it is not yet globally at the same low standard, and might also be because of different laws.
Anyone have a factual source that confirms that gmail is mining receipt data for advertising?
One refutation https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/google-gmail-purchases-priv... said in 2019 that Google’s Purchase’s page said “Google won't sell the [Purchases] information or use it to choose which ads you see”; however I did just log into Google and looked at https://myaccount.google.com/purchases and couldn’t find that text now, so who knows if that is still true.
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067714 refers to a second refutation from 2017 - “Google Will No Longer Scan Gmail for Ad Targeting”.
Edit: I did read an article talking about other companies scanning receipts to target advertising, so that could be a motivation of Amazon’s.
Also there’s many ways to exploit the purchase data without ever selling it outside the company, including using it in aggregate for ad targeting without exposing specifics to the ad buyer.
I once talked to their customer service to ask how to stop getting the emails since they're basically entirely useless and they told me there's no way to do that.
The mails from Amazon.de in German do not contain any information about ordered items. From the same Amazon.de, to the same mail address, but in Czech, they do.
- Your order of X (confirmation)
- Your order of X has been dispatched
- Arriving today: X
- Delivered: Order number N
Only the last does not contain the product name X.
But who knows, making stuff up like you and I did isn't evidence. At best it gives you an idea of the range of possibilities.
I have not heard about regulations like what you're describing.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/technology/personal-data-...
Source: I have a data provider that scrapes your email when you use their 3rd party email app, and sells your purchase receipts downstream. Google has no reason to do this to you, but the industry as a whole is shady.
Gmail hasn't mined data for commercial purposes for half a decade now. Someone at Amazon took dark-pattern customer engagement 101.
Specious....
I ordered something from Amazon today and a full description of the item I bought, including size and price, is in purchase confirmation email...