How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did

[alan1]

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did - Forbes

snips,

Target, for example, has figured out how to data-mine its way into your womb, to figure out whether you have a baby on the way long before you need to start buying diapers.

Target assigns every customer a Guest ID number, tied to their credit card, name, or email address that becomes a bucket that stores a history of everything they’ve bought and any demographic information Target has collected from them or bought from other sources.

Read the entire article, it is quite interesting.
I work for a Fortune 100 retailer and, although my company hasn't gone to the data mining extent that Target has, it is amazing how much data we collect to do marketing targeted at specific demographics and niche's of society.

 

[asterism]

Most Internet retailers (even tiny ones) have been doing this for about 10 years. The key is that retail is just now getting good at identifying customers.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

I canceled my target card for totally unrelated reasons a couple years ago. Now I am glad I did. Big brother is creepy even if it isn't the government

 

[alan1]

I canceled my target card for totally unrelated reasons a couple years ago. Now I am glad I did. Big brother is creepy even if it isn't the government

It's not just your Target Card though. They can use your debit/credit card to track your purchases.

 

[whitehall]

The reason pharmacies keep data on customers relates not only to the potential abuse of prescription drugs but it is a safety net in the event that legitimate prescriptions of different drugs for the same ailment might be harmful especially to the elderly who might take a lot of drugs.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

I can see the point of that. But this is a whole new level of creepy.

 

[asterism]

I canceled my target card for totally unrelated reasons a couple years ago. Now I am glad I did. Big brother is creepy even if it isn't the government

If you have a credit or debit card with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover it's the same thing. And they sell the data to any merchant.