- Let's take a moment to count the ways that Amazon tracks you. They track every order
you place on the website, every show that you watch
on Amazon Prime Video, every song you listen to on Prime Music, they track every request
you make on Alexa, every record of motion
on your Ring doorbell. They track your Kindle reading, including what date you read
a book, how long you read it, and what parts of the
book you even highlighted. They track similar data
for your Audible account and your Fire TV usage. They track your physical
address, your credit history, your search history, your website clicks, your internet usage via
advertisements and more. And how do I know this? Because when I go onto Amazon's
website to request my data, you know what they give me? They give me a dropdown menu of 15 different tracking
categories to choose from. In other words, Amazon
is basically telling me you want the data we have on you. You're gonna have to be more specific. (whooshing) Welcome to All Things Secured. My name's Josh, and back when I was living
in the United States, I admit that my family
made almost daily purchases from the Amazon website. Personally, I refuse
to buy an Alexa device or a Ring doorbell, but I have plenty of friends
and family members who did. So there are two the questions
we're gonna answer here. First, how does Amazon track me? I've already mentioned
the various categories of the data they collect, but there are three different
ways they gather that data and it's incredibly helpful to understand each one individually. Second, I'm gonna attempt
to figure out how to stop Amazon from collecting that data. And based on my research so far, I've got three different options that follow three very
different levels of paranoia. Make sense? Good. All right, let's dive in. Amazon tracks and collects data
on you in three unique ways. The first and most obvious way is the data that we voluntarily give them. We browse their website. We use their apps to purchase products. We give them our credit card info, our address for delivery
and so on and so on. But this also ties into our
use of their physical products, like a Kindle, a Fire TV,
and Alexa an echo device, or that awesome Amazon
fire phone, just kidding. But that was a gloriously public failure. Wasn't it? Anyway, the point here is that Amazon isn't doing anything underhanded. They're literally just storing the troves of information
that we're giving to them. And in the second half of this video, as we dive into ways that we
can stop Amazon's tracking, this is actually the
area that is the hardest to maintain privacy. The second type of
information Amazon collects, which I'm gonna call our
metadata is a bit shadier. I mean, sure it makes
sense that they track what you're doing on their website and the products that
you're looking to buy. But they also track the
device that you're using, maybe the OS, the IP address, which provides your general location. They track every record of
motion on your Ring doorbell log. They even track every scroll and click that you make on their website. And Amazon has said that
they are not in the business of selling this data to anybody else. So hopefully we shouldn't
have to worry about that. But the kind of profile
that they're building on us, that they're able to
build on us is alarming. And it's one of the many
reasons why regulators are trying to break up
these big tech companies. If that's not crazy enough,
then check this out. The third type of information
that Amazon collects on you is what they receive from third parties. I mean, this could be your credit history from credit bureaus as part
of their fraud prevention, information from third-party
delivery companies about your change of address. And finally, listen carefully here, data from their subsidiaries. Who are Amazon subsidiaries, you ask. Well, did you know that
Amazon owns diapers.com, Zappos, Twitch, IMDb
and Whole Foods Market among about 40 other companies? So although the connection between your interactions with these companies and your Amazon file might
not be direct, it does exist. And if at this point you're
not at least a little concerned about the data Amazon has on you, I don't know what to tell you. This All Things Secured YouTube channel, probably isn't for you. For the rest of us though, let's talk about whether or
not it's possible to stop or at the very least, limit
what Amazon can track about us. Here's the bad news. The only way to stop Amazon
from tracking you completely is to delete your Amazon account. I'm serious. It's extreme. It's crazy. And for most people
living at least in the US it's practically impossible. I know there are a few of you who are willing to live
without the convenience the Amazon provides, but
I'm gonna assume that most of us aren't willing
to take that drastic step. So if we're not gonna
delete our Amazon account, what other options do we have? Well, you're welcome to look, but you won't find a
privacy settings section in your Amazon account, which
that itself is very telling. What you will find isn't much. For those in the EU, thanks to GDPR, you have the option to set
custom cookie preferences, which are those little pieces of code that follow you around to
show you personalized ads. You can also turn off interest based ads. US consumers on the other hand, only have the option to turn
off these interest based ads. We're not given custom cookie preferences. I'll be honest though, neither
of these are a big deal. Amazon is still tracking you. The only difference is that the ads are gonna be a little bit dumber. You have a bit more control
on a mobile device, though. If you go into your Amazon app and click on the three bars in the menu, you'll find where it says permissions. This is where you can easily turn off Amazon's ability to use your Bluetooth, your location, your camera, your microphone, and your photos. Frankly, there's not one
setting in this permissions menu that I turn on. But then again, I'm not the kind of guy who likes to use my camera
to virtually try on products. So, I'm okay with that. Unfortunately, both Audible and Kindle don't offer much in terms
of privacy controls. I mean, you can remove the
reading insights on Kindle, which you can see me doing here, but it actually doesn't change
any data Amazon collects. It just removes it from my site. The same goes for turning
off your browsing history when you log in on your desktop. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean that Amazon
isn't tracking it. There is however, a bit more control if you're the owner of an
Alexa or a Ring product. Each family of products
has their own privacy hub where you can delete recordings and manage any privacy settings. So I recommend that you go in and do that. You may have also heard of
something called Sidewalk, which is Amazon's attempt
to use their devices as like this mesh network
to create a public wifi. If you have an echo device
made after I think 2016 or a select number of Ring
devices, then listen carefully. Personally, I don't see any good reason why I wanna have my home
devices broadcasting free wifi around my neighborhood. So Amazon Sidewalk is an easy no for me. Turn it off in the Alexa or
Ring app account settings. Well, I hate to say it, but
that's about all you can do on this easiest level of
Amazon privacy control. There are a couple of other little things that I won't go into detail here. Things like editing your
Amazon public profile or turning off the echo drop-in settings. But at this point it's
clear, that none of this is really affording us
any extra privacy at all. We're just limiting who can see certain types of information. Here comes the good part. If you're not willing to
delete your Amazon account, but you're also not comfortable with all of the data that Amazon collects, what is that middle ground option? Well, there's a bit of
nuance to this answer but here are a few easy places to start. First, when you're searching
to buy something on Amazon, use a web browser that
automatically blocks third party cookies. In other words, anything
other than Chrome right now. Next, I would make sure that
the browser I use to shop is not the same browser I use to buy, and that the browser I'm shopping with isn't logged into my Amazon account so they can't connect my account
with my browsing history. You can even go a step further and have different devices for
browsing and actual buying. Let's say you wanna go
even a step further. You could pay for your Amazon purchases using a virtual credit
card and having Amazon send all packages to a virtual address. I've already described both
of these virtual options in two different videos,
I recommend you watch next and I'll put links in
the description below. Now for the sake of my marriage, I don't go this far because
when my wife orders something on one or two day delivery, she expects to get it in one to two days. In a virtual address,
it just can't do that. This just goes to highlight
how difficult it is to erase your footprint on Amazon. They allow you to download
your data, but the only way to delete the data that Amazon has on you is to completely close your account. I hope this video has been helpful. Please hit that like button and make sure you watch the
rest of the videos in the series about how Google and
Facebook track you here. And did I already say subscribe? Yeah, I want you do that too.
