How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did, was the article I chose to talk about from this weeks reading. The title caught my eye right from the start and I clicked on it right away. I like the articles of data privacy and surveillance as they provide an understanding of what has been happening and how I can protect myself.
The article first starts out talking about Target’s process in tracking the costumers and how this program came about. It runs through the guest ID number everyone is given and that is linked to the cards of that person. They use this process to track certain products like lotions, purses, rugs, vitamins, and others that are keyed into pregnancy. Then by the use of data mining they can put together a strong idea of the percentage of how pregnant the person is when the person is due and what the gender is. They then compile a coupon/magazine ad that is mailed to the higher percentage targets. This provides them with coupons that are targeted to pregnant women so they can come in and by the products. The article got the title “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did”, because in one case when they first started they sent a complete catalog for just baby stuff to a house of a teen. Long story short the dad saw the magazine and was angry at the manger because it looked like they were trying to promote pregnancy. But really the daughter was pregnant and the dad had no idea that she was. From there they produced more catalogs that fit in as normal ads.
I think it is crazy that with just a guest id number, credit card, and the right products Target can figure out if you're pregnant. That shows how crazy data mining is and how our privacy is just all out there if someone wants to put in the effort. I think it's scary that this is information that is passed daily and isn’t as harmful. The area of privacy is interesting and if you look at it in the form of harmful information it can be even more frightening. Someone that wants to get harmful information out there can put in some effort and probably find some interesting stuff.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/#57d4fa976668
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