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comment by insomniasexx

Yes. I've been waiting for them to do this. It's the next logical step for them.

The only thing that concerns me is the fact that it will now be much easier to track the purchases you've made. Just like how Google now tracks you as you search, email, and watch and delivers relevant ads to you based on that, this Amazon payment will do the same thing. They will be able to better judge the things you buy and want to buy for a wider range of sites. It will also be easier to see your overall researching and purchasing patterns and find a way to make money off of that data. I'm sure if you start buying a slew of chemicals and nunchucks, the NSA will be all over you.

Other than that, this is great. I would use this for sure as well. I hate re-entering my card. I hate researching to make sure this random site with an awesome hoodie will actually deliver my product. Most of all, I hate the auto account creations that come with a single purchase. I probably have 100 accounts with 6 different emails and 100 different passwords from random one-off purchases. The only time I visit the site again is to turn off the fucking email notifications.





jaggs  ·  4065 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Interesting. You see I really like the purchase tracking. Over time it makes my shopping easier, because the system knows what I'm likely to need. Things like re-ordering easily is also brilliant, because I can never remember what deal on batteries I got 4 months ago etc.

I would probably never buy chemicals and nunchucks on Amazon for that very reason. :) The thing is, Amazon's strengths are in the sum of the parts, rather than any one single bit. Put it all together and you basically have an absolutely awesome retailing machine.

I remember standing in a now defunct (!) camera chain shop in town to buy an SD memory card. It was something like £60 which seemed a little expensive to me, so I dragged out my phone and did a quick check on the Amazon app. It was £16. I was so outraged at the delta, I went over to the assistant and told him. He couldn't have cared less.

So I went outside, stood on the sidewalk and bought the card from Amazon in 40 seconds using the app. It arrived the next morning. The camera chain went bust this year.

insomniasexx  ·  4065 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree it can be very helpful. But also scary. Just something to keep in mind so you don't walk blindly into a big data pool. If you are aware of what the companies are doing and choose to do it anyways, that is fine. Not knowing is bad no matter which way you cut it.

jaggs  ·  4064 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hmm...I think the problem is the boat has already sailed. If you have a credit card, an email account and a mobile phone you're already fully integrated into the big data pool, and there's not much that cannot be tracked about you.

Adding in an Amazon account is not going to provide any more raw data that isn't already easily and instantly available to anyone with the right connections.

The only way off this vessel is to sign out completely, cut up your cards, delete accounts, go offline and ditch the mobile, with all the attendant inconvenience that entails. This is our world nowadays, good and bad.