Amazon.com wants people to know if you're "Muslim, gay, unemployed..."

[Human Torch]

Amazon Proposes Using Customer Info for 'Gift Clustering'
08.14.06

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2003063,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121

By Evan Schuman, Ziff Davis Internet

The Santas on Amazon may soon know if intended gift recipients have been not only naughty or nice, but also whether they're Muslim, gay and unemployed.

Amazon.com filed a patent application on Aug. 10 for a process that would allow Amazon customers to use the retail Web site to gather information on other customers, including "birthday, interests, occupation, education level, income level, location, race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation."

That information would be obtained by Amazon through several means, including "from a user profile for the recipient, from past ordering patterns of the recipient or from publicly accessible databases" and Amazon would then make recommendations based on "appropriate recipients for the items (e.g., religion and race)," the patent filing said. Amazon officials have been careful to stress that the company has no current plans to deploy such a system.

It's also fair to point out that large companies typically file a huge number of such patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to protect their intellectual property and, more importantly, to preserve their future options. It's not unusual for a large company to have drawers full of patent applications that it will never use.

[Sinti]

1. Umm... no. Ah well, I buy books in the store and pay cash

They just want to take their "you must buy our crap" techniques to the next level. They give too much to the GOP anyways.