Amazon has long collected data about its customers based on their purchase history, but many shoppers may not realize just how detailed these profiles have become. The e-commerce giant uses this purchase data to make inferences about customers, building comprehensive assumptions about their lives, preferences, and even physical characteristics.
A Threads user recently discovered the extent of Amazon’s data profiling when she stumbled upon the company’s Shopping preferences page. Among various assumptions Amazon had made about her, including relatively mundane observations like shopping from women’s departments and probably owning a Shark robot vacuum, she found one particularly personal inference: that she has flat buttocks. The discovery, which the user attributed to her purchases of butt scrunch leggings, sparked widespread attention after she shared it online on October 3, 2026.
The post quickly went viral, garnering over a million views in less than a day. Many users expressed shock at the intimate nature of Amazon’s profiling and rushed to check their own accounts to see what assumptions the retail giant had made about them. The incident highlighted how closely tech companies monitor customer behavior and the sometimes uncomfortable specificity of their data collection practices.
For those curious about what Amazon thinks it knows about them, accessing this information is straightforward. On desktop computers, customers can hover over the “Hello” greeting that appears with their name in the upper right corner of the Amazon website. After clicking on “Account” under the “Your Account” section, they can navigate to “Your Shopping preferences” found under the “Ordering and shopping preferences” section. At the bottom of this page, a blue hyperlinked option labeled “Manage your information” reveals Amazon’s assumptions. Mobile users can access the same information through the hamburger icon menu, then navigating to Account, Shopping preferences, and finally “About you.”
The types of inferences Amazon makes vary widely in their nature and accuracy. The company’s algorithms have identified customers with interests ranging from photography and collectible card games to vinyl records and ceramics. Some profiles note shopping preferences like prioritizing comfort in clothing or favoring natural materials in home decor, while others make broader lifestyle assumptions about customers’ habits and possessions.
Amanda Silberling, a senior writer at TechCrunch who reported on this phenomenon, co-hosts a podcast called Wow If True and holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Her reporting on the viral discovery underscores growing concerns about the extent of corporate surveillance in everyday life and how tech companies leverage seemingly innocuous shopping data to build detailed profiles of their users.
The revelation serves as a reminder that e-commerce platforms continuously analyze customer behavior, transforming mundane purchase decisions into data points that feed increasingly sophisticated profiling systems. While some may find Amazon’s observations flattering or merely amusing, the incident raises important questions about privacy, data collection, and the trade-offs consumers make when shopping online.
