The strangest thing happened to me recently. I ordered some groceries on Amazon Fresh. When you check out, Amazon recommends other things you might want to buy related to your purchase. But this time, Amazon offered “Treatment for High Cholesterol” and Amazon One links to medical advice as well as links to prescription drugs.
It’s weird, because my doctor and my wife are the only people who know about my cholesterol numbers. They are also pretty good! But there are certainly data points, including my age, my food preferences, and my past purchases I read the news elsewhere on the webThat can suggest I would be a good candidate for a statinThe type of cholesterol-lowering drug Amazon recommended to me. And while I’m used to Amazon recommending books I might like or cleaning products I might want to buy again, pushing prescription drugs at me felt pretty creepy.
It’s entirely possible that the Amazon recommendations I saw on this particular grocery order were random. The next time I ordered groceries, the app recommended bacon, not statins. At first, I thought it might be a test or a mistake on Amazon’s part, but when I asked what was behind the recommendation, the company confirmed that it was a feature, not a bug.
“Amazon displays products that may be related or similar to the current purchased item,” Amazon spokeswoman Samantha Kruse said in an email. “Protected health information from Amazon Health services, including Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, is not used to market or advertise general merchandise in the broader Amazon store.”
In other words, Amazon may use information from your purchases to make prescription drug recommendations, but it won’t use your protected medical information to try to sell you other things.
Just seeing Amazon target me for a health condition draws attention to the unsettling amount of data Amazon has collected from my online activity — as well as the fact that Amazon is a healthcare companyOne that can collect data and push customers towards treatment accordingly.
It should come as no surprise that Amazon is working with extremely powerful data about us and what we buy. But in the past four years, Amazon has launched its own pharmacy business and bought One Medical, a primary care startup that can connect Amazon customers directly with doctors.
It’s clear that Amazon’s healthcare ambitions are huge. We still don’t know exactly how this will change the Amazon shopping experience for everyone – but perhaps my recent shopping experience was a preview.
Before I get too upset about Dr. Amazon, let’s take a closer look at what the retail giant knows about its customers and how.
Amazon is famously known as the store of everything, where you can buy everything from battery acid well, statins. Like most websites, Amazon collects data about your activity on the site, such as the things you buy, the things you don’t buy, and the things you consider buying. It builds a profile based on those interests and uses algorithms to recommend things you might want to buy next. the amazon This algorithm is proud. (Amazon collects aggregate data about you By the way, your shopping habits extend well beyond.)
Then there is Amazon’s ad business is booming. The advertising arm of the company Now rival Thanks in part to Google and the Meta duopoly that has dominated online advertising for years Amazon has a huge amount of data About what people buy, what they watch, where they live, etc. the amazon said It uses “cookies, pixels, IP addresses and other technologies” to target these ads, which is why you can find Amazon tracking bugs on websites. All over the web. For example, these trackers may know that I’ve looked up health-related questions on WebMD and use that data to make recommendations on Amazon, Christo WilsonProfessor of Computer Science at Northeastern University.
“There could be an Amazon tracker lurking on the page, monitoring what you’re doing, and you could potentially get these kinds of weird ads,” Wilson told me.
Or, perhaps, perhaps it was a pattern in my purchase history. My grocery orders that triggered the cholesterol medication recommendation included shredded cheese, salsa, tomatoes, flour tortillas — and notably, ground chicken. Was this a tell? It was, after all, a heart-healthy alternative to ground beef and taco night on the horizon. I also bought the fat free version of Coffee Mate French Vanilla Coffee Creamer, which is delicious and cholesterol free. But do these purchases make me an obvious target for a cholesterol consultation with Amazon One Medical? And anyway, should my Amazon purchases be linked to Amazon’s healthcare services at all?
Amazon One Medical is a relatively new service. Amazon bought One Medical In 2022and integrated it with Amazon Clinic telehealth services Before this summer. Now, Prime members can pay $99 a year to access care through Amazon One Medical. For $5 a year, Prime members can get access to discounted drugs With Amazon Pharmacy RxPass. Although I am a Prime member, I am not an Amazon One Medical customer, and I do not use Amazon Pharmacy. So, given my preference for healthy tacos, an algorithm might predict that, as someone proactive about their health care needs, I might be interested in Amazon’s health care offerings.
When Amazon bought a medical, FTC And others The healthcare industry has raised concerns about what this could mean for Amazon’s persistent and sensitive health data. It was around this time that the Washington Post reported to customers Signing away some of their health privacy rights When they were admitted to the Amazon clinic. None of this made me feel any better about whether it was legal for Amazon to use my complicated purchase history to sell me targeted healthcare products.
As far as I know, Amazon can. HIPAA, the federal law that protects health privacy, is narrower than most people think. This only applies to healthcare providers, insurers and companies that manage medical records. According to Suzanne Bernstein, a legal fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), HIPAA requires entities to protect your data as it moves between them, but that won’t apply to your Amazon purchases.
“This background is particularly important, as Amazon and other companies continue to collect, process and use vast amounts of consumer health data outside the scope of HIPAA,” Bernstein said. “And it’s not the fault of the American consumer that they don’t necessarily know that.”
In the absence of any federal protections, some states have passed their own data privacy laws. While California is perhaps most famous for giving its citizens more control over their data, Washington State changed the conversation about health data privacy when it Its My Health My Data Act has been enacted The law last year defined consumer health information more broadly, Bernstein explained, to cover any information about a consumer’s past, present or future health status. That could mean Washington residents have some privacy rights when their Amazon purchases indicate health conditions. It’s still unclear how the law might apply to Amazon, which is based in Washington.
I’m still making sense of my recent brush with statins on Amazon and still have more questions than answers. Is Amazon planning to routinely target its customers with prescription drug recommendations? Am I the only one who thinks that seems more invasive than convenient? Or does Amazon know what people really want, even if it seems a little creepy at first?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. One thing I do know: Taco Night with heart-healthy ground chicken is a hit.
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