Amazon Will Give $10 to Users Who Are Willing to Share Their Data

Amazon this week offered $10 as credits to users who were willing to share their online shopping data.

Amazon will pay users to get access to their data.

(Photo: AP)

Amazon is the latest technology giant going after your online data. But hang on, before you lose your cool, it’s worth mentioning that the company isn’t reportedly planning to steal the data under your nose.

In fact, they’ll pay you $10 (Rs 690) in credits, after which they’ll gain access to your shopping history on the internet, including what people buy off its competition.

According to a Reuters report, this deal was made available to Prime Day shoppers earlier this week, which lasted through 15 and 16 July in the US, when the company was offering bumper discounts on select products.

Everybody knows that data of users carry huge interests for businesses these days and Amazon thinks that $10 credits are sufficient for a user to be convinced about giving access to his/her data.

This ploy was tried out by Facebook earlier this year, when it offered a similar deal to more than 1 billion users on its platform. The social networking giant spoke about a new app called Study, which will be available in countries like the US and India for now, where select users will be invited to be part of it.

With Amazon, the user will be asked to install Amazon Assistant, a web tool that will ask for access to your web browser. This will allow Amazon to track those signing up for this arrangement, and probably give them a clear idea as to what the user is looking to buy off the internet, what are his/her taste and even their spending limit also.

With the onset of GDPR in the West, most companies are now vary of trying to access data of their users. By switching to the ‘get paid to share your data’ model, these brands are definitely presuming they’re legitimizing a process.

After all, working behind the backs of the user has brought trouble for the likes of Facebook and Google. Now, it’s up to the user to decide whether $10 for their data set is a deal worth going for, or not.