Amazon shenanigans

I’m checking the status of the Amazon shipment that will deliver my Boox Tab Ultra today, using my iPhone. Click the tracking link from the email in Outlook Mobile (which by the way now forces weblinks to open Edge Mobile :unamused:) and I get served an Amazon ad.

The ad says “Amazon’s mobile app is now the only way to get real time tracking updates for deliveries” (maybe slightly paraphrased but that’s the gist).

This tells me:

  1. Amazon want’s its app on more mobile phones
  2. You will have to enable maximum location setting capabilities for tracking to work
  3. Amazon has big plans for our location data. Q.E.D.

Am I the only one annoyed by c r a p like this?

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Perfect for the General Gripes thread but, yeah everything pushing users to their app is getting on my nerves.

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I’ve uninstalled most apps and opted to put a bookmark on my homepage. Hotmail, Amazon, banks and credit cards, etc.

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I’ll give you something that will creep you out even more given how potentially intrusive it is. Amazon is an occasional customer of ours and I’ve visited their Seattle and New York offices for meetings.

Because we do development using UWB tech in products for customers I have software on my S22 Ultra that gives me detailed status of what the UWB radios are doing/seeing.

As soon as you reach the visitor reception desk, multiple pings and queries hit my phone and the visitor badges have UWB radios/antennas in them as well. I can sort of understand that if I was going in to a product development area, but as soon as I hit the door?

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I have never had that happen and I can’t make it happen now with any of the three orders currently in transit. I’m using Apple Mail app, not Outlook. And I have Prime if that makes a difference.

In another job, the company security department reported to me. I get why it seems creepy, but in an active shooter situation, the ability to locate devices anywhere in the building can be critical.

Several of us probably have bad stories about dealing with devices brought by foreign nationals into secure areas (which can be thousands of acres of fenced-in ground), or when traveling and WE are the foreign national being scrutinized.

Yes I can see both sides to this, what surprised me a bit was how much/far reaching it has rapidly become.

Interesting. I have Prime too, but I haven’t tried Apple Mail. Thanks for checking.

I was wondering whether, as a part of putting the Amazon Store in the MS WAS, there was some “cooperation” clause that might serve Amazon ads in MS products.

Another data point is that I have downloaded the Apple Store app but currently have it deleted because it’s annoying. Have you never download the app before, perhaps? If not maybe they’re targeting people who haven’t tried it yet. Just a shot in the dark.

Oh yes. Remember all the uproar about Google Glass? Many institutions subsequently installed overlapping fixed camera systems that run real time video feed through interesting algorithms as you walk through common areas in those facilities.

The same system vendors are working hard to make sales to municipalities with large, fixed camera infrastructure as well.