Amazon.com knows things about you that you may not know yourself. Though plenty of companies have detailed systems for tracking customer habits, critics and boosters alike say Amazon is the trailblazer, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. It even received a patent recently on technology aimed at tracking information about the people for whom its customers buy gifts.
Some privacy advocates believe Amazon is getting dangerously close to becoming Big Brother with your credit card number. "They are constantly finding new ways to exploit personal information," said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an Amazon nemesis since 2000 after the company changed its privacy policy to allow sharing of personal information with companies it buys or partners with. More recently, the Seattle-based virtual retailer has launched a Web search engine, called A9, that can remember everything you've ever searched for — and the site reserves the right to share that information with its retailing arm. Amazon also funds a Web site called 43 Things. It seeks to link people with similar goals, such as getting out of debt.
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