Here’s a story that’ll make you check your Amazon account tonight

A woman bought a pair of those butt-scrunch leggings on Amazon. Later, she discovered Amazon had apparently decided that meant she had, quote, “flat buttocks.”
She found the note hidden in her account settings, posted it online, and the internet absolutely went wild. More than a million people saw it in less than a day.
Now, before everyone starts deleting Amazon, here’s what’s really going on.
Amazon keeps an internal profile on shoppers based on what we buy, browse, and search for. The company makes educated guesses about who you are and what you’re interested in. Some people discovered Amazon had labeled them things like “probably owns a Shark robot vacuum” or “invested in the Apple ecosystem.”
And while those labels might sound harmless, they’re actually important because they influence the products Amazon recommends and the ads you see.
The funny part? The technology isn’t nearly as smart as it thinks it is.
One person found Amazon thought she was a fan of a particular college football team. The only reason? She had bought merchandise as a gift for someone else. Amazon couldn’t tell the difference between her interests and her shopping list.
That’s really the takeaway here. These companies are constantly building digital versions of us, but those versions are often based on incomplete information and wrong assumptions.
And it’s not just Amazon.
Google has an advertising profile that tries to estimate things like your age, income range, and interests. Facebook and Instagram do similar things to determine which ads and content you’ll see.
The good news is that you can actually look at many of these profiles and correct them if they’re wrong.
The bigger question is this: How comfortable are we with companies creating files about us based on our purchases, clicks, and searches?
Because whether the guess is “Apple fan,” “robot vacuum owner,” or “flat buttocks,” these profiles influence what we buy, what we see, and increasingly, how companies market to us every day.

Check out what these websites think they “know” about you!
• Amazon Website: Hover over Hello, [your name] at the upper right, and click Account.
• Under Ordering and shopping preferences, click Your Shopping preferences.
• Scroll to the bottom and click Manage your information.
In the Amazon app:
• Tap the menu icon (three lines) in the bottom bar.
• Go to Account > Shopping preferences > About you.

• Google: Its ad profile can guess your age, income bracket and even health interests. Go to myaccount.google.com, click Data & Privacy, then Web & App Activity. Master switch. Search history, Chrome browsing, Maps queries, Play Store activity, all of it. Turn it off. Set auto-delete to three months, so data doesn’t live there forever.
• Facebook and Instagram: Open Settings & privacy > Settings > Accounts Center > Ad preferences. Look under Ad topics to see what Meta thinks you’re into, and tap See less on anything you don’t want following you around.