Tech companies know what you are doing right now

New Delhi Next time when Netflix or Amazon shows you what you should be watching or shopping next do not just let that notification pass by You personal life be it shopping movie streaming inapp experiences long drives or latenight dinners everything is being tracked analysed and packaged into data sets for enhancing consumer experiences which reach advertisers later What exactly do the tech firms know about you Practically everything under the sunBe it your location and address relationship and work status income level educational and financial background religious and political beliefs communications search and reading history content consumption social media behaviour health data or shopping history eversmarter algorithms are busy crunching everything about youAccording to Thomas George Senior Vice President and Head at CyberMedia Research CMR in a world driven by demanding and impatient consumers seeking instant gratification tech companies have to remodel and reorient their business to offer superior consumer experience CXIn doing so they have to learn more about consumers to tailor offerings accordingly George told IANSOn April 16 Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos told investors that the video streaming service would soon start releasing more specific and granular data and reporting to different groupsFirst to our producers then our members and of course to the press over time The aim is to be more fully transparent about what people are watching on Netflix around the world Sarandos saidNetflix CEO Hastings said the company will lean on to being more transparent quarter by quarterThe overthetop OTT company in December revealed that more than 45 million accounts watched its horror movie Bird Box within the first seven days of its releaseNetflix is also testing a new Top 10 feature that will show the 10 most popular TV series and films being watched by its 150 million subscribersA New York Times report in January said that Amazons advertising services are leveraging Machine Learning ML to dissect consumers online buying habitsIn addition to knowing what people buy Amazon also knows where people live because they provide delivery addresses and which credit cards they use said the reportIt knows how old their children are from their baby registries and who has a cold right now from cough syrup ordered for twohour delivery And the company has been expanding a selfservice option for ad agencies and brands to take advantage of its data on shoppers the NYT report claimedAmazons advertising business today is worth about 125 billionResearchers from Georgia Institute of Technology recently found that based on ads on smartphones shown a mobile app developer could learn a users gender with 75 per cent accuracy parental status with 66 per cent accuracy age group with 54 per cent accuracy and could also predict income political affiliation marital status with higher accuracy than random guessesFree smartphone apps are not really free Apps especially malicious apps can be used to collect potentially sensitive information about someone simply by hosting ads in the app and observing what is received by a user said lead researcher Wei MengPeople today are increasingly using smartphones for online dating banking and social mediaIn a datarich networked world the adoption of various apps and platform has opened more and more avenues for personal data collection There is a thin line between ensuring brilliant consumer experience CX and snooping George notedThe best example of how companies can snoop on your personal data is Target Corporation the eighthlargest retailer in the US which in 2012 used data analytics to predict that a High School student was pregnant long before her father didAs data becomes the new oil wait for more shockers as tech companies begin to monetise users dataCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates