Serious question, do grocery store apps remember everything I buy?

I use an app for my weekly shopping, and it suggests items based on past purchases. It creeps me out that it might be sharing this data with other companies. Last month, I got ads for diet pills after buying ice cream, which felt invasive. Now I worry about what else they're tracking.

3 comments

3 Comments

xena_brown502mo agoMost Upvoted

That part about the diet pill ads after buying ice cream is the exact problem. A scary angle I never see talked about is how this purchase history could be sold to data brokers who build risk profiles on you. That ice cream data point might not just lead to ads, but could someday affect things like your health insurance rates or even loan approvals if they decide your habits are "high risk." Your grocery list paints a scarily accurate picture of your private life, and you have no clue who ends up with that portrait.

wendys422mo ago

Isn't health insurance regulated against that, @harperreed?

harperreed2mo ago

Oh great, so my midnight ice cream run might now cost me more on health insurance. It's insane how every purchase becomes a mark on some secret scorecard. They'll see that ice cream and ignore the fact I ate vegetables all week. This data doesn't just feed ads, it builds a profile that can lock you out of loans or raise your rates. And we're left in the dark about who's drawing these conclusions from our grocery lists. Maybe we should all start fake-buying health food to game the system.