Creepy data mining by retailers

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did

As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

Scary! And people called the Gmail ads intrusive!

(Photo by Janine on Flickr)

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