How one woman kept her pregnancy a secret from online advertisers
By now, the story of Target’s role in informing a Minnesota father of his teenage daughter's pregnancy has become sort of an urban legend about the risks of data-based advertising. If you haven’t heard it – Target sent coupons for baby clothes and cribs to the girl after her prior purchases indicated a potential pregnancy. The outraged father complained to Target after seeing his daughter’s name in the address field, only to later find out that his daughter was actually pregnant. The manager at the Minneapolis Target called the father to apologize, the father in turn apologized to the manager for complaining without checking the facts first, and we can only assume they shared a cigar nine months later.
This is a real story, as outrageous as it sounds, and it’s not even the worst example. Some women have reported receiving coupons and advertisements for baby-related offers after suffering a miscarriage. These horror stories were enough to convince one New York woman to see what it takes to keep retailers out of her pregnancy.
Princeton sociology professor Janet Vertesi used the Tor browser when she had to browse baby-related websites, bought maternity clothes with cash, asked family and friends to refrain from mentioning her pregnancy on social media, and even resorted to code language when discussing the baby and pregnancy with her husband via text message, Forbes reports.
For online shopping, Vertesi created an email account on a personal server set up just to run an Amazon account, and had her purchases shipped to an Amazon Locker, which is essentially a PO box for Amazon orders. Vertesi told Forbes that "Amazon knows that email address has babies," but couldn’t make use of the information without her personal address. To avoid tipping them off through their credit card billing data, Vertesi and her husband bought Amazon gift cards with cash at retail stores and used them to make their purchases online.
Her objective was to avoid receiving unsolicited baby- and pregnancy-related offers from retailers, and her efforts paid off.
"It was really just a personal project, to see if it’s possible to avoid detection. If you’re a pregnant woman, it’s usually impossible to make it through your pregnancy without a single diapers ad. We didn’t get a single baby mailing, which is why I think it worked," Vertesi told Forbes. "You have to start early though before you’re even pregnant: My husband and I bought prenatal vitamins with cash."
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