Speaking of tricks.. a while back I turned off my “reading insights” in the Kindle app. Recently I’ve been re-reading Asimov and kindle reading insights popped up to congratulate me on my reading streak. Wouldn’t you know it — they’ve been tracking my reading this whole time, and I looked into it and there is no opt out short of closing my account (and subsequently losing access to my kindle library). Just absurd levels of stalking in the pursuit of data.
I don't condone this practice, but considering how "lucrative" data is, I read any sort of opt-out like this as "we're still going to collect the data but we'll hide the insights from you to make it look like we aren't." So, same with personalized ads on Google. Not sure how they're planning on implementing Maps location data such that Google "doesn't have" it, but color me skeptical for the time being.
