Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hydgv 2364 days ago
>This is the reason why none of your Amazon purchase confirmations list the items you purchased any more

Just checked a recent email from Amazon I received on a Gmail account and that is false.

2 comments

I just checked the emails I received from Amazon from Christmas purchases, and it is not false. I don't doubt you, but I'm curious what the difference is. I'm looking at order confirmation emails and package ship/delivery emails. They only list order numbers for me, and I need to click through to the Amazon account to see the actual items.

Is there a different category of purchase that you're looking at, or is there something I'm missing?

Edit: I am looking online and I'm not seeing any articles that reference Amazon hiding orders specifically to thwart Gmail tracking, so it's very possible I'm wrong and that's just anecdote. But that being said, they definitely aren't showing individual items in my email confirmations. Is there a preference for this that I forgot I toggled?

In my experience, I’ve noticed that order confirmation includes order details: shipping confirmation not. Took me a while to notice the pattern, and I still find it frustrating.
Do both of you use gmail?
I'm on Fastmail. I looked back at some of my old Gmail emails and they do list items. The Fastmail emails do not. This strikes me as really weird, if anything I would expect it to be the opposite.

Regardless, it's pretty clear that Amazon doesn't universally hide order information, so my assertion that they're doing it to avoid Gmail tracking seems to be pretty objectively wrong. If they were, they would do a better job.

Note that Gmail is still tracking your purchases, that's pretty widely established, and until recently, they were using your purchase history for ads. But I'm definitely wrong about Amazon's response, and I can't track down whatever source gave me that idea.

My confirmation emails contain zero product information.