Target infamously was inferring when teenage girls were pregnant before their parents knew based on reward card data records of single merchant retail purchases.... in 2002.

Tech companies when they speak to VCs: look at all the creepy things we can infer with ooodles of aggregated data and AI to maximize targeted ad revenue, we're worth 50x what an equivalent non-tech company in our sector is valued, because of all the things we can do with all that data from all those people together

Tech companies when they speak to their customers: oh you're so silly to even ask about privacy, what possible utility could there be in that single isolated variable?

▲

nkrisc 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Accidentally inferring. They were using basic machine learning to send coupons for predicted future purchases based on past purchases and general trends. And as far as I’m aware, it only happened once (or was only publicized once).

	▲	fc417fc802 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It almost certainly happened regularly since the entire point of the program was to make accurate predictions about future purchases. The practical impact of acting on those predictions only caused mild controversy and became publicized the one time (at least that I'm aware of) but we have no reason to expect that the program was unsuccessful and every reason to expect that it was.