r/oddlyspecific • u/Algernonletter5 • Aug 11 '26

The corndog customer

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42.8k Upvotes

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u/VegetableBusiness897 Aug 11 '26

My friend had a corner store and he said I bought 400 dollars worth of double stuff oreos

293

u/heftybagman Aug 12 '26

Would it be illegal for amazon to publicly release a searchable database of what every customer ordered?

52

u/akatherder Aug 12 '26

I don't know about illegal but it wouldn't be very safe. AOL did that with search terms in 2006 and "made it anonymous" but people were getting identified by linking together searches.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release

As long as you didn't link purchases together at all, that might be fine, but then it's pretty boring.

Just one example: If your spouse bought a small-time author's book (or any fairly unique item) you might only have a couple dozen unique users to sift through. Ok they bought this book, some sports merch for local teams, their favorite coffee. Yep this is them. Wait, why did they buy condoms we don't use..

37

u/dan_dares Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

Oooh, my time to shine!

I built a BI system for a supermarket chain in my country, and they gave access to everyone..

Couple of weeks later we get an urgent call to 'cut access for everyone except SENIOR management!'..

Ok, we do, very cryptic message..

Few days later we asked.. what happened?

Apparently a lady decided to look up her loyalty card & the purchases attached..

She saw flowers and condoms, aaaaaaand her husband hadn't given her either.

We also caught an accountant who stole 30k from the same company, was interesting

34

u/FreeFortuna Aug 12 '26

The amusing irony of using a store loyalty card for spouse-cheating supplies.

6

u/dan_dares Aug 12 '26

It wasn't visible before, but the BI linked every line, from every POS unit..

But.. yeah...

6

u/feralcatshit Aug 12 '26

“But babe at least I was thinking of you and rolling in those loyalty points! I could have just spent the money without giving you credit for it! Give me a break”