Amazon is giving some users a whole $2 a month for only one tiny thing in return: that they route their traffic through an Amazon server so the company can keep track of which Amazon ads they've seen. It has been doing this for a long time.
I don't think anyone needs to hear this, but you should. It's not! That's right.
You can get up to $10 a month in Amazon credit for uploading receipts for purchases you made at places other than Amazon and filling out surveys if you sign up for the program. Even if you were willing to give up your privacy in exchange for a few dollars, why would you do it? A list of the things you've bought is more personal than internet traffic. In court, receipts can be used as evidence.
If you joined the waitlist for the Shopper Panel program, you would be asked to turn on a PureVPN for your phone, according to an FAQ on Amazon. The company says this isn't actually installing a VPNs on your device; instead, it's making it so all yourDNS traffic goes to an Amazon server, which lets the company know when you see "Amazon's own advertising or ads from third-party businesses that advertise through Amazon
I don't think that's much better than if it were running a virtual private network. Your phone is still asking Amazon for directions when it tries to connect to a server, even though all of your traffic won't go through it. That's what the internet service provider does. You have to trust that the app will only use the app permission to confirm the ads from Amazon that you see, and that it won't receive or share any personal information with third-party companies.
The upside of this is that you get $2 at the end of the month if you keep the "VPN" on for most of the month.
There are other companies that have a program like this. Facebook gave users $20 gift cards each month to use a virtual private network on their phone, and in 2012 the company said it would pay users $5 every three months for running a Chrome extension that tracked their usage. If you used a special device that tracked your internet usage, you could get a $20 a month discount.
There is one thing that stands out about all of these programs, and that is how little money they pay the people who are willing to work for them. If you are the type of person who doesn't care about privacy, you should demand more from some of the most valuable companies in the world.
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