What happens to your data after online purchase?

Account name, email address, home address, credit card details, delivery address, shopping cart details, and the list goes on. This information and many more data points are collected from buyers whenever they purchase or at least attempt to. Yes! when you just visit the site, do a couple of clicks on items or just window shop for a few seconds, data can be collected. Broadly, there are two main data types that can be collected, what I term Volunteered, and Unvolunteered. Ever head of Big Data? In a narrow sense, all the information which can be collected once you use the internet. This is quite a massive stock of data which can be as much as 5,000 data points on a single individual. Emphasis will be laid only on your data collected from e-commerce websites where you regularly or just make single purchase from. No need to be scared though!

What data is collected?

Once again, Volunteered and Unvolunteered data. Those you knowingly and willingly offer to any marketplace such as Amazon or Alibaba whenever you make purchases or just a single purchase. Account name, address, geographical location, credit card information, products purchased, delivery address, email address, how much you spent, and so on. You are required to make this information available before you can receive your purchased products. Unvolunteered data remain a chunk you are unaware of. When you make the purchase recency, and frequency of your purchases, your navigation history during the purchase thus items you viewed but did not buy, a heat map of your navigation, and a lot more. Volunteered and Unvolunteered data include “cookies”.

How data is collected

They are just collected once you visit the website! Yes, once you accept and agree to visit the marketplace, it means you have tacitly agreed for your data to be collected in most cases. Also when you accept cookies which you are mostly obliged to accept, there’s a small piece of information exchange, just a tiny piece of connection and your data is stored and transferred from a web server to your browser, and of course the website you visited, and the other way round.

Privacy and data policies

When you accept privacy and data collection and usage policies at websites, this happens spontaneously. E-commerce websites/marketplaces indicate in their policies that your data would not be shared with any third party. Others point out categorically what companies or purposes your information is shared with or put to. It is advisable to find out this information if you are really scared of loosing data to some companies. Seriously, there are some e-commerce companies you do not want to give even your first name to.  

Data usage

They are used to send you ads, reminders especially of abandoned carts, make recommendations to you, inform you about discounts and promotions, and sometimes shared with other companies. You attempted to buy a product, added a few more items to your cart, gave your email address and forgot or refused to complete payment getaway? The shop will send you incessant reminders and alert you on discounts given on those items. Ever heard of “complementary products?” Printers and inks are used together, so a new printer will require ink. In 3months time after purchasing a coloured printer, an ad on ink is sent to your email. A good reminder that your ink is 80% done? That is your data being put to good use.

Data sharing

Some companies are related and have polices about data sharing. Frequency, recency, and monetary value data is sometimes shared with other e-commerce or entirely different companies and industry such as banks and sometimes governmental institutions but mostly for good ends. Your data is shared with suppliers at times just to ensure that products you frequently buy such as Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) are always readily made available. Sometimes your navigation history, thus pages you clicked first and successively are shared with website designers for SEO purposes.    

And so, what?

So, you do not really have to be scared, what happens to your purchasing data partly depends on you. Do not save or store credit card information, delivery address, and login information for your subsequent purchases especially on marketplaces you visit just once. Be mindful of the kind of cookies you accept, and do not forget to check for privacy information from marketplaces especially if you binge on goods from a particular online shop. It is twice important not to connect your login information or link applications on your phones and laptops as well.  For your email address, MailChimp has a good use for it so do not hesitate to give it. Just create an email address solely for online purchasing and mute its notification because targeted ads aren’t going anywhere. These things you can do for yourself, the rest you do not really need to worry about.