How Does Amazon Know?

Mistress and Slave were fooled again yesterday. Of course, there was the traditional wake-up sex.  Then Mistress phoned me at lunch time, and let me know that our sweet little daughters had an appointment with a photographer that Mistress had made for 5 pm.

"That means we will have an hour or two at home alone, Slave."

I could see her eyebrow lifting suggestively. Could there be back to back double headers on Slave's dance card?

I headed home a little early in the midst of late afternoon thunderstorms, anticipating a briefly empty nest. But when I pulled up the driveway, there were a full complement of cars in the driveway.

Inside the front door I encountered Mistress, who was in a short nightie. But looking a tad crestfallen.

"I didn't have the heart to tell you slave. But there appointment got moved because of the weather."

Foiled again.

But at least Mistress got some pre-dinner worship, if not the full monty of Slave's devotion.

But the focus of today's blog is not our over crowded nest, but annoying on line data collection.

According to Rand Paul, we need to be all worked up about the NSA and it's vacuuming up of all of the telephone calls we make. But personally, I'm not so worried about the gubmint knowing who I've called on my cell phone. This ol' slave has nothing to hide on that front.

What's much more annoying is all that data that corporations like Google and Amazon seem to aggregate and exploit in order to pitch me things that they think I will be tempted to buy once it pops up on my screen or in my mailbox. I'm not so sure what picture their choices for me paint.

Example:

Yesterday I got an email from Amazon with the latest selection of things that might prompt Mick to press the "buy with one click" button.

The first item on the list was a steel "grab bar" for my bathroom. Apparently Amazon thinks that this aging slave no longer can keep his feet under him and needs something to hold onto in the shower. Nice. Don't think I'm over the hill yet. (Maybe they were keying off some things I've bought for my aging Mom lately?)

But the next item on yesterday's Amazon pitch list was particularly un-nerving: An "Electronic Studfinder".

Do you think Amazon has cross-referenced my blog entries here, my kindle browsing, and / instagram entries to determine that one of my most important jobs is to find studs to entertain and stimulate Mistress?

Scary.

Plus I'm trying to figure out how this device works.  Is it like a gieger-counter, that you switch on at a bar or restaurant that clicks like crazy the closer you get to an available stud?

Maybe I should hit that "one click buy" button to find out.