Libertés Numériques

A month after I ordered prenatal vitamins on Amazon, I started hearing an ad on Spotify that featured the sound of a baby’s heartbeat. It was an ad for a prenatal doctor.

“Fuck,” I thought, “the Internet already knows I’m trying to get pregnant.”

But it was impossible to know if it was an example of Target-style omniscience or Spotify accurately targeting my general demographic: Woman listener of child-bearing age. (When I reached out to Spotify, a spokesperson said she was unable to tell me how the ad wound up in my mix.)

When Princeton professor Janet Vertesi got pregnant a few years ago, she went to great lengths to hide her baby bump from the world of big data. She didn’t want her unborn child to be tracked by advertisers and data brokers, so she paid for maternity clothes in cash, used Tor to surf baby sites, ordered baby products to an Amazon locker, and forbade friends and family from discussing the good news on Facebook or via texts.