How To Keep Your Amazon Wishlist Anonymous — Don't Let Your Kinky Amazon Wish List out Your Vanilla Identity — Privacy Checkup

Updated: Fri December 20, 2019

Support Your Favorite Content Creator

Amazon Wish Lists seem to be ubiquitous with social media profiles. Flip through just about any social media app or website and chances are that you’ll quickly run across a link to a Wish List. And what better way to show your appreciation of your favorite content creator than to send them a gift that you know they’ll love?

But, like any vanilla service, Wish Lists revolve around your legal identity. After all, how can your fans send you gifts if Amazon doesn’t know where to send them? And even more so it’s Amazon’s business model to track your activity online for advertising purposes (but that’s a whole different class).

Stalk Your Favorite Content Creator

Unfortunately, Wish Lists can inadvertently leak your vanilla information regardless of the steps you take to protect yourself.

When creating a Wish List the fields are pre-filled with the name and email address from your Amazon account. And chances are that this is your legal vanilla identity unless you created a separate kinkster Amazon account.

On the Wish List screen be sure to click Manage list from the ••• More dropdown menu and change the Recipient, Email address, and Description fields to match your kinkster pseudonym. If you wish to receive gifts around your birthday then also change the Birthday field to a fake date close to your actual birthday.

While only the Recipient and Description fields are publicly visible the Email address can also be used to search for Wish Lists. Be sure to remove all traces of your vanilla identity. After all, you don’t want sweet Auntie Anne sending you an Ass Destroyer t-shirt for Christmas!

Additional steps

Luckily, the publicly-visible Recipient is totally separate from the Name field on the shipping address. So your legal name (or a name that won’t be questioned by your Postmaster) obviously needs to be on your shipping address. Caveat: I haven’t actually received an Amazon Wish List gift yet so I don’t actually know if Recipient is printed on the shipping label as well as Name.

It should be safe to use an honorary with legal first name while omitting your last name. For example Miss Kay.

But I’m not sure what the Phone number is used for outside of the scope of shipping. It’s possible that it may be used for search and I’m fairly certain that Amazon uses all data at their disposal to link identities together for advertising purposes.

So I’d take it a step further and use a Google Voice or dedicated kinkster mobile number for the Phone number field when adding a shipping address. After all, you do have a dedicated kinkster mobile and you don’t mix your vanilla identity and kinkster pseudonym on the same smartphone, right?

Tinfoil Hat Thinking

As an oldschool hacker my mind dives deep down rabbithole scenarios. The Third party shipping agreement checkbox jumped out at me.

This agreement absolutely makes sense and needs to be checked in order for items to be shipped that aren’t part of the Fulfillment by Amazon program. In other words, if a vendor uses Amazon as a payment processor but ships the item themselves, they obviously need access to your shipping address.

What about accidental leaks?

Most third parties will include an invoice generated by their accounting system with the order. That invoice may also be forwarded to the person who placed the Amazon Wishlist order. So chances are that your name and shipping address may be revealed to the buyer.

What about leaks by design?

Even worse is the fact that Amazon’s package tracking system may reveal exactly where the package is on a map once it’s out for delivery. So even your full address isn’t leaked the buyer might see that your package is currently on Main Street in your town and only one stop away.

And how could this be intentionally exploited by a stalker?

Simple, in theory, as long as the stalker is dedicated and tech-savvy enough to create an Amazon Seller account. If the stalker then creates a listing for an exact item from the Wish List at the lowest price then that item should be the next in line to sell.

The stalker will then receive the victim’s shipping address, name, and phone number if they purchase the item from the Wish List themselves.

Be Careful of Double-Dipping with Amazon Associates Tracking Ids

One last edge case is the use of Amazon Associates Tracking IDs. These are affiliate codes that allow Amazon Associates members to earn affiliate commissions on referral sales.

But, if you use the same Tracking ID as on your vanilla websites, then that’s one more piece of data that stalkers can use to link your vanilla identity to your kinkster pseudonym.

Just be sure to add a new Tracking ID dedicated for kinkster use and don’t use it for anything else. But beware that Amazon Associates Terms of Service may disallow posting affiliate codes on NSFW websites.

Additional information

Hopefully this article has gotten you thinking about privacy and security in general. If you need additional information or wish to host one of my OPSEC classes feel free to contact me or reach out on FetLife!

KR, Reify.