Why your holiday shopping data needs a cleanup now
NEWNow you can listen to News articles!
If the ads you see in December seem too precise, you’re not imagining it.
The holiday shopping season is the busiest time of year for retailers and data brokers. These companies silently track, collect, and sell your personal information. Every search, click, add to cart, and purchase feeds a digital shopping profile linked to your name, phone number, email, and address.
If you don’t clean it up before the end of the year, that profile will follow you until 2026. It leads to more scam calls, targeted ads, identity theft attempts, and privacy risks you never accepted. Here’s how your profile is formed, why data brokers want it, and how to delete it quickly.
Sign up to receive my FREE CyberGuy report
Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive offers delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Guide to Surviving Scams, free when you join me CYBERGUY.COM information sheet.
FBI warns email users as holiday scams rise
Your digital shopping profile is formed every time you browse, click, or shop during the holiday season. (iStock)
Your digital shopping profile is formed the moment you shop online
Your profile begins to form the moment you browse Amazon, Target, Sephora, Walmart, or any online store. Each interaction adds new data points, including:
- Items you saw
- Items you added to your cart
- Purchases and almost purchases
- Shipping and billing addresses
- Total expenditure
- Preferred brands
- Device and browser type
- IP address and physical location
Activity increases in November and December. You are looking for gifts, deals, decorations and electronics. Data brokers are seeing this increase and collecting more aggressively.
How data brokers get your information
Data brokers collect your personal information from multiple places at once. Here are the most common sources.
1) Retailers send your purchase data to third parties
Most retailers use analytics, advertising or measurement partners. These partners are typically data brokers. The more companies that handle your information, the greater the risk of exposure.
Marketing tools can analyze personal data such as age, race, gender, location, and purchasing habits. Even without clear consent, partners typically receive:
- Complete purchase histories
- timestamps
- Product Categories
- Loyalty account details
Some stores even share in-store behavior when you scan a loyalty card.
2) Shopping apps track much more of what you buy
Apps from Amazon, Temu, Walmart, SheinTarget and others track everything you do. They often collect:
- Real time location
- Device data
- Contact lists if allowed
- Slip patterns
- Time spent viewing specific items
This behavioral data becomes extremely valuable to data brokers. It also helps scammers understand how to attack you.
Data brokers collect this activity from retailers, apps and tools to create a detailed record of your habits. (iStock)
3) Price comparison tools copy your browsing habits
Browser add-ons that offer price drops or deal matching often rake in much more than expected. An FTC investigation revealed that they can capture details from location and demographics to mouse movements.
Data points like these are packaged, sold, and added to your digital shopping profile. Scammers can then create highly targeted attacks.
What scammers can do with your digital shopping profile
Scammers use these profiles to carry out more convincing attacks during the holiday season. With access to your data, they can:
- Send fake order confirmations
- Launch refund scams
- Send fraudulent delivery text messages
- Commit identity theft
- Resell your information to other criminals
If you interact with a scam even once, your profile may be marked as verified. That makes you a priority target for future attacks.
PROTECT YOUR DATA BEFORE HOLIDAY SHOPPING SCAMS STRIKE
Why December is the best month to delete your data
Every January brings an increase in scams, including refund scams, account update scams, IRS scams, Medicare scams, and subscription renewal scams. Many of these attacks are based on holiday shopping data collected in the previous weeks.
If you delete your data now, you reduce:
- fraudulent calls
- Spam emails
- Targeted phishing attempts
- The number of companies that hold your personal information
Data brokers must delete your information once you request it. Acting now limits the amount of their 2025 activity they can store and resell.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENS ON THE DARK WEB AND HOW TO STAY SAFE
However, deleting your data manually is almost impossible. You should contact and submit opt-out requests to:
- People Search Sites
- Marketing Data Brokers
- Retail data aggregators
- Ad targeting providers
- Purchase analysis platforms
- Credit-linked identity brokers
One at a time.
The fastest way to delete your digital shopping profile
That’s why I recommend using an automated data removal service. They remove your exposed data from hundreds of data broker sites and continue to monitor for new threats.
While no service can guarantee complete removal of your data from the Internet, a data deletion service is truly a smart choice. They are not cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically deleting your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to delete your personal data from the Internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing leak data with information they can find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.
Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already available on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.
Cleaning your data in December reduces scams, reduces targeted tracking, and protects your privacy heading into the new year. (iStock)
Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already available on the web: Cyberguy.com.
Kurt’s Key Takeaways
Your digital shopping profile may seem invisible, but it determines the ads you see, the scams you receive, and the exposure of your personal information. The holiday season gives data brokers more information in two months than they collect during the rest of the year. Use December to clean it up. With a few smart steps and an automated data removal service, you can enter 2025 with fewer scams, fewer trackers, and more control over your privacy.
What part of your digital shopping profile surprised you the most after learning how data brokers track you? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE News APP
Sign up to receive my FREE CyberGuy report
Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive offers delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Guide to Surviving Scams, free when you join me CYBERGUY.COM information sheet.
Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning technology journalist with a deep love for technology, gear and devices that improve lives with his contributions to News and News Business since mornings on “News & Friends.” Do you have any technical questions? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment on CyberGuy.com.