What price smart algos, predictive data?

Retail businesses are replacing intuition and luck with data analysis to engage with consumers in a more accurate fashion. But on the consumer side, it's a more complicated story.

Here's something that happened to my friend. After having unprotected sex, she searched for "pregnancy test papers" only once on Taobao, a popular online shopping site in China. From then on, items related to the entire pregnancy cycle, from maternity dresses to infant formula, kept popping up on her landing page.

"I feel exposed and being monitored. All those flashy promotions do me no good but simply add to the pain, since they are the reminders of the unhappy experience that I had," she said.