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December 20, 2024 5:22 AM

Is there any way to hide a graphic NSFW image from a search of my Amazon purchase history? Archiving the order doesn't do it. (CW: NSFW)

I recently purchased a silicone butt plug from Amazon, using our family Amazon account. I have purchased sex toys from Amazon in the past. This hasn't been a problem, because Amazon lets you archive orders. When you archive an order, it doesn't show up on your order history page. So I order the sex toy, archive the order, kids eyes are protected if they look at recent orders. No problem.

However, when you Archive an order, Amazon doesn't actually make it that hard to find. It will still show up if you search your purchase history. This wouldn't be a problem if the name of the product was "butt plug". If a family member searches our purchase history for butt plug, they get what they deserve. But in this case, the seller used an SEO name and called the product something like "Silicone butt plug for men, women, dogs, monsters, large, small, comfortable, adjustable, colorful, high quality, massive, cute, assorted sizes, fits inside pants and clothing, use at home or traveling."

In addition, the product image is shocking pink and highly graphic. It jumps off the page.

The result is that if I search my purchase history for "men's pants" the first thing that pops up is a graphic image of a monster dog dildo.

I don't think there is any way around this, other than taking solace in the fact that my other family members don't, to my knowledge, use the search-purchase-history functionality on Amazon. But it would be great to know if there was some way to hide this result, or even just hide the image.

TIA.

posted by anonymous to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Years ago when I bought a popular book that turned out to be absolute drivel I went into my purchase history or recommendations and used an option similar to "This was a gift". All seemingly related recommendations disappeared.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:26 AM on December 20 [4 favorites]

Years ago when I bought a popular book that turned out to be absolute drivel I went into my purchase history or recommendations and used an option similar to "This was a gift". All seemingly related recommendations disappeared.

I don't have anything similar in my own purchase history or recommendations.

One thing you can do is go to "Account and Lists" in the top right, click "Recommendations," then "improve your recommendations" in the menu bar, and then uncheck the butt plug so you don't get butt plugs suggested.

What this will *not* do is actually fix your specific ask about the order history. I bring it up because it might help you and it often comes up when people ask this question - you're not the first.

Unfortunately I think from Amazon's standpoint, this situation might be a bit of an extreme edge case - most companies badly want individuals (not families) to have accounts, and ensuring that users can always access order history is valuable for resolving customer complaints, including real and suspected scams/hacks.
posted by Tomorrowful at 5:39 AM on December 20

You might try using their customer service. I've used it 2 or 3 times in the past for other kinds of issues - lost orders - but through that experience I've learned it's pretty fast and easy to get to a human, and the ones I reached were very helpful. I think you have to go through a few clicks to get to a human but it wasn't very challenging and the whole thing was relatively quick. The conversation was through chat; I don't see a phone option.
posted by happy_cat at 7:38 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

This is a huge problem for getting any gifts for children as well, if they are old enough to access the amazon account. Even if you mark it as a gift, it's still in the history (kids are crafty) and often because you ordered one of something, their recommendation engines think you probably want 100 of them.

So good luck getting an answer, and thank you to anyone who has an answer.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:36 AM on December 20

My house recently switched to Amazon Household and I don't see anything my husband has ordered or searched for. Oldest kid has a teen acct.
posted by aetg at 12:04 PM on December 20

Thanks for that pointer to Amazon Household. I wasn't aware of that. (In the past Amazon tried to get me to sign up for a small business account to have multiple logins, but that looked like way overkill.)
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:13 PM on December 20

Whether this is enough I don't know, but I see you can remove something from your browsing history to improve your recommendations, and that seems to include purchased items.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 3:57 PM on December 21 [1 favorite]

How tech savvy are your family? Can you set up a new family account, give them the new login, change the old account's password. Then tell your family there was a technical glitch, or your account was compromised, and they have to use this new login but everything else is exactly the same.

Don't do this if they're technical enough to have follow up questions.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:37 PM on December 21