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How to keep your Amazon gift purchases a secret

Leslie Pedder and Kurt Knutsson22.3K views

Think back to the days when hiding Christmas presents meant sticking them in a secretive place in the attic or basement. Nowadays, you not only have to hide the physical presents you’ve bought, but you have to cover your internet purchase footprint as well. 

Don’t worry you’re not the only one shopping for Christmas gifts on Amazon. And unfortunately, your spouse, kids, or siblings may be using your Amazon Prime account as well. So how do you still add the element of surprise if you can see what everyone has bought on Amazon? No problem, Amazon has created a few features that’ll help keep your purchases hidden, so Christmas morning is full of surprises.

Turn on Amazon Household

This may be the simplest solution. Amazon Household is an Amazon feature that allows you to share your Prime benefits with the family. You can create up to two adult accounts, four teens, and four child profiles. Amazon Household keeps all shopping purchases and notifications for shipping separate. So no need to worry about your Christmas present being revealed before giving it out. 

With Amazon Household you not only get to keep your purchase separate but you can also share eBooks, audiobooks, digital content, and games.

Create your Amazon Household here.

Archive an Order

This is very useful if you share your account with multiple people or have sneaky kids who know your password and will look at your purchase history.   The following will only work on a desktop or laptop browser. (not on a tablet or mobile device)

  1. Log In to your Amazon account
  2. Click on ‘Returns and Orders’ in the top right corner
    1. A list of your orders from the past three months will appear
  3. Scroll to find the item you want to hide
    1. Below the item, you will see ‘Archive Order’
      1. A window will appear and you’ll need to select ‘Archive order’ again
    2. If you do not see ‘Archive Order’ select ‘View order details to the right of the purchased item
      1. On the right-hand side, select “Archive order’

Even though the item will no longer appear in Your Orders, you can still view it in ‘Archived Orders’ from Your Account.

Hide from Alexa

Now, if you have some real sleuths in your household, you are going to need to do more than just archive your purchases to make sure your gifts are still surprises. You can start by changing your Alexa settings.

  1. Open the Alexa app
  2. Click ‘Settings’
  3. Find and Select ‘Notifications’  then select ‘Amazon Shopping
  4. Scroll to ‘Say or Show Item Titles’ now turn this feature off

Now Alexa will still notify you when a package is being delivered, but it will not say what the item is.

Clear Your Search History

We all have that one relentless person, determined to find out which presents were purchased this year. Another step to keep them off your tracks is deleting your ‘Search History.’

The following will only work on a desktop or laptop browser. (not on a tablet or mobile device)

  1. Go to ‘Account & Lists’ in the upper right corner of your browser then, select ‘Recommendations’
  2. Click ‘Your Browsing History (text in gray strip towards top of the screen)
  3. Select ‘Manage history’ (text towards the right part of the screen).  This will open up a row and reveal “Manage history”
  4. Click ‘Remove all items from view’ button
  5. Then select ‘Remove all items from view’ yellow button that will appear in the center of your screen

Now that you know how to keep your Christmas shopping private, make sure to check out some of Kurt’s top gift picks

More Gift Ideas from Kurt

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