How To Hide Amazon Orders from Prying Eyes

Do you have a guilty shopping secret? Did you spend more than you should recently? Have you bought gifts for people online and don’t want them seeing? These are all good reasons why you might want to hide your Amazon orders from prying eyes. I’m going to show you how.

That feeling of calm satisfaction of being ahead of the curve during holiday season, or of getting away with buying a little more than you should on Amazon will fade quickly if you’re found out. If you are able to keep your credit card statement to yourself, the only other evidence, other than the products themselves, is your order history on Amazon. And while you cannot hide the mountain of packages outside your door that speel out your very obvious guilt, you can do something about that pesky, incriminating order history.

While you cannot delete your order history, you can archive it. Unless the person looking on your account knows about the order archive, your secret should be safe.

How to hide Amazon orders

Amazon doesn’t allow you to delete your order history, which is a shame. If you have a curious partner, children or a friend (frenemy?) who would think nothing of digging through your Amazon account to see what you have been up to, hiding your order is about as good as it gets.

1. Log in to your Amazon account.
2. Select Your Account in the top left.
3. Select Order History and then the order you want to hide.
4. Select Hide Order.
5. Confirm your choice.

This removes that order from the default order history view. It doesn’t remove it altogether. You will still be able to view or re-order using the archived one by selecting the very helpful ‘View Hidden Orders’. Fortunately, even though you can see this button, it isn’t as obvious as the usual order history screen.

Should you need to, you can Unhide Order by finding an order in View Hidden Orders and selecting ‘Unhide Order’ on the right.

How to buy gifts without being found out

With most of our shopping now happening online, there is a trail of electronic evidence that follows our every purchase. Where we once could use cash to buy a product and then either hide or trash the receipt, we now have a record on our credit card statement, an email confirmation, email statement and an account statement with the retailer. So while shopping may have gotten easier and more convenient, hiding your Amazon orders, and your overspending, hasn’t!

If you want to keep the mystery alive and your gifts secret, there are still options to hide that gift order for your significant other.

Go old school

Cash is still legal tender and still used pretty much everywhere. Nothing is stopping you from going to a brick and mortar store and buying a gift. You can hide the receipt, have the present gift wrapped or wrap it yourself and hide the gift until it is time. There is no trace and no record of what has happened. As long as you have a good hiding place for the gift, you’re home free!

Use a degree of separation

If you’re gifting to curious types, you will need a degree of separation between you and the gift. That usually means using a family member or a friend to make the purchase. If you trust them not to let on, this is an excellent way of buying online without leaving a trace. You can then either use cash or do a bank transfer to pay the purchaser so everyone is even and you’re all set!

Again, as long as you know how or where to hide the gift, you should have no problem here. If you’re already imposing on the kindness of friends and family, maybe you can just store the gif there.

Second accounts

If you regularly buy things that you don’t want found, you may find running a second Amazon account more useful. You will need a second credit card and a reason for a second account though. If you’re self-employed, a contractor or something else, that’s easy. You can open a personal and a business account. If you’re an normal user opening a second account could be tricky.

You could use a second credit card but then you still leave a trail. So why not use a pre-paid credit card? These are still legit cards but don’t usually send statements to your house and won’t leave a trace that can be found by others. They are also a great way to shop online safely as if the numbers get stolen, the worst that can happen is they can steal whatever cash you loaded the card with.

There are many reasons why you might want to hide Amazon orders. We don’t judge. The Hide Order function on the Amazon website is okay but if the person you’re hiding the order from knows about it, that method isn’t foolproof. These other methods might offer better protection though.

Do you know of other effective ways to hide Amazon orders? Tell us about them below if you do!