Spend some time on security and privacy blogs, and you’ll find plenty of problems. Stores, especially the chains such as Target, save every scrap of data they can about you, and they merge that with other sources. A store purchase history can be combined with other stores’ purchase history, public records, web searches and online social activity by a data broker to often uniquely identify people. [A birth date plus a zip code can identify rural and most suburban people uniquely, and dense city dwellers to a group of about less than ten.]
In the US, there are basically no regulations barring data collection or how that data can be used.
Motherboard has a good recent article on data brokers:
“They also collect or buy information from commercial sources, scooping up people’s purchase histories (along with the dates, dollar amounts, payment used, loyalty cards, coupons used, etc.) as well as warranty registration information, etc. from retailers and catalog companies.”
From an NPR article two years ago:
"Some of the categories are innocuous — pet owner, or winter sports enthusiast.
“But Brill says others were more problematic, like “single mom struggling in an urban setting” or “people who did not speak English and felt more comfortable speaking in Spanish” or “gamblers.””
Hey, I don’t think that is quite fair. There are many no fee bank credit cards that offer a % back on purchases. If you don’t want to mess around with which one gives which % on which purchase, you still benefit from just using a points giving card for day to day purchases. With essentially no effort you get a benefit you can use to pay your credit card bill. Of course, it’s always prudent to pay you bill by the due date. After all, you are getting free access to money, and a bonus % just for doing so. This doesn’t require spending any time figuring out which card to pay first.
One reasonable resource for sorting this out might be nerdwallet.com.
jimthing: In reality, how does it affect you in having a company tracking your spending?
Surely, all the store is going to do here is offer you things more relevant to you, like vouchers off, or maybe personal advertising in some way?
Spend some time on security and privacy blogs, and you’ll find plenty of problems. Stores, especially the chains such as Target, save every scrap of data they can about you, and they merge that with other sources. A store purchase history can be combined with other stores’ purchase history, public records, web searches and online social activity by a data broker to often uniquely identify people. [A birth date plus a zip code can identify rural and most suburban people uniquely, and dense city dwellers to a group of about less than ten.]
Location and proximity data are also dumped into the mix. Beacons track where people are within retailers, restaurants, stadiums, movie theaters, including Apple Stores. Apple was one of the first major retailers to deploy beacons:
Apple’s beacons might be tracking you while you’re in a store, but they do not share the information. And Apple will anonymize the purchasing data made with their credit card wherever you are.
If you use the Starbucks app, you’ll be getting targeted messages based on current location and previous purchases. The app can even tell you what song is currently playing. Target has also been a big pioneer in usage of beacons in-store. And a friend who works in stadium advertising says that beacons are what enable food/drink orders to be delivered accurately to customers in their seats, and to know what promos, messages and ads to display in app and on the big screens.
In the US, there are basically no regulations barring data collection or how that data can be used.
That’s something else that ticks me off about the proposed $3-5 million Facebook US government settlement. Why aren’t any privacy regulations part of the deal?
jimthing: