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Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

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Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#91
post #69

The European Union is often made fun of with "the Americans innovate, the EU regulates", but in the meantime GDPR[1] is coming into force in 2018 > The primary objectives of the GDPR are to give citizens and residents back control of their personal data [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regu...

I've read the Wikipedia summary, and it appears to me, that GDPR only requires encryption, not anonymisation, of personal data! Or did I miss something?

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't in the medium term because of how much they hate the credit card company's cut. 3% is a lot on an already low-margin transaction at Walmart.

Walmart wouldn't take credit if it wasn't financially sound for them to do so.

Doesn't mean they like the arrangement and are going to shill for the credit card companies though. That was my point.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#93
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, but Google will find a way...

No they won't it would be too high cost, it's easier to make it very convenient to use your phone or card for payments and 95% of people will follow suit.

Just like you deposit up to 40 bills simultaneously into an ATM, Google will deploy similar scanners at POS checkouts. In fact it is faster since the cashier does not have to manually count. Simply insert into the cash reader, and it spits out the correct change. Combined with your loyalty card for discounts, they have your identity. Don't want a loyalty card? I hope you enjoy paying 5-10% more for your grocery purchases.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#94
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually surprised that retailers haven't started surcharging people paying in cash by now in order to drive all of individuals' transaction data into the panopticon.

They won't in the medium term because of how much they hate the credit card company's cut. 3% is a lot on an already low-margin transaction at Walmart.

There is no way Walmart pays 3% when a small business with minimal documentation can pay less via Square, PayPal, etc...

And as mentioned elsewhere, cash has a cost as well (theft, miscounting change, counting in and out cash drawers during shift changes, arranging daily deposits, trips to the bank, etc). As someone who worked retail 10+ years ago, I can assure you all these things happened, and probably added 2-3% to costs vs electronic payments.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#95
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because you have location services enabled on your phone. Google collects your phones location with this on. You can see the details by going to your location history.

Yeah I keep location services turned off most of the time. I also have never intentionally clicked on an online ad of any kind.

> Yeah I keep location services turned off most of the time.

Even if your location services, wifi and bt are off, they occasionally turns on to get your location. In Lineage OS there is an additional setting to not use wifi (when it is off) for location services.

May be you can look into developer options to disable this setting (Please note that even if wifi is off, your phone searches for wifi hotspots to find itself where it is).

And if your wifi/bt is on, your location is (almost) always available to Google. You know it, right?

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#96
post #20

Now I will have to seriously consider getting off the Google ecosystem now. Deactivating facebook was okay, but Google might be tricky considering many of website accounts use Google authentication.

Okay, this is a small rant that is not directly aimed at you, so nothing personal. This is aimed generally more at people in the privacy at all costs camp and the like. If there's some viewpoint I'm missing here I'd also love to hear it, so it's not really a mean-spirited rant either. Google owns the internet at this point. For general use purposes, they ARE the internet. So avoiding them should really have at least…

It's also a matter of principle. You can always argue that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear in support of more surveillance. But that's a slippery slope.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#97
post #37

FTA: "Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with companies that track that data." Wow.

So the only way to break the circle is to purchase with cash... And now fewer and fewer people buy with cash, to the point some Nordics plan on doing away with cash as much as possible.

That's quite normal here in Germany. A lot of people I know still only pay with cash because most of the people are skeptical about data that may be used against them. Sure, there are a lot of young people (born >=2000) sharing everything and paying everything with card but the older ones still care about their privacy.

That means a safe way I and a lot of people prefer is to get a bunch of cash from a cashpoint and use that to buy stuff to not get profiled...

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#99

I'm interested to read about where people believe this progression of technology will take us in the near and far future. Are there thought out considerations of what type of world we are heading towards? Has Google revealed their vision of advertising for 2032? I don't mean this rhetorically, I genuinely want to know what vision there is for advertising in the future because I believe it's something we really ought…

I love this question too. I think we're heading for a full blown "société de contrôle" (see Wikipedia). So the locus of power is changing. Before it was repression, now it is control. It's not inhernetly good or bad. But my gut feelings says that we're transtionning to that society. And while we're transitionning, the first movers, the fastest movers (Google, FaceBook, etc) have an advantage and therefore may look dangerous to us. So in complement to your question I'd like to hear about what are the forces that are here to balance the powers.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#100
post #91
post #69

The European Union is often made fun of with "the Americans innovate, the EU regulates", but in the meantime GDPR[1] is coming into force in 2018 > The primary objectives of the GDPR are to give citizens and residents back control of their personal data [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regu...

I've read the Wikipedia summary, and it appears to me, that GDPR only requires encryption, not anonymisation, of personal data! Or did I miss something?

It also requires trivial opt-out and readability of the opt-ins.

And it gives enough power to really control what companies are doing with people's data. And the fines are huge (up to 3% of the company's global gross amount) compared to what exists today.

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