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Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

latimes.com

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Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#201

Post by gdulli »

choward wrote: post #81
AznHisoka wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MasterCard and Visa not only make money from each credit card transaction but to add insult to injury, they make money selling that transaction data as well! That's what I call a ludicrous business.

Or like cable companies trying to get you to pay for TV and then also wanting you to watch commercials. It's all about double dipping.

You understand you pay cable companies for the infrastructure and it's different companies who show you the programming, right? Do you call it double dipping when you pay your internet provider and then the Netflix account isn't free?

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#202

Post by TeMPOraL »

yborg wrote: post #26
thinkling wrote: post #4

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.

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 do it in a different way - through loyalty cards. In a store I frequent (which is cheap, and thus services lots of poor people), you can save a bit of money by just letting the clerk scan your loyalty card.

Interestingly, the discounts are usually not on the "exclusive" items, but on basic necessities - like vegetables.

Also, the shop in question didn't even have debit/credit card readers until very recently. I suppose stores may be reluctant to pushing people into card payments simply because processing fees are too large if you're running on small margin.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#203

Post by LamaOfRuin »

omginternets wrote: post #174
hueving wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this fall squarely into "the Americans innovate, the EU regulates"? Whether that saying is derogatory or not obviously depends on your point of view, but this new regulation isn't contradictory to the saying.

The point was that it's usually said in a derogatory fashion, insinuating that European innovation suffers as a result of this.

Those also aren't strictly tied together. I absolutely believe that EU's internet regulations make it less desirable to start interesting new internet companies there. In many cases, I would also gladly trade that for the benefits of being an individual living under such a system.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#204

Post by TeMPOraL »

bbcbasic wrote: post #170
keithpeter wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a more subtle thing for them to keep in mind: many people carry out a mix of card/online and cash transactions. Only the card/online transactions will be captured. The Panopticon's record will show an extremely unhealthy and meagre diet for me for instance because I buy fresh fruit/veg at markets - cash only. It strikes me that data censored through transaction modality and then used to make marketing decisio…

If they can still make predictions based on a partial dataset it's better than nothing and probably profitable to use. Chuck some linear regression or similar at it.

Also in this particular example, they could probably compute that your junk food shopping doesn't account for your daily calories intake.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#205

Post by cheez »

pdkl95 wrote: post #183
adjkant wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to note the definition of privacy you use is important. For me, in my daily life, all of this is completely "private". Google having my data in mass and an identity profile on me that no human will ever specifically look at is just as good as private to me. The fact that computers will be handing this data, not other humans, is an important distinction for me. No human will ever see my individu…

> the definition of privacy you use is important Yes, it is. Defining privacy to mean the very opposite of "private" is pure doublethink/newspeak. > Google having my data You're not giving your data only to google. You're also giving it to anybody that hacks Google's servers to take their data at any point in the future (and anybody that buys it from the hackers), and any government (or other entity with sufficient p…

There is anonymity in crowds. That's potentially the privacy he's speaking about.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#206

Post by TeMPOraL »

pnut wrote: post #194
awinter-py wrote: post #19

I think everyone remembers the first ad to follow them around multiple websites. For me it was an ASPCA campaign. The next version of that experience will be researching a purchase and where to get it, then seeing ads on the way that are customized to (a) the product you're buying and (b) your preferences. If you're 55 you'll get michael jordan advising you to buy nikes. If you're 35 it will be Noel Gallagher (air no…

If ads were going to become honest and informative, it would have happened already. A sale from a lie is equal in value to a sale from the truth.

> A sale from a lie is equal in value to a sale from the truth.

And a sale from a lie is also cheaper to achieve than a sale from the truth. So even if your ads are always 100% honest, if your competitor starts lying, you're forced to either do the same, or risk going out of business. This is how the market optimizes human values away as inefficiencies.

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#207

Post by pjc50 »

gub09 wrote: post #66

This is probably an unusual opinion, but for me privacy is similar to freedom. Freedom is usually defined as a negative: people are free of oppression, have freedom of speech (freedom from speech being constrained), freedom of movement (not forced to stay in one place), religious freedom (freedom to believe what one will and not be limited in practice or assembly), etc. Privacy is the freedom from being watched, from…

Remember that Roosevelt's famous "four freedoms" included two "freedom of" and two "freedom from".

The "freedom from" elements have been de-emphasised lately as they're extremely unpopular with the right-wing:

"The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world."

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#208

Post by waibelp »

Moru wrote: post #101
waibelp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Germany is one of the few countries that has recently seen the reality of what tracking can lead to if the wrong people end up in power. So the question is, do you trust Trump or whoever comes after him? My main gripe with shopping in Germany is everyone is standing there at the cash-register trying to find the correct ammount of cash to pay. There is a large amount of different coins you have to sorth through and th…

Haha, I don't know why you are writing about Trump but no: I don't trust him or anybody else but I think that's because I'm a very skeptical person.

I think the problem with long waiting queues at cash-registers isn't the amount of different coins but the people that 1) do not calculate what the need to pay 2) want to speak with the sellers because they have nobody else they can speak to

But that's all a thing of personal attitude: Do we always have to be fast at everything what we do? Do we always need to optimize everything and use every free minute? In my opinion the laxness comes with age and who knows if we will do the same things in some years that we are hating others for today?

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#209

Post by thesehands »

AznHisoka wrote: post #13
thinkling wrote: post #4

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.

MasterCard and Visa not only make money from each credit card transaction but to add insult to injury, they make money selling that transaction data as well! That's what I call a ludicrous business.

a logical conclusion could be drawn that there either Visa/Mastercard should start an ad network, or Google gets in the credit card game (As android pay becomes more widely accepted, this may be an irrelevant step for them)

Re: Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

#210

Post by a3n »

mc32 wrote: post #37
thinkling wrote: post #4

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.

My car is due for an emissions test, and this morning I was looking at the testing company's site to see if they accept cash. I thought it was ludicrous that I couldn't be sure whether a face to face transaction could be done with "legal tender."
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