Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#121

Post by ams6110 » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 4:20 AM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #25

trendia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa is working to prevent people from using cash in stores [0]. Currently, they are merely giving merchants an incentive to change, but in the future they may use their immense lobbying power to get preferential legislation enacted. Once cash is gone: 1. your purchases will be available to any company willing to pay for it, and 2. Visa will get a de facto "tax" on all transactions (through 1-2% merchant fees) [0] ht…

So how do we fix this? In the days when we had interest rates it was possible to make money on transactions by taking the money one day and paying the invoice on the next day. Overnight the money would earn interest. This would be profit to cover the transaction. So a bank could make money moving cheques around for people, taking two weeks to clear back in the days when everything was manual. So with electronic payme…

> why the merchant fees?

Convenience. Handling cash is risky and expensive. You have to pay someone to count it, take it to the bank, where it has to be counted again, etc. That is time that has a cost. There is risk of loss or theft. That can be insured but there is a cost for that too. If you have to have an armored courier transport it, that has a cost.

Bottom line, the merchant fees are probably not much more than, and in some cases less than the costs of handling cash.

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#122

Post by snuxoll » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:08 AM UTC

snark42 wrote: post #95

djrogers wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no "yes VISA but not MasterCard" sillyness. Is there anywhere that is actually a thing? Very rarely I see a place that won’t take Amex, but no visa or mc?

> I see a place that won’t take Amex, but no visa or mc? Lots of places won't take AmEx or Discover (some of the highest fees in the business.) CostCo currently only takes Visa (no MC.) Sam's used to only take Discover. It's rare, but it happens. In this case it's also only for "credit" purchases, "debit" is ok for any card, but the fees are way less for "debit" than "credit".

I've only run into one place in 2 years of having a Discover card that wouldn't take it, seeing Amex not accepted is rather common.

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#123

Post by patrec » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:09 AM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #110

kafkaesq wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want HN to be a place of real discussion and debate, it's stupid to try to tie people to their companies. When the company is Google (or of a similar scale) -- and that company claims to care about privacy (but sometimes engages in practices that suggest otherwise) -- then clearly that association is quite relevant. (Its not a huge oversight, but really, if you had put a standard disclaimer at the end of your…

"But calling people "stupid" for pointing out that this association matters (when it obviously does) is just... "Google-y", I guess. " You have not given any reason the association actually matters here[1], nor engaged the argument on the merits Instead, you did precisely what i said would happen - character assassination for no reason. You also assert i called people stupid, which is also clearly false, I instead ex…

> IE It's not "better" when they sell it to someone who isn't Google

It obviously is, because these other someones don't have the same amount of information on you. It seems not unlikely to me (and probably others) that your difficulty in appreciating this point is employment related, even if you are arguing in good faith and are not consciously aware of it.

I don't disagree with you that the correct fix is to prohibit the sale of this information in general.

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#124

Post by pferde » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:38 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #113

DannyBee wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"he problem is that ones opinions regarding the entity responsible for issuing their paycheck are inherently less valuable" No, they aren't, and it's horrendously biased to say that. "So really, if you want a place of real discussion and debate, it's important to tie people to their companies in cases where they are participating in discussions about these companies. " No, it isn't, precisely because your premise is…

Eventually you'll find that making an issue of this, is a mistake. I was inclined to favor Google in this case, since TFA was published in the AMZN-CIA Post, but your unsavory contributions to this thread ( not your original comment, but rather the clueless hole-digging that followed) have mostly changed my mind.

"Unsavoury" does not mean the same as "something I do not agree with".

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#125

Post by true_religion » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 6:12 AM UTC

rifung wrote: post #119

DannyBee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think the disclaimer would have been appropriate here just for transparency sake." I'm very strongly against disclaimers for my personal opinions on random discussion forums , and will continue not to do so right up until i'm forced to (at which point, i'll probably just stop contributing). When I write or post articles in a public news setting or something, or get paid to write them, i'll be happy to. When i'm ju…

> People should not form opinions based on who other people work for, when they aren't speaking for their companies. This is precisely a type of bias we should be seeking to prevent. It adds no value to an intellectual discussion. It just gives a mechanism for smug self satisfaction by saying "hey, i don't have to care if he has a good point, he works for X so i can just pretend it's not a real argument" The irony is…

It's not as if he didn't disclose. He did so in his profile which is the canonical place on HN to put off-topic information about a poster.

If he put "I work at Google", on every post that touches Google then we might as well go back to having signatures on every post like a web-forum.

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#126

Post by bmon » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 9:32 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #113

DannyBee wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"he problem is that ones opinions regarding the entity responsible for issuing their paycheck are inherently less valuable" No, they aren't, and it's horrendously biased to say that. "So really, if you want a place of real discussion and debate, it's important to tie people to their companies in cases where they are participating in discussions about these companies. " No, it isn't, precisely because your premise is…

Eventually you'll find that making an issue of this, is a mistake. I was inclined to favor Google in this case, since TFA was published in the AMZN-CIA Post, but your unsavory contributions to this thread ( not your original comment, but rather the clueless hole-digging that followed) have mostly changed my mind.

>I was inclined to favor Google... but your comments have changed my mind

That doesn't even make sense. The op made no argument for or against google in any of this thread, and has only tried to clarify that. Defending yourself against the Google hating bandwagon is clueless hole digging? Did you even read any of the op's comments?

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#127

Post by drusepth » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 2:17 PM UTC

chimen wrote: post #65

drusepth wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they'd lobby this harder overseas. I moved to Europe 10 months ago and one of my biggest qualms with seemingly almost every single vendor here is that they only take cash and in the rare cases they also take card, they only take some cards (sometimes Visa, sometimes Maestro, sometimes MasterCard, etc). I would give up my purchasing history to everyone in the world if it meant I could use a single card to actua…

Europe? You need to be more specific than that. I find it hard to believe what you say and I live in eastern europe (Romania). I don't have any problem paying with cards here. It's an actual european law that asks the merchants to accept credit cards.

Sorry for being vague; just left it "europe" since I've moved around a bit since getting here.

I'm currently in Croatia, where it seems only restaurants and some grocery stores frequently take cards; I paid for an invoice at a local bank (Raiffeisenbank) yesterday that only took cash, which I thought was hilariously ironic.

For what it's worth, my stay in Iceland (3 months) was absolutely fantastic when it came to taking card payments.

On the other hand, the Netherlands (Amsterdam, 3 months) often only took Maestro-only (or sometimes Visa-only) in the cases where vendors even took cards.

Likewise in England (Sheffield, 3 months) many vendors only took cash, and were mightily confused by American cards (especially one requiring pin + signature).

I also had a brief stay in Italy (Naples, 1 week) where I found one restaurant that took any kind of card; everywhere else was cash-only.

This has been my experience. I didn't realize how commonplace card transactions actually were in America until I realized how rare they were in the places I've lived since.

I hate paying with cash because it's several extra mental steps to withdraw $X / maintain $X on hand / track expenditures / count up payments + check change / etc. It's so much easier and faster to use a card, so I hope Visa (or whomever, I don't have a preference as long as it's a card) lobbies for more widespread acceptance worldwide.

If that requires killing off cash, I wouldn't have a problem with that!

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#128

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #106

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the problem. The problem is that ones opinions regarding the entity responsible for issuing their paycheck are inherently less valuable, and this context is important for others reading. You might think you are completely objective and unbiased, as do most others, and maybe you are. But, most people are fooling themselves a little. Nobody will admit to themselves, let alone others, that they work for someo…

"he problem is that ones opinions regarding the entity responsible for issuing their paycheck are inherently less valuable" No, they aren't, and it's horrendously biased to say that. "So really, if you want a place of real discussion and debate, it's important to tie people to their companies in cases where they are participating in discussions about these companies. " No, it isn't, precisely because your premise is…

You'll want to quote the entire statement, since what you've selectively quoted changes the meaning drastically.

People are less objective about an entity who is paying them. There is nothing controversial about this. I'm surprised someone like you would even convince themselves otherwise.

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#129

Post by gbacon » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 7:07 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #92

gbacon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the insight behind the founding of GEICO, originally the Government Employees Insurance Company. The Goodwins recognized that government employees are more risk averse than the average bear. By writing policies to civil servants only, they could profitably charge lower premiums. Geico began offering policies to the general public in 1974, so this is historical trivia now.

>Geico began offering policies to the general public in 1974, so this is historical trivia now. I do recall that they offered a rather significant military discount when I was a soldier. I have wonder if that discount was backed by actuarial data. I would rather expect members of the military to be higher risk than civilians or civil servants.

Risk tolerance is funny in that it’s not always uniform.

The region where I live is heavy in the defense industry. There are lots and lots of veterans here. Federal Acquisition Regulations give preference to veteran-owned small businesses and also to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. Despite that, in a town with lots of defense and lots of veterans, there aren’t a whole lot of VOSBs.

A few years ago, the dad of a schoolmate of my son’s retired as an Army Lieutenant Colonel. Even though he as a Ranger performed parachute jumps with weapon in hand into hostile territory, he had lived in post housing all his adult life and had never had a mortgage before. The civilian world and business customs were all foreign to him despite his having interacted closely with the contracting industry for years.

We get used to what we’re exposed to. After being told for years and years to jump out of perfectly good aircraft to go blow up this-or-that target, it becomes not quite so scary. Drop the typical cake eating civilian in that world, and he’s likely wetting his pants. Drop G.I. Joe in the new world of corporate finance, contract vehicles, teaming agreements, and business development, and it can be unsettling too.

Re: Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

#130

Post by kafkaesq » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 7:32 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #110

kafkaesq wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want HN to be a place of real discussion and debate, it's stupid to try to tie people to their companies. When the company is Google (or of a similar scale) -- and that company claims to care about privacy (but sometimes engages in practices that suggest otherwise) -- then clearly that association is quite relevant. (Its not a huge oversight, but really, if you had put a standard disclaimer at the end of your…

"But calling people "stupid" for pointing out that this association matters (when it obviously does) is just... "Google-y", I guess. " You have not given any reason the association actually matters here[1], nor engaged the argument on the merits Instead, you did precisely what i said would happen - character assassination for no reason. You also assert i called people stupid, which is also clearly false, I instead ex…

You also assert i called people stupid, which is also clearly false,

Sorry, but saying "it's stupid to do X" really is basically the same as saying... "people who do X are stupid". Or at least "they are, in that context, being stupid".

Either way, you said what you said -- and presumably you meant what you said -- so there's no point in trying to wiggle away from it.