They are going to use the results to set up a hedge fund. Not quite insider trading, but shady.
Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
261–270 of 294 posts
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really believe they stop tracking your data even if you opt out after recent events?
What events are those?
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#263GNU Taler can't come soon enough. Http://Taler.net > When you pay with Taler, your identity does not have to be revealed. Just like payments in cash, nobody else can track how you spent your electronic money. However, you obtain a legally valid proof of payment.
GNU Taler site like to state that at the same time stating they government will have overview into all transactions.
https://taler.net/en/governments.html
I call bullshit in the comparison to cash.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#264I wonder how this interacts with GDPR? Could I send a mail to VISA, asking what information they are tracking on me? Or is it “okay” because it’s anonymized?
You can always ask for what information is gathered on you.
Please do and share a blog on it :)
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to still use a "credit card" online without being tracked by the MasterCards or Visas of the world (or even individual merchants), then check out https://privacy.com/ .. It lets you generate a new credit card number for every transaction if you want. I'm not affiliated with them.. Just a satisfied user. (Although happy to hand out referral links.)
How does that hide the data from Mastercard and Visa? Surely they must know who is behind every card number, otherwise who would they charge?
Disclosure: I work for privacy.com
You can use pseudonymous billing info for the transaction. We then debit your underlying account afterwards.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#266Do I have a choice, other than cancelling all of my MasterCard cards? This business of tracking and profiling is increasingly evil. If I dystopically discovered that someone has been following me around all the time, writing down everything I look at or do or purchase, in public and at home, I could not tolerate it.
Lightning network for Bitcoin has multiple privacy features, though it's still only in beta and will probably take a few years to have some adoption.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#267That's how you become a product when there is no proper regulation.
> Before we launched this beta product last year, we built a new, double-blind encryption technology that prevents both Google and our partners from viewing our respective users
> We do not have access to any personal information from our partners’ credit and debit cards, nor do we share any personal information with our partners
That probably means that they do not get customers' names or email addresses but hashes of them. So technically no personal information is transferred.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can be extremely ethical about your factory farm but it's still a factory farm. Google is in the business of utilising your data in the interest of advertising. No matter how you sugar coat it, the core of the business is tracking people and exploiting that data. Are they doing their best to be careful and ethical? It sure seems like it, but that doesn't solve the issue. The free services they and many tech compa…
Google is not in the business of selling your data. Google does not sell your data. It’s pretty clear in their privacy policy: https://privacy.google.com/how-ads-work.html Disclaimer: I work at Google.
As we found out, they buy the data - this time from Mastercard and collect a detailed profile of every user, maybe more detailed than 3-letter agencies have.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#269Do I have a choice, other than cancelling all of my MasterCard cards? This business of tracking and profiling is increasingly evil. If I dystopically discovered that someone has been following me around all the time, writing down everything I look at or do or purchase, in public and at home, I could not tolerate it.
Your only option is to refuse cards altogether because they've all been selling anonymized data on you for years. The big hedge funds pay big dollars for direct lines of data from the credit card companies.
Wait, so for example hedge funds can buy aggregated data from BoA about how much is spent at Walmart on BoA CCs on a daily/weekly basis, wouldn't that data be very valuable prior to an earning call/report, somewhat like insider trading (but I guess not technically?)?
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are laws against them doing this in Europe.
Are you referring to GDPR? As far as I can tell, the data is allegedly anonymous, so not subject to GDPR. Even if it weren't, Google doesn't exactly have a good track record of respecting privacy or privacy related laws. They've been known to "accidentally" harvest wifi traffic in bulk. They drive spy cars around taking pictures or everything and everyone.
If they were anonymous Google wouldn't be able to match purchases against ad views or let users opt out. I suppose they are just exchanging something like a hash from customer data, so technically Google doesn't get personal information.