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Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

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Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#191

Post by Applejinx »

zerealshadowban wrote: post #133

I've been repeatedly contacted by Google over recent years (supposedly because of the work I've done) but I've always felt uneasy about them and hesitated to respond. This additional layer of tracking and the recent revelation on location tracking regardless of explicit settings both seal the non-deal for me. The soul of that company is to turn the human experience into a vessel for the paid delivery of ads, nothing…

Even 'someone to trade with' is a limited viewpoint, a set of blinders in its own right. That said, agreed with the rest of it.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#192

Post by TeMPOraL »

bigiain wrote: post #83
noelsusman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"anonymized" 100% deserves/needs scare quotes around that. I mean just look at the snake-oil bullshit wording Google are using to describe what they do here: "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’ personally identifiable information,” I mean, I guess there are proper cryptographic…

"Anonymized" always deserves scare quotes, because there ain't such thing as "anonymized"; there's only "anonymized until correlated with other data sets".

Anyway. Yes, I do trust that of all parties, Google actually would both develop and deploy whatever that "double-blind encryption technology" is. Still, it's not the problem.

I think we need to stop dancing around the real issue with all that talk about PII. No, I really don't care about my PII just leaking somewhere. I care about what people do with them. It's what companies do with PII, "anonymized" or not, that's the problem. Advertising, upselling, price discrimination. Those are the real problems.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#193

Post by Aaargh20318 »

Tharkun wrote: post #175
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move to Europe, where there are sane laws against this type of behavior.

What makes you think MC and Google aren't doing the same thing in Europe?

This is about linking real-world credit-card payments to your online identity. People in Europe don't use credit cards offline.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#195

Post by TangoTrotFox »

i1856511 wrote: post #94
noelsusman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of attention in the press is given to Google et. al. about purchase profiling and tracking for ads. But the concept of purchase profiling has existed really since the invention of the credit card. As others have mentioned hedge funds have brokered this data for decades - but for some reason it has not been covered as excruciatingly as it has for tech companies. While I disapprove of the practice overall I would…

The issue is individual tracking vs aggregate tracking. Tech companies now a days are starting to target individuals based on their individual patterns. This is quite a bit different than aggregate tracking based on group trends. For instance if you see a link to a Credence Clear Water video after watching a video of Under the Watchtower, it makes a lot of sense. On the other hand if you see a link to a lecture from Leonard Susskind -- then that's going to be exclusively the result of personalized tracking and it feels invasive.

And the example I'm giving there is the most completely innocuous possibility there is. This gets much worse when, for instance, politicians will (and to some degree already are) creat[ing] multiple mutually incompatible versions of themselves to sell to different demographics and ultimately even individuals. That's not cool, and you can come up with far worse scenarios that this sort of individualized tracking.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#196

Post by icebraining »

rapnie wrote: post #163
Gaelan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right–people often conflate "selling" with "using internally to sell ads." There's a difference, and it's meaningful, but the point is that Google's business model is based on gathering and exploiting as much data about you as possible

Yes. And isn't it also the case that, by offering their very elaborate targeting capabilities to advertisers, they still leak your personal data to 3rd parties, though indirectly? After all, the fact that a certain personalized ad appears in your page confirms to the advertiser that you are in their carefully crafted target group.

confirms to the advertiser

How would the advertiser know? Google is the one serving the ad.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#197

Post by icebraining »

witten wrote: post #150
i1856511 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of attention in the press is given to Google et. al. about purchase profiling and tracking for ads. But the concept of purchase profiling has existed really since the invention of the credit card. As others have mentioned hedge funds have brokered this data for decades - but for some reason it has not been covered as excruciatingly as it has for tech companies. While I disapprove of the practice overall I would…

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?

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#198

Post by basicplus2 »

foepys wrote: post #182
HohPum1l wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even if some company offered that all the retailers could still share their data with some aggregator which would effective work around your privacy oriented card not sharing data. If you buy in a brick and mortar store the retailer would not have your address, only your card number. And a privacy-focusd CC company would allow you to generate new numbers for each transaction so the retailers can't use that to m…

Funnily enough, Google Pay (and Apple Pay even earlier) is doing exactly that [1]. The merchant is only seeing a token that will be connected to the actual card number in the credit card network. Google is now closing the circle to get to know exactly what was bought - blowing all privacy advantages away. 1: https://support.google.com/pay/merchants/answer/6345242?hl=e...

And removing the oportunity for the retailer to collect info on who shops in their stores...

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#199

Post by ginko »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #193
Tharkun wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think MC and Google aren't doing the same thing in Europe?

This is about linking real-world credit-card payments to your online identity. People in Europe don't use credit cards offline.

>People in Europe don't use credit cards offline.

That's a huge over-generalization. It's true that cash is king in Germany for instance, but Scandinavians pay almost exclusively by card.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#200

Post by TangoTrotFox »

fwn wrote: post #189
kyboren wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, of course. Google is actually really benign. They don't sell your data. They just automatically scrutinize it in unfathomable detail to make as much money as possible when they pimp you out to anybody else who wants to manipulate you. Please accept our sincere apologies--Google is such a nice company with a 100% ethical business model!

Parents point is valid in so far as that selling really is the wrong term for it. If Google sold the data, someone else would have it. That would not only be awful from a privacy perspective, it would be desasterous for business. It's primarily a case for precise language and not something to ridicule.

Like you mention one of the most obvious reasons that Google does not sell user information is because it would not make good business sense. These immense profiles they're building on everybody are part of their 'secret sauce' and simply selling those would not be good for business.

When they're choosing to not engage in behavior that no company in their shoes would engage in, it's hardly praise worthy and I think indeed that ridiculing it as a 'positive' for them is completely fair. So let's change the game a bit. If, somehow, their business changed or evolved such that selling user information directly was a profitable part of some business strategy - do you think they would still choose not to? What if I asked you, not that long ago, whether you think Google would be willing to build a search engine in China completely accepting (and thus arguably implicitly endorsing) all state level censorship engaged in by China?

I do think that Google at one time sincerely held the sort of anti-corporate-establishment view of 'don't be evil.' But it's much easier to moralize when you don't have the option of going against those morals to the tune of billions of dollars accompanied by immeasurable influence.

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