Am I the only one who finds this outrageous? I'm not surprised, but I am angry.
This is hardly the first outrageous thing google has done.
Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
81–90 of 294 posts
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#82Do 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.
From the article "The company said people can opt out of ad tracking using Google’s “Web and App Activity” online console. Inside Google, multiple people raised objections that the service did not have a more obvious way for cardholders to opt out of the tracking, one of the people said."
Wasn't this "Web and App Activity" just this month found to keep its own location history when Location Services are disabled? Seems like they've loaded a lot of different behaviors into this one setting.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#83Do 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.
"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 means by which you could achieve something that matches that description.
But does _anyone_ trust the worlds biggest advertising company to be doing that???
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#84Do 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.
How do you unGoogle? They have my phone, my email. Amazon now follows my grocery shopping at Whole Foods. I doubt Visa and Amex are far behind, it's free money for them so there is no point in canning Master. What a disaster! Ad supported Internet is the root of the problem.
Did you read Chaos Monkeys? What about Dragnet Nation? Both (of which are not new) peek behind the curtains you're concerned about. Both are recommended, and freightening. It's only going to get worse.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#85I don't understand how they can correlate a sale to a specific google account without getting personal identification data. By definition if they can associate a transaction with a user, the user has been identified and has lost all privacy.
They double ROT-13 the email address that each side collected so they can correlate, but not identify, individual consumers -- or something, TFA didn't specify the actual encryption algorithm.
"double blind" == "dual ROT13" - of course!!!
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#86Earlier 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…
Out of all the other possible parties that could have attempted this? Yup, I'd say I trust them the most.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did read the article. That's discovering that someone is stalking you, until and unless you tell them you'd rather "opt out" even though you never "opted in" the evil stalking. Meanwhile, all shops and businesses you get near to or purchase from are calling the stalker to let him know what you're doing -- how do you "opt out" of these?
Pull money out at an ATM and pay for things with cash I guess. Not great, but it's an option.
Do you think gift cards would shield you enough? I mean they can be tied to the card used to purchase. But are the data-mongers doing that?
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#88Well, if you're looking for some anti-Google legislation to get traction in the US, there's probably never going to be a more interested President...
That'd be some sort of delicious irony.
The most reprehensible president ever, curtailing the bad behaviour of the most reprehensible global advertising company ever.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
You never had a choice. Paying with plastic always meant that you were tracked and that data sold. If you don't like it, use cash.
Cash is tracked by the banks. It's usually pretty easy too, especially with things like coffee shops that take a lot of 20s and give a lot of 5s. Most people take out 20s, so it's pretty easy to know who was likely at some place at some day or week.
not even remotely the same league.. I've never once heard of cash analytics for spend habits the same I have seen for cardholder/loyalty programs.
Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
#90Slighly off topic, whenever I see rebates (or similar) in the form of gift cards, I always assume the the entity awarding the gift card does so because the use of the card deepens their data profile on you.
Or maybe I'm just too paranoid?