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posted by martyb on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-your-data-are-belong-to-us. dept.

The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23/google-now-knows-when-you-are-at-a-cash-register-and-how-much-you-are-spending/ reports that Google has talked retailers into sharing data from credit card transactions, which it will link to location and other data, to further enhance consumer profiling*.

The article says "Google for years has been mining location data from Google Maps in an effort to prove that knowledge of people's physical locations could "close the loop" between physical and digital worlds. Users can block this by adjusting the settings on smartphones, but few do so, say privacy experts.

This location tracking ability has allowed Google to send reports to retailers telling them, for example, whether people who saw an ad for a lawn mower later visited or passed by a Home Depot. The location-tracking program has grown since it was first launched with only a handful of retailers. Home Depot, Express, Nissan, and Sephora have participated."

* and erode privacy.

The article also makes it clear than consumers don't get to opt-out, if they even find out their data has been shared.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:29PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:29PM (#514846)

    I wouldn't let a little thing like this stop me from getting a beer. Why didn't you give the cash to the cashier or another customer and ask him/her to pay with their own card/phone-bump?

    Engineers are problem solvers. Or maybe you aren't an engineer?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:44PM (2 children)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:44PM (#514857)

    Matter of principle. It was an example of me taking my money elsewhere. In this case, exactly over the street to another craft beer store, that accepted cash.
    So I rewarded their competition with my patronage.

    I still got my beer, walking across the street wasn't a big deal for it. Yes, if there was no competition in the area, I could have done something like that, but there was no call for it.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:57PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:57PM (#514872)

      Understood. It's the clerk at the first pub that wasn't an engineer (problem solver). He/she could have offered to take your cash and put it on their personal card, or another work-around.

      • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Wednesday May 24 2017, @06:00PM

        by art guerrilla (3082) on Wednesday May 24 2017, @06:00PM (#514982)

        *that there* ! ! !
        there is the nub of the rub right that there: WE mere human beans who -as 'masters'- this technology is SUPPOSED to serve, end up being the ones who have to 'work around' the shortcomings of a system that doesn't give a shit about what human beans want, ONLY what superior-beings, korporations, want...
        AND the more human-unfriendly tech invades every corner of our lives, the more we have to 'work around' the limitations of tech...
        .
        as way of illustration, just had an annoying sequence of events essentially beyond my control:
        use t'bird as email client because goog's gmail sucks (HATE blobs of email, want SEPARATE emails as dog almighty intended), added a laptop a couple months ago with t'bird accts set up there, everything percolates along nicely for a couple months, when, um, hey, what happened to my gmail showing up on my laptop ? ? ?
        go to send a test email to myself, and shows up on the desktop fine, does not show up on the laptop... um, wait a minute, emails not showing up here for the last week, wtf is going on ? ? ?
        dick around for an hour or so, just can't fathom what is going on...
        late at night, send a fuckity-fuck you fucktard fuckholes to the black hole of googlecutta, not expecting anything except perhaps a drone strike...
        next morning, that day's email shows up on laptop ! ! !
        PLUS have email from the fiendly fucktards at googs that *maybe* i want to check permissions on a couple apps, blah blah blah...
        hmmm, the plot thickens...
        so, of the three apps they suggest, one is t'bird, that is fine; one is a game i installed and uninstalled soon thereafter, but still had permissions for all kinds of shit; and one was an email app i installed on MY TABLET *BRIEFLY* before uninstalling, about 4-5 MONTHS AGO...
        apparently, this app was reaching back from the grave to change my gmail permissions and settings...
        WTF ? ? ?
        all this syncing shit is causing me more trouble than it is solving...
        AND, whenever you take the time to track down a lot of this crap and uninstall it (IF possible), turn it off, rescind permissions, etc; it only starts all over again when some 'update' or 'patch' or something causes all the settings to revert to WHAT THEY WANT, not what i want...
        .
        about to the point i am going back to an abacus, paper pad, pencil and call it a day...