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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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @08:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @08:28PM (#515087)

    I'm not sure what country you're in, but in my country we can speak ill of the evil|stupid|corrupt dickheads who may be in office at the moment.

    Technically yes, but that doesn't mean they won't try to single you out for doing so. Maybe they'll investigate you more deeply and find that you broke some minor law, try to blackmail you, or just plain set you up. The US government has done all of those things, and that FBI letter sent to MLK is but one example. Protests are also legal, but that doesn't stop the government from harassing protestors; they just have to make up enough excuses to do so, which they frequently do.

    Of course, it's less likely the government will be interested in some nobody. However, they are interested in journalists, whistleblowers, political opponents, and activists, people who actually help democracy function. Just because the government is unlikely to be interested in your destruction doesn't mean it isn't extremely dangerous.

    There are specific safeguards (even if they aren't as widely implemented as they should be) to restrain government from amassing huge amounts of data about the residents of my country.

    You are lucky then, assuming your government actually follows those specific safeguards. In the US, the government conducts unconstitutional mass surveillance on the populace and uses techniques such as parallel construction to make use of the data. Mass surveillance inherently threatens freedom and democracy, and any corporate data is likely to end up in the government's hands too. I guess all I can say is that we do not yet have a total police state.

    Exactly *zero* limits are placed on corporations (with the minor exception of HIPAA, which is spottily enforced and often poorly implemented).

    You're in the US? Then your government is doing unconstitutional mass surveillance and the "specific safeguards" are not just sparsely implemented, but are a total joke. Any country that conducts mass surveillance is in an extremely dangerous position. Maybe you were talking about a different kind of data, but the NSA's mass surveillance vacuums up nearly everything.