17 ms·

Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores

369 points by Jerry2 9y ago

thinkling 9y ago
FTA: "Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with companies that track that data." Wow.
- spydum 9y ago
  Agree -- that is a staggering figure and I'd love to know more about what they mean here.
- AznHisoka 9y ago
  MasterCard and Visa not only make money from each credit card transaction but to add insult to injury, they make money selling that transaction data as well! That's what I call a ludicrous business.
  - choward 9y ago
    Or like cable companies trying to get you to pay for TV and then also wanting you to watch commercials. It's all about double dipping.
    - Fifer82 9y ago
      And Cinemas! I realized a few years ago with the Scottish Indy Ref, that the BBC was state media so I briefly stopped watching and paying for that service. As a result, everything else that is moving media is surrounded by spam. Even if you pay 60 pound for a premium service (Think how much money it is, even if you have infinite money), you will spend 1/3 of that time watching Adverts. It is like a Freemium Game Model but when you pay, it doesn't matter. I have no idea why people are so careless with their time. Now that I ditched TV/Film, and found other ways to fill that time, I honestly feel better within myself. I twiddle around with robots while listening to the 20 hour audiobook (of your 90 minute film), or try to grow Carrots with some weird automated soil probe remotely at an Allotment. Compared to the enjoyment I get from these time fillers, motion picture is honestly the lowest form of entertainment and the lest rewarding.
    - gdulli 9y ago
      You understand you pay cable companies for the infrastructure and it's different companies who show you the programming, right? Do you call it double dipping when you pay your internet provider and then the Netflix account isn't free?
  - imron 9y ago
    Not sure if you meant lucrative. Ludicrous also works.
  - chinathrow 9y ago
    Indeed - and with their stupid reward programs they essentially buy the users to spend more and more with them.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    I've heard that this is not a very big business for Visa/Mastercard. That's because the credit card processors don't get many details on the purchase, they just know the amount, the user, and the bank they are sending the money to.
    - thr0waway1239 9y ago
      That's because they can't do much with this info since they aren't also a giant ad network. Now imagine the same data in the hands of a company which has built one. They should probably start charging more :-)
    - puzzle 9y ago
      False. Years ago I had a business credit card charge from either Target or Kmart where you could see the individual items. So some merchants do share that kind of detail.
    - hyperbovine 9y ago
      My bank seems to know the origin and destination of all the plane tickets I buy (for example), so presumably the CC processor has this sort of information as well? I'm sure someone reading this is in the industry and can explain.
      - rcar 9y ago
        Plane tickets have an odd setup in CC processing systems where it actually shows origin/destination in the transaction information itself. The only other similar example I've seen has been in payment processors like Square or Paypal where they'll include both that it was a Paypal transaction and some customizable string showing the merchant who actually received the payment. Other than those sorts of situations though, Visa/MC or the bank issuing the cards only know where the transaction occurred and how much it was and don't directly get SKU-level data on what was purchased barring some other sort of partnership with the merchant.
      - gergles 9y ago
        Yeah, this is called "Level 3 data" and can include line items from a receipt and other details of transactions.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    Is this also true of Amex (which makes more money from each credit card transaction than Visa and Mastercard)?
    - morganvachon 9y ago
      Just an uninformed guess, but I'd say that 70% figure probably covers Visa/MasterCard but not Amex or Discover, based on what I've observed working in retail in the past.
    - treyfitty 9y ago
      Yes. https://vimeo.com/155746893 https://vimeo.com/155746893 http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160517006038/en/Viacom-American-Express-Form-Exclusive-Partnership-Launch http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160517006038/en/Viac... They used to have a "Business Intelligence Group" which acted as a Consulting firm to corporations who want to answer questions like "Where should my company set up more stores?" The group often sifted through their customer data to answer that question.
      - bonzini 9y ago
        That's reasonable, and different from selling it to third parties.
  - thesehands 9y ago
    a logical conclusion could be drawn that there either Visa/Mastercard should start an ad network, or Google gets in the credit card game (As android pay becomes more widely accepted, this may be an irrelevant step for them)
- richjdsmith 9y ago
  This is the point that really shocked me! I'd love to read more on this.
  - greenyoda 9y ago
    The book "Chaos Monkeys"[1], while irritating in many ways, has a detailed description of how Facebook correlates its own advertising data with information from data brokers (such as credit card transaction aggregators). This kind of stuff has been happening for quite some time. (As an extra bonus, the book describes how the author's ad-tech startup got into YC and was bought by Twitter.) [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019MMUAAQ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019MMUAAQ
- yborg 9y ago
  I'm actually surprised that retailers haven't started surcharging people paying in cash by now in order to drive all of individuals' transaction data into the panopticon.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    They won't in the medium term because of how much they hate the credit card company's cut. 3% is a lot on an already low-margin transaction at Walmart.
    - creepydata 9y ago
      Walmart wouldn't take credit if it wasn't financially sound for them to do so.
      - ekianjo 9y ago
        It still has transaction costs.
        sanswork 9y ago
        So does cash handling.
      - mattnewton 9y ago
        Doesn't mean they like the arrangement and are going to shill for the credit card companies though. That was my point.
        creepydata 9y ago
        Um... Walmart IS a credit card shill, they have their own credit card - https://www.walmart.com/cp/walmart-credit-card/632402 https://www.walmart.com/cp/walmart-credit-card/632402 We don't know Walmart's feelings, they may like the arrangement. Business go cash free for all kinds of reasons. Customers that use credit spend more money than cash customers. Walmart probably isn't one of those places that benefit as much as a pub but they may have a small credit spending boost that covers the fees. Walmart is a really smart and data driven company and I'm sure they've weighed their options about what is effective business practices for them.
- mc32 9y ago
  So the only way to break the circle is to purchase with cash... And now fewer and fewer people buy with cash, to the point some Nordics plan on doing away with cash as much as possible.
  - a3_nm 9y ago
    It's very important to keep making as many purchases in cash as possible, precisely for this reason. At least where I live (France), this is very doable. Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced and is widely accepted. It's something that would be impossible to bootstrap today if it didn't already exist. Hence, it's crucial to keep it alive.
    - Cyphase 9y ago
      > Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced ... I just wanted to point out the possibility of tracking serial numbers on bills. Obviously it's not going to be as reliable, at least not now, but it could be made more so; for instance, if there was a sudden movement to use more cash for privacy. Of course, that seems unlikely; most people like the convenience of plastic/digital payments, and there's a lot of market pressure pushing people toward those payment methods, so deploying the infrastructure for more reliable cash tracking probably isn't worth a whole lot. But I haven't exactly run the numbers, and there are other possible incentives, so who knows..
      - mc32 9y ago
        It is possible to track the serials, if they wanted to; however, except for banks, I have not exchanged cash with a retailer who scans the bills at the point of transaction and if they did, they'd also have to tie a given ser no with me at the time of purchase. Since a particular bill will go through many hands, it'd be like trying to figure out who made a change on a system when it was done by 'root' or 'administrator' where the whole team logs in as root or admin. Basically attribution would be kinda inaccurate.
        9y ago
- fictioncircle 9y ago
  Oh it gets better. "We don't know what you bought or how much". https://www.revolution-payments.com/requirements-for-level-3-processing/ https://www.revolution-payments.com/requirements-for-level-3... > Level 3 processing can benefit businesses who sell to other businesses or government by lowering your transaction cost by as much as 1.50%. > Line Item Details: Of course, if they are like one of the places I worked...they just turn it on for everyone and pass it along regardless.
- chinathrow 9y ago
  Exactly. Google: You're already way too deep in our lives and now this. When will you ever stop? When you own us?
- thr0waway1239 9y ago
  My first thought was: why only 70%? This may be a case where the savings (i.e. money from selling data in return for a big pile of cash) are actually passed on to the customer - e.g. transaction costs are lower for Visa/Mastercard for merchants, which is why they sometimes don't accept Amex and Discover. It would be interesting to see if Visa and Mastercard have some clause which prevents Google from buying data from AMEX and Discover (competitive advantage for them because then Amex and Discover's transaction costs aren't subsidized) in return for agreeing to part with their data. Said another way, what's preventing Google from also getting data from Amex or Discover? Its not as if Google is going to say no.
- Sophira 9y ago
  This was absolutely the most worrying part for me. How in the hell did Google get access to that much?
tdeck 9y ago
My former employer Square (generally a great company) has been doing a similar thing for a while, in partnership with Facebook [1]. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/facebook-knows/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/facebook-knows/
azinman2 9y ago
"The kinds of data that Google is collecting also could become an inviting target for hackers, said Miro Copic, a marketing professor at San Diego State University" As if Google wasn't already a target already?!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
synaesthesisx 9y ago
There are certain products that people are more likely to buy in-store than online (clothing etc) but may be exposed to/advertised to online. I've always wondered how retailers track offline conversions effectively...
inesta 9y ago
Hmm I was wondering how some stores show up on Google maps even though I did not use Google maps to get to those places. God damm Google.
- cyberhigh 9y ago
  That is because you have location services enabled on your phone. Google collects your phones location with this on. You can see the details by going to your location history.
  - tomascot 9y ago
    Also WiFi
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Yeah I keep location services turned off most of the time. I also have never intentionally clicked on an online ad of any kind.
    - pksadiq 9y ago
      > Yeah I keep location services turned off most of the time. Even if your location services, wifi and bt are off, they occasionally turns on to get your location. In Lineage OS there is an additional setting to not use wifi (when it is off) for location services. May be you can look into developer options to disable this setting (Please note that even if wifi is off, your phone searches for wifi hotspots to find itself where it is). And if your wifi/bt is on, your location is (almost) always available to Google. You know it, right?
  - inesta 9y ago
    well i do have location services on, but on my iphone. i dont have google maps open even in the background. i have background app refresh off for google maps too. i really dont see how google could get that info. apple maybe.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Hmm I was wondering how some stores show up on Google maps even though I did not use Google maps to get to those places. Isn't that just advertising?
paradite 9y ago
Now I will have to seriously consider getting off the Google ecosystem now. Deactivating facebook was okay, but Google might be tricky considering many of website accounts use Google authentication.
- adjkant 9y ago
  Okay, this is a small rant that is not directly aimed at you, so nothing personal. This is aimed generally more at people in the privacy at all costs camp and the like. If there's some viewpoint I'm missing here I'd also love to hear it, so it's not really a mean-spirited rant either. Google owns the internet at this point. For general use purposes, they ARE the internet. So avoiding them should really have at least SOME effect before it's even seriously considered. What does getting off Google do? It doesn't hurt them, as there's no way a significant number of people will take action, at least in the near future. So, then it must be done for you. By not being in these services and having all this data collected on you, what do you actually gain? Likely, nothing at all. You won't be able to be tracked down as easily if Google turns evil, sure. If their data is breached in a meaningful way, sure again. But, for both of these, emphasis on "as easily". At this point, if you're looking to maliciously track down just about anyone, it's not hard at all. You'd have to go fully off the grid to get this. And in that scenario, what do you gain again? We follow down the same road of "I only gain something in very unlikely scenarios" again. So to me, the only way this type of perspective makes sense is if you believe those very unlikely scenarios (from my view) are much more likely. And if they are, we're all fucked already, and being one of the few to be off the grid probably won't matter in the end. Basically, at this point, you've already given yourself to Google. Rather than decide whether or not to trust them, I think putting more effort into trying to influence them towards "not being evil", as they say, is much more of a realistic move for someone with concerns over data, privacy, power/security of all this, etc. Am I missing something? PS: I understand Facebook - for some, there are no significant benefits you give up. For most, you're going to give up a lot more with Google.
  - taneq 9y ago
    > By not being in these services and having all this data collected on you, what do you actually gain? Likely, nothing at all. By closing the curtains in your bedroom when you're about to get busy with your partner, what do you actually gain? Likely, nothing at all. I place a not-inconsiderable weight on not feeling like I'm being watched and recorded every second of the day and night. By controlling which data I give companies like Google and Facebook, I significantly reduce this creepy feeling and so gain a significant amount of peace of mind.
JosephLark 9y ago
Not Google specific, but some good reading on this topic came out in January - The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power [0] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Aisles-Have-Eyes-Retailers-Shopping/dp/0300212194/ https://www.amazon.com/Aisles-Have-Eyes-Retailers-Shopping/d...
russell_h 9y ago
A Googler gave a talk at Real World Crypto in January describing a system that might back this. The relevant part of the talk starts around the 10 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s In short, they're able to compute the intersection of the set of users who have viewed an ad with the set of people who purchased a product in a store, without either party disclosing their side of the set.
- singron 9y ago
  After studying the slides, it looks like they do a Diffie Hellman-like exchange of user identifiers. g_i = Google's identifier for customer i. s_j = Merchant identifer for customer j. If g_i == s_j then customer i == j. These identifiers might be phone numbers or email addresses or other identifiers that both parties have. Neither party wants the other to learn any identifiers it doesn't already known about. So Google picks a random secret value G and sends g_i^G to the Merchant. The Merchant picks random secret value T and sends g_i^(G* T) back to Google. Additionally the merchant sends s_j^T to Google. Then Google calculates s_j^(T* G). If s_j^(T* G) == g_i^(G* T) then s_j == g_i and i == j. So know Google knows the exact set of their users who purchased something at the Merchant. Additionally, for each s_j^(T), the Merchant sends a homomorphically encrypted value for the amount they spent. Then Google can perform a homomorphic addition on these encrypted values of only the intersection it calculated. The Merchant can then decrypt it to get the total sum and share it back to Google. So in the scheme I described 1) Google still learns who is purchasing at which merchant. 2) Google does not learn individual amounts. 3) Merchants can't perform the same calculation to learn which users saw their ads unless Google sends s_j^(T* G) back to them (not pictured in the slides).
  - hammock 9y ago
    It's not a new and a very common process. A personal identifying variable is calculated in the same way on both sides (usually by a third party), then hashed. Hashed values are then compared/matched.
    - 9y ago
hackuser 9y ago
There are anonymized credit card services, including pre-paid and other solutions. The following is based on notes at least a year old, and I haven't tried them: * Abine * Final https://getfinal.com/ https://getfinal.com/ * Privacy Inc. https://privacy.com/ https://privacy.com/ Also, many pre-paid cards require the user to identify themselves before the card is activated
- lowglow 9y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting down voted. This is reasonable contribution.
- tyingq 9y ago
  I didn't downvote, but some of those only help so much. Your name is still in the track data, and for credit you generally have to input a zip code. For online purchases, you're entering an address as well.
  - taneq 9y ago
    Yes, but even if a panopticon could theoretically piece your entire history back together, using multiple companies to keep the silos separate is one way to reduce the ease with which this can be done. That's why it's such a big deal when companies sell your info. Merging silos dramatically increases the amount that can be inferred from each piece of information.
awinter-py 9y ago
I think everyone remembers the first ad to follow them around multiple websites. For me it was an ASPCA campaign. The next version of that experience will be researching a purchase and where to get it, then seeing ads on the way that are customized to (a) the product you're buying and (b) your preferences. If you're 55 you'll get michael jordan advising you to buy nikes. If you're 35 it will be Noel Gallagher (air noels?), and if you're 10 it will be the ninja turtles. The good news is at a certain point the competition for eyeballs will become so fierce that the ads become honest & informative.
- Moru 9y ago
  I've been allergic to adverticing all my life, I don't remember any adverticement following me around at all... :-) Adblockers is no new thing.
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  >The good news is at a certain point the competition for eyeballs will become so fierce that the ads become honest & informative. How exactly would that transition work? If anything, the trend has been going the other way for the past century.
- pnut 9y ago
  If ads were going to become honest and informative, it would have happened already. A sale from a lie is equal in value to a sale from the truth.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > A sale from a lie is equal in value to a sale from the truth. And a sale from a lie is also cheaper to achieve than a sale from the truth. So even if your ads are always 100% honest, if your competitor starts lying, you're forced to either do the same, or risk going out of business. This is how the market optimizes human values away as inefficiencies.
  - awinter-py 9y ago
    not always -- returns are pretty expensive for retailers.
yuhong 9y ago
Thinking about it, the entire US economy has been about increasing consumption and credit since the 1970s.
talamown 9y ago
Amazon already has been doing this as well. They started to recommend some items related with books I have never bought online, just after I got them at local bookstore by credit card.
- Graphon1 9y ago
  Isn't there a difference? Google is sharing that offline purchase insight with advertising clients, rather than simply using that data itself, as does Amazon.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Where the advertising client is the local bookstore that he purchased the book from.
sleepless 9y ago
Cash is a great invention.
gub09 9y ago
This is probably an unusual opinion, but for me privacy is similar to freedom. Freedom is usually defined as a negative: people are free of oppression, have freedom of speech (freedom from speech being constrained), freedom of movement (not forced to stay in one place), religious freedom (freedom to believe what one will and not be limited in practice or assembly), etc. Privacy is the freedom from being watched, from having one's movements and actions and consumption and words observed, tabulated and stored. I hope that one day whether by laws or technological solutions, privacy will again be the norm in our lives.
- adjkant 9y ago
  I think it's important to note the definition of privacy you use is important. For me, in my daily life, all of this is completely "private". Google having my data in mass and an identity profile on me that no human will ever specifically look at is just as good as private to me. The fact that computers will be handing this data, not other humans, is an important distinction for me. No human will ever see my individual data in all likelihood. I don't think the lack of privacy is a problem, but rather the centralized power. It's really tough right now with so much power in information, but the only real information power coming in volume.
  - dorian-graph 9y ago
    > Google having my data in mass and an identity profile on me that no human will ever specifically look at is just as good as private to me. This feels like saying "I have nothing to hide".
  - XJOKOLAT 9y ago
    "in all likelihood" ... the key bit. The US, for example, is one presidency away from complete democratic failure. By which I mean all that data, which now is effectively, "in all likelihood", private via volume, can and will be abused. Giving up and allowing privacy to fail now only makes disastrous consequences more likely later at the whim of that centralised power you mention.
  - tskaiser 9y ago
vmarsy 9y ago
The European Union is often made fun of with "the Americans innovate, the EU regulates", but in the meantime GDPR[1] is coming into force in 2018 > The primary objectives of the GDPR are to give citizens and residents back control of their personal data [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regu...
- akavel 9y ago
  I've read the Wikipedia summary, and it appears to me, that GDPR only requires encryption, not anonymisation, of personal data! Or did I miss something?
  - nsebban 9y ago
    It also requires trivial opt-out and readability of the opt-ins. And it gives enough power to really control what companies are doing with people's data. And the fines are huge (up to 3% of the company's global gross amount) compared to what exists today.
    - amelius 9y ago
      Can users still be manipulated to opt-in to a service X if they want a service Y badly enough? I.e., you can only use Y if you also take X? How many people would opt-out of (or not opt-in to) a service like Google search?
      - bonzini 9y ago
        There are some things that must have a separate opt-in from the bare minimum that's necessary to provide the service. Typically, there are three bullets on European privacy forms: handling personal data to provide the service, handling personal data for commercial and advertising purposes, sharing personal data with third parties (usually for commercial and advertising purposes). Pre-printed forms can only have the first ticked to yes, the other two must be filled in by the customer.
syphilis2 9y ago
I'm interested to read about where people believe this progression of technology will take us in the near and far future. Are there thought out considerations of what type of world we are heading towards? Has Google revealed their vision of advertising for 2032? I don't mean this rhetorically, I genuinely want to know what vision there is for advertising in the future because I believe it's something we really ought to be thinking about and judging so we can make informed decision about what's best for us.
- wiz21c 9y ago
  I love this question too. I think we're heading for a full blown "société de contrôle" (see Wikipedia). So the locus of power is changing. Before it was repression, now it is control. It's not inhernetly good or bad. But my gut feelings says that we're transtionning to that society. And while we're transitionning, the first movers, the fastest movers (Google, FaceBook, etc) have an advantage and therefore may look dangerous to us. So in complement to your question I'd like to hear about what are the forces that are here to balance the powers.
  - jansho 9y ago
    > what are the forces that are here to balance the powers. Well there's no chance of a David vs Goliath so the only one I can think of is governments. Yeah...
    - wiz21c 9y ago
      Yep, I know that but somehow, at my age (and I'd say even at a younger age), one must think that change does exist and that change is for the better. So maybe there's a David somewhere... Right now I'm thinking about the Pirate Party, but I have no ideas of what they're doing...
- rsto 9y ago
  Jaron Lanier writes about this in his book "Who Owns the Future" [1] Disclaimer: I haven't read it yet, so can't say if it meets your "thought out considerations" criteria. [1] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25424120M/Who_Owns_the_Future https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25424120M/Who_Owns_the_Futur...
jsonne 9y ago
This is likely unpopular, but this makes my job exponentially easier. The number of "What is that click worth" questions to us data driven marketing folks by small businesses effectively closes off a lot of us that focus primarily on the data from that market. With this, there is very real money to be made with small businesses that were too skittish to advertise before. We've been playing with Facebook's online to offline and frankly the brick and mortar folks we work with that we're utilizing it are incredibly delighted.
- bumblebeard 9y ago
  Just because it makes your job easier doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
- mark_edward 9y ago
  Your job is a terrible thing, building the panopticon for cash
thephyber 9y ago
I was under the impression that Google already did this. A Googler already described this to me years ago as "closing the loop", where Google's ad network already exposed a customer to a brand/product, but Google only gets credit for the conversion if it happens in the same browser session online. By tying together stats between impression and conversion (purchase, even in-store), the ad network becomes more valuable -- or less, if there was already an assumption of this effect with previously overestimated results.
- jforman 9y ago
  Lots of companies have been improving attribution online. Offline is quite a different beast.
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    I remember reading an article a few years ago about Facebook doing this. It's also why some merchants will ask for your phone number, even if you pay in cash. With your phone number, the merchant can identify you. In Facebook's case, they know what ads they show you online, then they can tie any subsequent purchases tagged with your phone number back to your FB account.
    - wavefunction 9y ago
      Sounds like another company claiming credit for something it didn't actually do. facebook showed me ChristianMingle ads for years despite marking myself as agnostic. I have a fair amount of experience with the Ad-words network and all I can see of facebook's ad network and target is that it sucks. I've never seen any place I've worked have much success deriving any meaningful value from facebook ads.
      - leesalminen 9y ago
        It works for us. But we cater to a small niche that's fairly easy to target.
      - 9y ago
justinbaker84 9y ago
This is not just starting - Google has been testing this since at least 2014. I worked at a big online advertising agency from 2013-2014 and we had a lot of fortune 500 companies as clients. Google began offering this tracking functionality as a beta in 2014 to a small number of very large companies. Here's the thing - Google is basically telling advertisers "just trust us to report on our own performance." They are saying buy traffic from us and we will use our secret algorithms to tell you how much revenue we drove and you will have no way to verify the totals. As you can imagine this is not an attractive proposition.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Earlier, on HN: Report warns computers may threaten constitutional rights (1982) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14329877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14329877
staticelf 9y ago
Next phone will be an iPhone even if I think Android is so much better.
hopfog 9y ago
Another way companies are connecting your online profile with offline activities is by using one of the many call tracking services. Basically when you visit a site using these you will be shown a unique phone number. When you ring it the service will tie your web session to the call. The company will see the caller's whole web user journey and any subsequent visits.
birracerveza 9y ago
Where I live we have laws in place that criminalize stalking. Why isn't this considered stalking?
- a_imho 9y ago
  Maybe you implicitly agree to their ToS when you enter a partner store? It's a technical detail of creative lawyering. They must have covered the legal aspects and factored in the fines in case they get a slap on the wrist. I guess it is the same thin line you have between tax evasion and tax optimization and Google has a nearly unlimited budget to try to move this line in their favor.
  - birracerveza 9y ago
    But it's not like agreeing to a ToS allows you to do illegal things, stalking being one of them. And yes, the definition keeps fitting more and more Google's tracking methods. I know that I sound dramatic, but all of these kind of things that we have let Google do would be considered HIGHLY illegal if instead of a company it was a single, private individual.
    - a_imho 9y ago
      Not dramatic at all, it is stalking, it is unethical but defining illegal is very complicated and up to the elected bodies. Powerful entities should not be above the law but in practice they are, no point denying that. I'm sure everyone has an explanation according to taste how come double standards can be the normal.
evolve2k 9y ago
> The new tracking system was created in consultation with “incredibly smart people” to ensure it's not invasive. He described the program as “secure and privacy safe.” It's not "incredibly smart people" you need; it's "highly ethical people".
- iDemonix 9y ago
  Very important point. In my workplace, often the smartest engineers are so focused on doing smart things, they forget that the data they're dealing with belongs to, or identifies, people. Got to make those yearly objectives/appraisals count though.
  - keithpeter 9y ago
    Perhaps a more subtle thing for them to keep in mind: many people carry out a mix of card/online and cash transactions. Only the card/online transactions will be captured. The Panopticon's record will show an extremely unhealthy and meagre diet for me for instance because I buy fresh fruit/veg at markets - cash only. It strikes me that data censored through transaction modality and then used to make marketing decisions may result in poor results.
    - eternalban 9y ago
      The Panopticon central says 'cash is going bye bye sunshine'.
      - keithpeter 9y ago
        http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2015/q3prerelease_1.pdf http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte... Cash will be around for a fair time yet, but you have a point for any form of regular or recurrent expenditure. As the above pdf explains 'hoarding' of notes as a store of value seems strangely popular...
    - bbcbasic 9y ago
z3t4 9y ago
Does who advertise for products sold offline doesn't care about clicks though, only views.
romanovcode 9y ago
> Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions. I don't get it, does VISA, MASTERCARD or AMEX just gives google the transactions? That got to be illegal, right?
- bonzini 9y ago
  Only if you didn't sign a contract that says they can. In Europe it would be opt-in in all likelihood.
kator 9y ago
Best part about this article, it's talking about Google advertising and meanwhile the page loads with 147 trackers, page entry interstitials, auto-play videos, and pop-up interstitials while I'm trying to read. Many of the ads on that page are all google driven including the massive annoying pushdown at the top of the page. As to the topic, let's be clear credit card data mining has been going on since before the web was born. I've explained this to people for decades, that and "customer loyalty" programs are amazing sources of data while being very scary at the same time. What google is doing here is not any different than 100's of other vendors and companies in advertising technology. Their advantage is the retention of all your search data, clicks when it's a google ad etc. Facebook has comparable data as do many companies. Both these companies enjoy a duopoly that is massive and in some markets, they capture more than 70% of all advertising spend. Those resources combined with offline techniques creates a white-hot spot light that ignites a dialog that most likely should have happened before the web was born. Advertisers want to know the money they spend is effective and works. We can all debate for eons about the effectiveness of advertising, but let me tell you de facto that it works. These types of systems are designed to help them optimize the spend. Sadly, meanwhile you have perfectly good outlets like this newspaper where that optimization has led to downward pressure combined with user habit changes. They are desperate to stay in business and allow their digital offerings to be turned into graffiti pages in hopes to make up for lost revenues in the physical business. This leads to turning users off (157 trackers now as I write this) and they stop coming to the site. The leads to a vicious cycle where the users stop coming, the advertisers notice and stop spending or start discounting the money they're willing to pay. Digital death is horrific, rapid and all automated. I don't know the answer to all these things, what I do know is people do want to have intelligent dialogs with other people who are offering something of interest. But advertising has always in the past been about injecting itself into people's lives in unwanted ways, from the kid screaming on the street corner "Come and get it, hot off the press" to a page on latimes.com with now 158 trackers and more ad space than content. I dream of a world where I can have intelligent dialogs with people offering things that could enhance my life in some way. I spend every day of my life thinking about how to do this, and I'm building technology and products to address this idea. I would love nothing better than a single ad on a site like this, the right one, the one you wouldn't mind hearing from and one that pays the site owner 20x what they get now with their graffiti strategy. I can tell you advertisers also want this, they don’t want to be on a page with 158 trackers, and a graffiti layout where their message is diluted by all the noise. It’s a real problem, it will get much worse before it gets better, but those who say advertising is evil are missing the point. Effective advertising is about communication, and should be person to person. The most powerful advertisement is a friend telling another friend about something new and exciting they discovered. However, to have that dialog you must have the first experience, the discovery, the friend of a friend had to learn about this amazing new product and advertising sets out to do that.
hacksonx 9y ago
Many ways are being suggested as workarounds for maintaining annonimity about where one spends their money. Fact if the matter is, if the money leaves your account in batches these guys will know. So Google, and others, in the age of bitcoin will just partner with banks.
chatman 9y ago
Dr. Stallman and FSF always promoted used of free software to counter surveillance.
MikeVanBike 9y ago
Tracking more please google. Im really happy that you violate my privacy with fancy new terms and ideas.
AdamN 9y ago
Are there concrete recommendations for being able to use a credit card (i.e. for an airline purchase where cash is tough) and maintain maximum privacy? I know Apple Pay helps vis-a-vis the merchant since the CC number is hidden. Are Visa, AMEX, MC different at all? Are there banks that have better privacy policies or does it not matter since the bank is just handling the final money transfer?
- nicholasjarnold 9y ago
  I use a service called Privacy.com which is quite convenient for certain types of transactions or when dealing with certain merchants. Check their privacy policy: https://privacy.com/terms#privacy-policy https://privacy.com/terms#privacy-policy The one thing that stands out to me is this line: "Privacy.com does not disclose personal data to third parties for direct marketing purposes." I am suspicious that the addition of the word 'direct' in that sentence might be significant. I'd love to hear of other similar services.
sterban 9y ago
Are there any credit card companies or banks offering cards that will not participate?
kyrra 9y ago
It's worth seeing the information from the source. The talk[0] and the blog post[1]. Plus, as Engadget called out[2] in an update, you can opt-out by contacting your credit card company, and there are more details at the FTC[3]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkRJqnQ2T8&19m05s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkRJqnQ2T8&19m05s [1] https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-analytics-innovations.html https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-anal... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-trips-ads/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-tr... [3] https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-your-personal-financial-information https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-y...
throwaway111112 9y ago
Yesterday, I received [1] from a friend. I laughed it off as the usual exaggeration when someone talks about Google and privacy. Today, I read that Google moved one step closer to that story. [1] https://www.devrant.io/rants/605665/hello-gordons-pizza-no-sir-its-googles-pizza-so-its-a-wrong-number-no-sir-google https://www.devrant.io/rants/605665/hello-gordons-pizza-no-s...
justforFranz 9y ago
I'm not concerned. By the time they've figured out what everyone is buying, people won't have any money anymore to buy anything. So... whatever.

369 points by Jerry2 9y ago

FTA: "Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with companies that track that data." Wow.

spydum 9y ago
Agree -- that is a staggering figure and I'd love to know more about what they mean here.
AznHisoka 9y ago
MasterCard and Visa not only make money from each credit card transaction but to add insult to injury, they make money selling that transaction data as well! That's what I call a ludicrous business.
- choward 9y ago
  Or like cable companies trying to get you to pay for TV and then also wanting you to watch commercials. It's all about double dipping.
  - Fifer82 9y ago
    And Cinemas! I realized a few years ago with the Scottish Indy Ref, that the BBC was state media so I briefly stopped watching and paying for that service. As a result, everything else that is moving media is surrounded by spam. Even if you pay 60 pound for a premium service (Think how much money it is, even if you have infinite money), you will spend 1/3 of that time watching Adverts. It is like a Freemium Game Model but when you pay, it doesn't matter. I have no idea why people are so careless with their time. Now that I ditched TV/Film, and found other ways to fill that time, I honestly feel better within myself. I twiddle around with robots while listening to the 20 hour audiobook (of your 90 minute film), or try to grow Carrots with some weird automated soil probe remotely at an Allotment. Compared to the enjoyment I get from these time fillers, motion picture is honestly the lowest form of entertainment and the lest rewarding.
  - gdulli 9y ago
    You understand you pay cable companies for the infrastructure and it's different companies who show you the programming, right? Do you call it double dipping when you pay your internet provider and then the Netflix account isn't free?
- imron 9y ago
  Not sure if you meant lucrative. Ludicrous also works.
- chinathrow 9y ago
  Indeed - and with their stupid reward programs they essentially buy the users to spend more and more with them.
- speedplane 9y ago
  I've heard that this is not a very big business for Visa/Mastercard. That's because the credit card processors don't get many details on the purchase, they just know the amount, the user, and the bank they are sending the money to.
  - thr0waway1239 9y ago
    That's because they can't do much with this info since they aren't also a giant ad network. Now imagine the same data in the hands of a company which has built one. They should probably start charging more :-)
  - puzzle 9y ago
    False. Years ago I had a business credit card charge from either Target or Kmart where you could see the individual items. So some merchants do share that kind of detail.
  - hyperbovine 9y ago
    My bank seems to know the origin and destination of all the plane tickets I buy (for example), so presumably the CC processor has this sort of information as well? I'm sure someone reading this is in the industry and can explain.
    - rcar 9y ago
      Plane tickets have an odd setup in CC processing systems where it actually shows origin/destination in the transaction information itself. The only other similar example I've seen has been in payment processors like Square or Paypal where they'll include both that it was a Paypal transaction and some customizable string showing the merchant who actually received the payment. Other than those sorts of situations though, Visa/MC or the bank issuing the cards only know where the transaction occurred and how much it was and don't directly get SKU-level data on what was purchased barring some other sort of partnership with the merchant.
    - gergles 9y ago
      Yeah, this is called "Level 3 data" and can include line items from a receipt and other details of transactions.
- bonzini 9y ago
  Is this also true of Amex (which makes more money from each credit card transaction than Visa and Mastercard)?
  - morganvachon 9y ago
    Just an uninformed guess, but I'd say that 70% figure probably covers Visa/MasterCard but not Amex or Discover, based on what I've observed working in retail in the past.
  - treyfitty 9y ago
    Yes. https://vimeo.com/155746893 https://vimeo.com/155746893 http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160517006038/en/Viacom-American-Express-Form-Exclusive-Partnership-Launch http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160517006038/en/Viac... They used to have a "Business Intelligence Group" which acted as a Consulting firm to corporations who want to answer questions like "Where should my company set up more stores?" The group often sifted through their customer data to answer that question.
    - bonzini 9y ago
      That's reasonable, and different from selling it to third parties.
- thesehands 9y ago
  a logical conclusion could be drawn that there either Visa/Mastercard should start an ad network, or Google gets in the credit card game (As android pay becomes more widely accepted, this may be an irrelevant step for them)
richjdsmith 9y ago
This is the point that really shocked me! I'd love to read more on this.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  The book "Chaos Monkeys"[1], while irritating in many ways, has a detailed description of how Facebook correlates its own advertising data with information from data brokers (such as credit card transaction aggregators). This kind of stuff has been happening for quite some time. (As an extra bonus, the book describes how the author's ad-tech startup got into YC and was bought by Twitter.) [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019MMUAAQ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019MMUAAQ
yborg 9y ago
I'm actually surprised that retailers haven't started surcharging people paying in cash by now in order to drive all of individuals' transaction data into the panopticon.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  They won't in the medium term because of how much they hate the credit card company's cut. 3% is a lot on an already low-margin transaction at Walmart.
  - creepydata 9y ago
    Walmart wouldn't take credit if it wasn't financially sound for them to do so.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      It still has transaction costs.
      - sanswork 9y ago
        So does cash handling.
    - mattnewton 9y ago
      Doesn't mean they like the arrangement and are going to shill for the credit card companies though. That was my point.
      - creepydata 9y ago
        Um... Walmart IS a credit card shill, they have their own credit card - https://www.walmart.com/cp/walmart-credit-card/632402 https://www.walmart.com/cp/walmart-credit-card/632402 We don't know Walmart's feelings, they may like the arrangement. Business go cash free for all kinds of reasons. Customers that use credit spend more money than cash customers. Walmart probably isn't one of those places that benefit as much as a pub but they may have a small credit spending boost that covers the fees. Walmart is a really smart and data driven company and I'm sure they've weighed their options about what is effective business practices for them.
mc32 9y ago
So the only way to break the circle is to purchase with cash... And now fewer and fewer people buy with cash, to the point some Nordics plan on doing away with cash as much as possible.
- a3_nm 9y ago
  It's very important to keep making as many purchases in cash as possible, precisely for this reason. At least where I live (France), this is very doable. Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced and is widely accepted. It's something that would be impossible to bootstrap today if it didn't already exist. Hence, it's crucial to keep it alive.
  - Cyphase 9y ago
    > Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced ... I just wanted to point out the possibility of tracking serial numbers on bills. Obviously it's not going to be as reliable, at least not now, but it could be made more so; for instance, if there was a sudden movement to use more cash for privacy. Of course, that seems unlikely; most people like the convenience of plastic/digital payments, and there's a lot of market pressure pushing people toward those payment methods, so deploying the infrastructure for more reliable cash tracking probably isn't worth a whole lot. But I haven't exactly run the numbers, and there are other possible incentives, so who knows..
    - mc32 9y ago
      It is possible to track the serials, if they wanted to; however, except for banks, I have not exchanged cash with a retailer who scans the bills at the point of transaction and if they did, they'd also have to tie a given ser no with me at the time of purchase. Since a particular bill will go through many hands, it'd be like trying to figure out who made a change on a system when it was done by 'root' or 'administrator' where the whole team logs in as root or admin. Basically attribution would be kinda inaccurate.
      - 9y ago
fictioncircle 9y ago
Oh it gets better. "We don't know what you bought or how much". https://www.revolution-payments.com/requirements-for-level-3-processing/ https://www.revolution-payments.com/requirements-for-level-3... > Level 3 processing can benefit businesses who sell to other businesses or government by lowering your transaction cost by as much as 1.50%. > Line Item Details: Of course, if they are like one of the places I worked...they just turn it on for everyone and pass it along regardless.
chinathrow 9y ago
Exactly. Google: You're already way too deep in our lives and now this. When will you ever stop? When you own us?
thr0waway1239 9y ago
My first thought was: why only 70%? This may be a case where the savings (i.e. money from selling data in return for a big pile of cash) are actually passed on to the customer - e.g. transaction costs are lower for Visa/Mastercard for merchants, which is why they sometimes don't accept Amex and Discover. It would be interesting to see if Visa and Mastercard have some clause which prevents Google from buying data from AMEX and Discover (competitive advantage for them because then Amex and Discover's transaction costs aren't subsidized) in return for agreeing to part with their data. Said another way, what's preventing Google from also getting data from Amex or Discover? Its not as if Google is going to say no.
Sophira 9y ago
This was absolutely the most worrying part for me. How in the hell did Google get access to that much?

tdeck 9y ago

My former employer Square (generally a great company) has been doing a similar thing for a while, in partnership with Facebook [1]. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/facebook-knows/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/facebook-knows/

azinman2 9y ago

"The kinds of data that Google is collecting also could become an inviting target for hackers, said Miro Copic, a marketing professor at San Diego State University" As if Google wasn't already a target already?!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

synaesthesisx 9y ago

There are certain products that people are more likely to buy in-store than online (clothing etc) but may be exposed to/advertised to online. I've always wondered how retailers track offline conversions effectively...

inesta 9y ago

Hmm I was wondering how some stores show up on Google maps even though I did not use Google maps to get to those places. God damm Google.

cyberhigh 9y ago
That is because you have location services enabled on your phone. Google collects your phones location with this on. You can see the details by going to your location history.
- tomascot 9y ago
  Also WiFi
- ams6110 9y ago
  Yeah I keep location services turned off most of the time. I also have never intentionally clicked on an online ad of any kind.
  - pksadiq 9y ago
    > Yeah I keep location services turned off most of the time. Even if your location services, wifi and bt are off, they occasionally turns on to get your location. In Lineage OS there is an additional setting to not use wifi (when it is off) for location services. May be you can look into developer options to disable this setting (Please note that even if wifi is off, your phone searches for wifi hotspots to find itself where it is). And if your wifi/bt is on, your location is (almost) always available to Google. You know it, right?
- inesta 9y ago
  well i do have location services on, but on my iphone. i dont have google maps open even in the background. i have background app refresh off for google maps too. i really dont see how google could get that info. apple maybe.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Hmm I was wondering how some stores show up on Google maps even though I did not use Google maps to get to those places. Isn't that just advertising?

paradite 9y ago

Now I will have to seriously consider getting off the Google ecosystem now. Deactivating facebook was okay, but Google might be tricky considering many of website accounts use Google authentication.

adjkant 9y ago
Okay, this is a small rant that is not directly aimed at you, so nothing personal. This is aimed generally more at people in the privacy at all costs camp and the like. If there's some viewpoint I'm missing here I'd also love to hear it, so it's not really a mean-spirited rant either. Google owns the internet at this point. For general use purposes, they ARE the internet. So avoiding them should really have at least SOME effect before it's even seriously considered. What does getting off Google do? It doesn't hurt them, as there's no way a significant number of people will take action, at least in the near future. So, then it must be done for you. By not being in these services and having all this data collected on you, what do you actually gain? Likely, nothing at all. You won't be able to be tracked down as easily if Google turns evil, sure. If their data is breached in a meaningful way, sure again. But, for both of these, emphasis on "as easily". At this point, if you're looking to maliciously track down just about anyone, it's not hard at all. You'd have to go fully off the grid to get this. And in that scenario, what do you gain again? We follow down the same road of "I only gain something in very unlikely scenarios" again. So to me, the only way this type of perspective makes sense is if you believe those very unlikely scenarios (from my view) are much more likely. And if they are, we're all fucked already, and being one of the few to be off the grid probably won't matter in the end. Basically, at this point, you've already given yourself to Google. Rather than decide whether or not to trust them, I think putting more effort into trying to influence them towards "not being evil", as they say, is much more of a realistic move for someone with concerns over data, privacy, power/security of all this, etc. Am I missing something? PS: I understand Facebook - for some, there are no significant benefits you give up. For most, you're going to give up a lot more with Google.
- taneq 9y ago
  > By not being in these services and having all this data collected on you, what do you actually gain? Likely, nothing at all. By closing the curtains in your bedroom when you're about to get busy with your partner, what do you actually gain? Likely, nothing at all. I place a not-inconsiderable weight on not feeling like I'm being watched and recorded every second of the day and night. By controlling which data I give companies like Google and Facebook, I significantly reduce this creepy feeling and so gain a significant amount of peace of mind.

JosephLark 9y ago

Not Google specific, but some good reading on this topic came out in January - The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power [0] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Aisles-Have-Eyes-Retailers-Shopping/dp/0300212194/ https://www.amazon.com/Aisles-Have-Eyes-Retailers-Shopping/d...

russell_h 9y ago

A Googler gave a talk at Real World Crypto in January describing a system that might back this. The relevant part of the talk starts around the 10 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s In short, they're able to compute the intersection of the set of users who have viewed an ad with the set of people who purchased a product in a store, without either party disclosing their side of the set.

singron 9y ago
After studying the slides, it looks like they do a Diffie Hellman-like exchange of user identifiers. g_i = Google's identifier for customer i. s_j = Merchant identifer for customer j. If g_i == s_j then customer i == j. These identifiers might be phone numbers or email addresses or other identifiers that both parties have. Neither party wants the other to learn any identifiers it doesn't already known about. So Google picks a random secret value G and sends g_i^G to the Merchant. The Merchant picks random secret value T and sends g_i^(G* T) back to Google. Additionally the merchant sends s_j^T to Google. Then Google calculates s_j^(T* G). If s_j^(T* G) == g_i^(G* T) then s_j == g_i and i == j. So know Google knows the exact set of their users who purchased something at the Merchant. Additionally, for each s_j^(T), the Merchant sends a homomorphically encrypted value for the amount they spent. Then Google can perform a homomorphic addition on these encrypted values of only the intersection it calculated. The Merchant can then decrypt it to get the total sum and share it back to Google. So in the scheme I described 1) Google still learns who is purchasing at which merchant. 2) Google does not learn individual amounts. 3) Merchants can't perform the same calculation to learn which users saw their ads unless Google sends s_j^(T* G) back to them (not pictured in the slides).
- hammock 9y ago
  It's not a new and a very common process. A personal identifying variable is calculated in the same way on both sides (usually by a third party), then hashed. Hashed values are then compared/matched.
  - 9y ago

hackuser 9y ago

There are anonymized credit card services, including pre-paid and other solutions. The following is based on notes at least a year old, and I haven't tried them: * Abine * Final https://getfinal.com/ https://getfinal.com/ * Privacy Inc. https://privacy.com/ https://privacy.com/ Also, many pre-paid cards require the user to identify themselves before the card is activated

lowglow 9y ago
I'm not sure why you're getting down voted. This is reasonable contribution.
tyingq 9y ago
I didn't downvote, but some of those only help so much. Your name is still in the track data, and for credit you generally have to input a zip code. For online purchases, you're entering an address as well.
- taneq 9y ago
  Yes, but even if a panopticon could theoretically piece your entire history back together, using multiple companies to keep the silos separate is one way to reduce the ease with which this can be done. That's why it's such a big deal when companies sell your info. Merging silos dramatically increases the amount that can be inferred from each piece of information.

awinter-py 9y ago

I think everyone remembers the first ad to follow them around multiple websites. For me it was an ASPCA campaign. The next version of that experience will be researching a purchase and where to get it, then seeing ads on the way that are customized to (a) the product you're buying and (b) your preferences. If you're 55 you'll get michael jordan advising you to buy nikes. If you're 35 it will be Noel Gallagher (air noels?), and if you're 10 it will be the ninja turtles. The good news is at a certain point the competition for eyeballs will become so fierce that the ads become honest & informative.

Moru 9y ago
I've been allergic to adverticing all my life, I don't remember any adverticement following me around at all... :-) Adblockers is no new thing.
skummetmaelk 9y ago
>The good news is at a certain point the competition for eyeballs will become so fierce that the ads become honest & informative. How exactly would that transition work? If anything, the trend has been going the other way for the past century.
pnut 9y ago
If ads were going to become honest and informative, it would have happened already. A sale from a lie is equal in value to a sale from the truth.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > A sale from a lie is equal in value to a sale from the truth. And a sale from a lie is also cheaper to achieve than a sale from the truth. So even if your ads are always 100% honest, if your competitor starts lying, you're forced to either do the same, or risk going out of business. This is how the market optimizes human values away as inefficiencies.
- awinter-py 9y ago
  not always -- returns are pretty expensive for retailers.

yuhong 9y ago

Thinking about it, the entire US economy has been about increasing consumption and credit since the 1970s.

talamown 9y ago

Amazon already has been doing this as well. They started to recommend some items related with books I have never bought online, just after I got them at local bookstore by credit card.

Graphon1 9y ago
Isn't there a difference? Google is sharing that offline purchase insight with advertising clients, rather than simply using that data itself, as does Amazon.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Where the advertising client is the local bookstore that he purchased the book from.

sleepless 9y ago

Cash is a great invention.

gub09 9y ago

This is probably an unusual opinion, but for me privacy is similar to freedom. Freedom is usually defined as a negative: people are free of oppression, have freedom of speech (freedom from speech being constrained), freedom of movement (not forced to stay in one place), religious freedom (freedom to believe what one will and not be limited in practice or assembly), etc. Privacy is the freedom from being watched, from having one's movements and actions and consumption and words observed, tabulated and stored. I hope that one day whether by laws or technological solutions, privacy will again be the norm in our lives.

adjkant 9y ago
I think it's important to note the definition of privacy you use is important. For me, in my daily life, all of this is completely "private". Google having my data in mass and an identity profile on me that no human will ever specifically look at is just as good as private to me. The fact that computers will be handing this data, not other humans, is an important distinction for me. No human will ever see my individual data in all likelihood. I don't think the lack of privacy is a problem, but rather the centralized power. It's really tough right now with so much power in information, but the only real information power coming in volume.
- dorian-graph 9y ago
  > Google having my data in mass and an identity profile on me that no human will ever specifically look at is just as good as private to me. This feels like saying "I have nothing to hide".
- XJOKOLAT 9y ago
  "in all likelihood" ... the key bit. The US, for example, is one presidency away from complete democratic failure. By which I mean all that data, which now is effectively, "in all likelihood", private via volume, can and will be abused. Giving up and allowing privacy to fail now only makes disastrous consequences more likely later at the whim of that centralised power you mention.
- tskaiser 9y ago

vmarsy 9y ago

The European Union is often made fun of with "the Americans innovate, the EU regulates", but in the meantime GDPR[1] is coming into force in 2018 > The primary objectives of the GDPR are to give citizens and residents back control of their personal data [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regu...

akavel 9y ago
I've read the Wikipedia summary, and it appears to me, that GDPR only requires encryption, not anonymisation, of personal data! Or did I miss something?
- nsebban 9y ago
  It also requires trivial opt-out and readability of the opt-ins. And it gives enough power to really control what companies are doing with people's data. And the fines are huge (up to 3% of the company's global gross amount) compared to what exists today.
  - amelius 9y ago
    Can users still be manipulated to opt-in to a service X if they want a service Y badly enough? I.e., you can only use Y if you also take X? How many people would opt-out of (or not opt-in to) a service like Google search?
    - bonzini 9y ago
      There are some things that must have a separate opt-in from the bare minimum that's necessary to provide the service. Typically, there are three bullets on European privacy forms: handling personal data to provide the service, handling personal data for commercial and advertising purposes, sharing personal data with third parties (usually for commercial and advertising purposes). Pre-printed forms can only have the first ticked to yes, the other two must be filled in by the customer.

syphilis2 9y ago

I'm interested to read about where people believe this progression of technology will take us in the near and far future. Are there thought out considerations of what type of world we are heading towards? Has Google revealed their vision of advertising for 2032? I don't mean this rhetorically, I genuinely want to know what vision there is for advertising in the future because I believe it's something we really ought to be thinking about and judging so we can make informed decision about what's best for us.

wiz21c 9y ago
I love this question too. I think we're heading for a full blown "société de contrôle" (see Wikipedia). So the locus of power is changing. Before it was repression, now it is control. It's not inhernetly good or bad. But my gut feelings says that we're transtionning to that society. And while we're transitionning, the first movers, the fastest movers (Google, FaceBook, etc) have an advantage and therefore may look dangerous to us. So in complement to your question I'd like to hear about what are the forces that are here to balance the powers.
- jansho 9y ago
  > what are the forces that are here to balance the powers. Well there's no chance of a David vs Goliath so the only one I can think of is governments. Yeah...
  - wiz21c 9y ago
    Yep, I know that but somehow, at my age (and I'd say even at a younger age), one must think that change does exist and that change is for the better. So maybe there's a David somewhere... Right now I'm thinking about the Pirate Party, but I have no ideas of what they're doing...
rsto 9y ago
Jaron Lanier writes about this in his book "Who Owns the Future" [1] Disclaimer: I haven't read it yet, so can't say if it meets your "thought out considerations" criteria. [1] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25424120M/Who_Owns_the_Future https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25424120M/Who_Owns_the_Futur...

jsonne 9y ago

This is likely unpopular, but this makes my job exponentially easier. The number of "What is that click worth" questions to us data driven marketing folks by small businesses effectively closes off a lot of us that focus primarily on the data from that market. With this, there is very real money to be made with small businesses that were too skittish to advertise before. We've been playing with Facebook's online to offline and frankly the brick and mortar folks we work with that we're utilizing it are incredibly delighted.

bumblebeard 9y ago
Just because it makes your job easier doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
mark_edward 9y ago
Your job is a terrible thing, building the panopticon for cash

thephyber 9y ago

I was under the impression that Google already did this. A Googler already described this to me years ago as "closing the loop", where Google's ad network already exposed a customer to a brand/product, but Google only gets credit for the conversion if it happens in the same browser session online. By tying together stats between impression and conversion (purchase, even in-store), the ad network becomes more valuable -- or less, if there was already an assumption of this effect with previously overestimated results.

jforman 9y ago
Lots of companies have been improving attribution online. Offline is quite a different beast.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  I remember reading an article a few years ago about Facebook doing this. It's also why some merchants will ask for your phone number, even if you pay in cash. With your phone number, the merchant can identify you. In Facebook's case, they know what ads they show you online, then they can tie any subsequent purchases tagged with your phone number back to your FB account.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    Sounds like another company claiming credit for something it didn't actually do. facebook showed me ChristianMingle ads for years despite marking myself as agnostic. I have a fair amount of experience with the Ad-words network and all I can see of facebook's ad network and target is that it sucks. I've never seen any place I've worked have much success deriving any meaningful value from facebook ads.
    - leesalminen 9y ago
      It works for us. But we cater to a small niche that's fairly easy to target.
    - 9y ago

justinbaker84 9y ago

This is not just starting - Google has been testing this since at least 2014. I worked at a big online advertising agency from 2013-2014 and we had a lot of fortune 500 companies as clients. Google began offering this tracking functionality as a beta in 2014 to a small number of very large companies. Here's the thing - Google is basically telling advertisers "just trust us to report on our own performance." They are saying buy traffic from us and we will use our secret algorithms to tell you how much revenue we drove and you will have no way to verify the totals. As you can imagine this is not an attractive proposition.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Earlier, on HN: Report warns computers may threaten constitutional rights (1982) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14329877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14329877

staticelf 9y ago

Next phone will be an iPhone even if I think Android is so much better.

hopfog 9y ago

Another way companies are connecting your online profile with offline activities is by using one of the many call tracking services. Basically when you visit a site using these you will be shown a unique phone number. When you ring it the service will tie your web session to the call. The company will see the caller's whole web user journey and any subsequent visits.

birracerveza 9y ago

Where I live we have laws in place that criminalize stalking. Why isn't this considered stalking?

a_imho 9y ago
Maybe you implicitly agree to their ToS when you enter a partner store? It's a technical detail of creative lawyering. They must have covered the legal aspects and factored in the fines in case they get a slap on the wrist. I guess it is the same thin line you have between tax evasion and tax optimization and Google has a nearly unlimited budget to try to move this line in their favor.
- birracerveza 9y ago
  But it's not like agreeing to a ToS allows you to do illegal things, stalking being one of them. And yes, the definition keeps fitting more and more Google's tracking methods. I know that I sound dramatic, but all of these kind of things that we have let Google do would be considered HIGHLY illegal if instead of a company it was a single, private individual.
  - a_imho 9y ago
    Not dramatic at all, it is stalking, it is unethical but defining illegal is very complicated and up to the elected bodies. Powerful entities should not be above the law but in practice they are, no point denying that. I'm sure everyone has an explanation according to taste how come double standards can be the normal.

evolve2k 9y ago

> The new tracking system was created in consultation with “incredibly smart people” to ensure it's not invasive. He described the program as “secure and privacy safe.” It's not "incredibly smart people" you need; it's "highly ethical people".

iDemonix 9y ago
Very important point. In my workplace, often the smartest engineers are so focused on doing smart things, they forget that the data they're dealing with belongs to, or identifies, people. Got to make those yearly objectives/appraisals count though.
- keithpeter 9y ago
  Perhaps a more subtle thing for them to keep in mind: many people carry out a mix of card/online and cash transactions. Only the card/online transactions will be captured. The Panopticon's record will show an extremely unhealthy and meagre diet for me for instance because I buy fresh fruit/veg at markets - cash only. It strikes me that data censored through transaction modality and then used to make marketing decisions may result in poor results.
  - eternalban 9y ago
    The Panopticon central says 'cash is going bye bye sunshine'.
    - keithpeter 9y ago
      http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2015/q3prerelease_1.pdf http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte... Cash will be around for a fair time yet, but you have a point for any form of regular or recurrent expenditure. As the above pdf explains 'hoarding' of notes as a store of value seems strangely popular...
  - bbcbasic 9y ago

z3t4 9y ago

Does who advertise for products sold offline doesn't care about clicks though, only views.

romanovcode 9y ago

> Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions. I don't get it, does VISA, MASTERCARD or AMEX just gives google the transactions? That got to be illegal, right?

bonzini 9y ago
Only if you didn't sign a contract that says they can. In Europe it would be opt-in in all likelihood.

kator 9y ago

Best part about this article, it's talking about Google advertising and meanwhile the page loads with 147 trackers, page entry interstitials, auto-play videos, and pop-up interstitials while I'm trying to read. Many of the ads on that page are all google driven including the massive annoying pushdown at the top of the page. As to the topic, let's be clear credit card data mining has been going on since before the web was born. I've explained this to people for decades, that and "customer loyalty" programs are amazing sources of data while being very scary at the same time. What google is doing here is not any different than 100's of other vendors and companies in advertising technology. Their advantage is the retention of all your search data, clicks when it's a google ad etc. Facebook has comparable data as do many companies. Both these companies enjoy a duopoly that is massive and in some markets, they capture more than 70% of all advertising spend. Those resources combined with offline techniques creates a white-hot spot light that ignites a dialog that most likely should have happened before the web was born. Advertisers want to know the money they spend is effective and works. We can all debate for eons about the effectiveness of advertising, but let me tell you de facto that it works. These types of systems are designed to help them optimize the spend. Sadly, meanwhile you have perfectly good outlets like this newspaper where that optimization has led to downward pressure combined with user habit changes. They are desperate to stay in business and allow their digital offerings to be turned into graffiti pages in hopes to make up for lost revenues in the physical business. This leads to turning users off (157 trackers now as I write this) and they stop coming to the site. The leads to a vicious cycle where the users stop coming, the advertisers notice and stop spending or start discounting the money they're willing to pay. Digital death is horrific, rapid and all automated. I don't know the answer to all these things, what I do know is people do want to have intelligent dialogs with other people who are offering something of interest. But advertising has always in the past been about injecting itself into people's lives in unwanted ways, from the kid screaming on the street corner "Come and get it, hot off the press" to a page on latimes.com with now 158 trackers and more ad space than content. I dream of a world where I can have intelligent dialogs with people offering things that could enhance my life in some way. I spend every day of my life thinking about how to do this, and I'm building technology and products to address this idea. I would love nothing better than a single ad on a site like this, the right one, the one you wouldn't mind hearing from and one that pays the site owner 20x what they get now with their graffiti strategy. I can tell you advertisers also want this, they don’t want to be on a page with 158 trackers, and a graffiti layout where their message is diluted by all the noise. It’s a real problem, it will get much worse before it gets better, but those who say advertising is evil are missing the point. Effective advertising is about communication, and should be person to person. The most powerful advertisement is a friend telling another friend about something new and exciting they discovered. However, to have that dialog you must have the first experience, the discovery, the friend of a friend had to learn about this amazing new product and advertising sets out to do that.

hacksonx 9y ago

Many ways are being suggested as workarounds for maintaining annonimity about where one spends their money. Fact if the matter is, if the money leaves your account in batches these guys will know. So Google, and others, in the age of bitcoin will just partner with banks.

chatman 9y ago

Dr. Stallman and FSF always promoted used of free software to counter surveillance.

MikeVanBike 9y ago

Tracking more please google. Im really happy that you violate my privacy with fancy new terms and ideas.

AdamN 9y ago

Are there concrete recommendations for being able to use a credit card (i.e. for an airline purchase where cash is tough) and maintain maximum privacy? I know Apple Pay helps vis-a-vis the merchant since the CC number is hidden. Are Visa, AMEX, MC different at all? Are there banks that have better privacy policies or does it not matter since the bank is just handling the final money transfer?

nicholasjarnold 9y ago
I use a service called Privacy.com which is quite convenient for certain types of transactions or when dealing with certain merchants. Check their privacy policy: https://privacy.com/terms#privacy-policy https://privacy.com/terms#privacy-policy The one thing that stands out to me is this line: "Privacy.com does not disclose personal data to third parties for direct marketing purposes." I am suspicious that the addition of the word 'direct' in that sentence might be significant. I'd love to hear of other similar services.

sterban 9y ago

Are there any credit card companies or banks offering cards that will not participate?

kyrra 9y ago

It's worth seeing the information from the source. The talk[0] and the blog post[1]. Plus, as Engadget called out[2] in an update, you can opt-out by contacting your credit card company, and there are more details at the FTC[3]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkRJqnQ2T8&19m05s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkRJqnQ2T8&19m05s [1] https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-analytics-innovations.html https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-anal... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-trips-ads/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-tr... [3] https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-your-personal-financial-information https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-y...

throwaway111112 9y ago

Yesterday, I received [1] from a friend. I laughed it off as the usual exaggeration when someone talks about Google and privacy. Today, I read that Google moved one step closer to that story. [1] https://www.devrant.io/rants/605665/hello-gordons-pizza-no-sir-its-googles-pizza-so-its-a-wrong-number-no-sir-google https://www.devrant.io/rants/605665/hello-gordons-pizza-no-s...

justforFranz 9y ago

I'm not concerned. By the time they've figured out what everyone is buying, people won't have any money anymore to buy anything. So... whatever.