14 ms·

Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint

160 points by a_w 9y ago

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I actually also filed a complaint with the FTC about this program. Nobody wrote an article about me though. :( (In fairness, this appears to be an actual legal case, not just a 'complaint'.) I was particularly perturbed that Google made it clear they had access to my credit and debit card data even if I do not grant them permission to have it. My guess is somehow I have given the credit card companies permission to sell it, but it feels like my entire purchase history attached to my personally-identifiable info enough to tie it to a Google account really shouldn't be legal to sell. As a note, filing privacy complaints with the Federal Trade Commission is surprisingly intuitive, and I highly recommend people familiarize themselves with the system and use it liberally.
- fvinci 9y ago
  Has the FTC contacted you to follow up on your complaint? Just curious what process is like.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Not as of yet. (Filed on May 23rd, got a generic "we received it" email on that date.) It is possible that filing a complaint is akin to screaming into the void, but it made me feel better that I filed it. Presumably if a lot of people file complaints on the same topic, they might notice.
kyrra 9y ago
Previous discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406583 Opt-out (I believe) happens at the credit-card level, per [0][1]. [0] https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-trips-ads/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-tr... [1] https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-your-personal-financial-information https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-y...
DannyBee 9y ago
Unfortunately, credit card companies/banks/etc have been selling purchasing histories, to pretty much all comers, for years. It'd be really nice if we could stop that instead of caring about the particular people they sell it to. IE It's not "better" when they sell it to someone who isn't Google, and I honestly could't give a crap about the complaint, which mostly deals with antitrust.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Yeah, first and foremost, it bothers me that this data can be sold at all in a user-identifiable way. (Presumably for Google to be able to link it to accounts, name and address are included in the data.) Perhaps this offers the opportunity for a product, in the short term: Is anyone offering credit cards which promise not to sell your purchase history? I'd be game for that.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    It's actually not given to Google in a user identifiable way. I am not privy to the details, but an overview was presented at a crypto conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s It looks to me like a form of homomorphic encryption where both the aggregate consumer transactions (people bought X at merchant M), and the aggregate Google ad information (people saw ad for X at merchant M) are encrypted and the set intersection is computed on the ciphertext revealing only the aggregate number of purchases, not the individuals. Now granted, there could be a security hole in this scheme as with any crypto-protocol, so it does need peer review, but the design, as stated in that YouTube presentation, is not to reveal to Google personal purchasing information, nor reveal to merchants, personal profile information. No personal financial data or purchasing information is supposedly transmitted. The problem with this kind of technology is that it is really difficult to explain to the public, and easily demagogued.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      My question is... how is that supposed to work? How do they turn "person A's credit card account" and "person A's Google account" into something comparable. To say "X customers saw the ad and then purchased it", you've gotta be able to be able to confirm that the same person is on both sides of the dataset, which is a pretty hard problem even without it allegedly not sharing the info on one side with Google. I guess this complaint from this article is asking the FTC to get more information on this process, or get Google to explain how it works, or something. Upvote for the explanation.
CivilianZero 9y ago
Try as I might, I just can't be bothered to care if someone wants to know what I've been buying so they can show me advertisements relevant to my interests. But I'm weird, I don't think advertising is inherently evil or annoying.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Inherently evil and annoying? No, but in practice it's annoying and online at least, potentially problematic on other levels as well such as security and performance. Telemarketing isn't inherently evil and annoying either, but it's become a playground for scammers with robocalls and constantly shifting spoofed numbers. That, maybe, should tell you something about the nature of the medium, or at least the nature of the medium when it's being exploited by a broad population.
  - CivilianZero 9y ago
    I think telemarketing is annoying, it's also intrusive and requires effort on my part. Passive advertisement on the internet does not. Note I am not saying there are not annoying advertisements, but that's an issue of implementation, not the concept of targeted advertising. If anything, Google would know I will never click on an annoying ad if they "invaded my privacy" more than they do now.
- robteix 9y ago
  To be honest, I don't either. But the data is still there. You don't know if in ten years Google is going to start losing money and is forced (by its shareholders) to find alternative means of monetization. You can't really say Google is perfectly secure and will never ever ever be hacked and leak your data either. Maybe it will never happen, maybe it will. Therefore I believe I should have the right to say "hey, I don't want this private corporation to have my credit info".
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Or potentially worse, if they're compromised/hacked in some way and that data simply enters the wild ecosystem.
Piccollo 9y ago
The older we get, the less fks we give about privacy.
the_common_man 9y ago
> Google called its advertising approach "common" Tragedy of the commons. At this point in time, any and all forms of data collection have become common. When I visit a website, I expect them to collect everything about me - my IP, my mouse movements, what I clicked, how long I took to click it. Just a matter of time, that they start tracking audio and visual cues as well. It's unthinkable today but we will get there. It will enter slowly in the form of alexa and google home. then a browser plugin. Then a browser integration. Then a web api. And to cap it all, everyone will claim how it's made their life better.
- whytaka 9y ago
  I wonder if you're using the term as a poetic device, but as far as I know that's not what Tragedy of the Commons means. Commons are properties without private owners. The tragedy is that because no one individual owns it, the people that use it use it without care to its maintenance believing that it is not their responsibility.
  - CardenB 9y ago
    This is still sort of the same thing. The blame can't be pinned on one single entity because it is so common.
- cbr 9y ago
  start tracking audio and visual cues as well Do you mean microphone and camera, or something else? (If you do mean mic/camera, sites can't access those without prompting the browser to show a permissions dialog and you clicking "ok".)
  - waqf 9y ago
    How fortunate, then, that browsers never have security bugs.
- drusepth 9y ago
  >And to cap it all, everyone will claim how it's made their life better. You don't think it actually _will_ make some people's lives better? Do you think those people are being tricked into thinking their life is being improved? Or do you just think the downsides just outweigh those improvements?
jgalt212 9y ago
> To do this, Google said it had obtained access to the credit and debit card records of 70 percent of U.S. consumers. After reading the initial article in May, I called American Express and they swore up and own they don't sell my purchased data. I don't see how you get above 70% without data from American Express. So who's lying?
- davidcbc 9y ago
  American Express has a pretty small market share (7.5%) https://wallethub.com/edu/market-share-by-credit-card-network/25531/ https://wallethub.com/edu/market-share-by-credit-card-networ...
  - jgalt212 9y ago
    Am I reading it wrong? The chart makes it look like Amex has 23%.
    - davidcbc 9y ago
      I'm referring to the cards in circulation number. The original claim was about a percentage of consumers, not a percentage of transactions so to me that is the more relevant number. Either way, 100% - 23% = 77% which is > than 70% so the point stands. Visa + Mastercard alone are over 70% using the purchase volume numbers
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        Yeah, when Google said "over 70%", I basically just figured "Okay, so they have Mastercard and Visa." Amex and Discover are both tiny comparatively.
    - stordoff 9y ago
      Which means that 70% is possible without AmEx? I'd also wonder about how the numbers are computed - you can get incomplete records on a high percentage of consumers without the AmEx data as (people with AmEx) and (people with other card(s)) aren't disjoint sets.
code_duck 9y ago
I see ads on facebook related to purchases I make with a specific credit card. I have no indication which party is supplying this info to whom and how they made the connection to my facebook account.
EGO_DEATH 9y ago
Privacy centric Cryptocurrencies is the solution rearing it's head. Zcash. Btc.
simlevesque 9y ago
WaPo has the same power: they know what customers buy. They're owned by Bezos which owns Amazon. How are they different ? Why would Google's data be more prone to hacking than Amazon's ? This article is pretty hypocritical.
- idlewords 9y ago
  Bezos owns the Washington Post, but as far as I know there's no connection to Amazon or integration with Amazon. He owns it as an individual. Publishers in general have very little visibility into user behavior, since they rely on third-party tracking tools and third-party ad engines.
  - vitus 9y ago
    For about 8 months (Dec 2015 to the end of July 2016) I got daily emails from Amazon with free articles from the Washington Post. Information on this is sparse, so I don't know why it started or stopped. Prime members also get a free six-month trial period, followed by a discount on a subscription -- $3.99 / month [0], as opposed to the standard $10 / 4 weeks (or $99/year) [1]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072MHQFJ1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072MHQFJ1 [1] https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com/ https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com/
Oletros 9y ago
Good, but it would be better if they ask what kind of data is sold to any party
sounders 9y ago
Credit card companies and retailers have sold anonymized purchasing data for years to help companies analyze online ad clicks to offline spend. Auto companies have used Polk vehicle registration data and data aggregators to match a vehicle purchase to the user's online ad clicks. They compare how showing ads for certain models influences your car purchase (ex. Honda CRV) from your initial search (best family sedan) and demographic info (FB data indicates you are an avid runner, 2 kids, 1 dog, etc..). Retailers employ a similar model for basket size. There are partners like Oracle Data Cloud, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Neustar and LiveRamp (ex. IdentityLink http://identity.liveramp.com http://identity.liveramp.com) that provide similar data for O2O measurement.
nibstwo 9y ago
One philosophical question I have been wondering recently is whether this problem could not be addressed by removing "real life" identity from the equation. I don't think personalized ads would be nearly as obnoxious if I knew that the ad matches my browsing history but has nothing to do what name shows up on my passport. Most of what people seem to take issue with is their personal identity in addition to the tracking. The tracking for the purposes of relevant ads would be identical from the perspective of the advertiser (efficient/profitable) but much more private for the user.
cgb223 9y ago
It's kind of ironic that a news paper owned by Amazon's CEO is publishing articles about Google violating customers privacy Not that it's not a valid complaint, just interesting

160 points by a_w 9y ago

I actually also filed a complaint with the FTC about this program. Nobody wrote an article about me though. :( (In fairness, this appears to be an actual legal case, not just a 'complaint'.) I was particularly perturbed that Google made it clear they had access to my credit and debit card data even if I do not grant them permission to have it. My guess is somehow I have given the credit card companies permission to sell it, but it feels like my entire purchase history attached to my personally-identifiable info enough to tie it to a Google account really shouldn't be legal to sell. As a note, filing privacy complaints with the Federal Trade Commission is surprisingly intuitive, and I highly recommend people familiarize themselves with the system and use it liberally.

fvinci 9y ago
Has the FTC contacted you to follow up on your complaint? Just curious what process is like.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Not as of yet. (Filed on May 23rd, got a generic "we received it" email on that date.) It is possible that filing a complaint is akin to screaming into the void, but it made me feel better that I filed it. Presumably if a lot of people file complaints on the same topic, they might notice.

kyrra 9y ago

Previous discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406583 Opt-out (I believe) happens at the credit-card level, per [0][1]. [0] https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-trips-ads/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-track-shopping-tr... [1] https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-your-personal-financial-information https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0222-privacy-choices-y...

DannyBee 9y ago

Unfortunately, credit card companies/banks/etc have been selling purchasing histories, to pretty much all comers, for years. It'd be really nice if we could stop that instead of caring about the particular people they sell it to. IE It's not "better" when they sell it to someone who isn't Google, and I honestly could't give a crap about the complaint, which mostly deals with antitrust.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Yeah, first and foremost, it bothers me that this data can be sold at all in a user-identifiable way. (Presumably for Google to be able to link it to accounts, name and address are included in the data.) Perhaps this offers the opportunity for a product, in the short term: Is anyone offering credit cards which promise not to sell your purchase history? I'd be game for that.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  It's actually not given to Google in a user identifiable way. I am not privy to the details, but an overview was presented at a crypto conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee7oRsDnNNc&t=10m1s It looks to me like a form of homomorphic encryption where both the aggregate consumer transactions (people bought X at merchant M), and the aggregate Google ad information (people saw ad for X at merchant M) are encrypted and the set intersection is computed on the ciphertext revealing only the aggregate number of purchases, not the individuals. Now granted, there could be a security hole in this scheme as with any crypto-protocol, so it does need peer review, but the design, as stated in that YouTube presentation, is not to reveal to Google personal purchasing information, nor reveal to merchants, personal profile information. No personal financial data or purchasing information is supposedly transmitted. The problem with this kind of technology is that it is really difficult to explain to the public, and easily demagogued.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    My question is... how is that supposed to work? How do they turn "person A's credit card account" and "person A's Google account" into something comparable. To say "X customers saw the ad and then purchased it", you've gotta be able to be able to confirm that the same person is on both sides of the dataset, which is a pretty hard problem even without it allegedly not sharing the info on one side with Google. I guess this complaint from this article is asking the FTC to get more information on this process, or get Google to explain how it works, or something. Upvote for the explanation.

CivilianZero 9y ago

Try as I might, I just can't be bothered to care if someone wants to know what I've been buying so they can show me advertisements relevant to my interests. But I'm weird, I don't think advertising is inherently evil or annoying.

QAPereo 9y ago
Inherently evil and annoying? No, but in practice it's annoying and online at least, potentially problematic on other levels as well such as security and performance. Telemarketing isn't inherently evil and annoying either, but it's become a playground for scammers with robocalls and constantly shifting spoofed numbers. That, maybe, should tell you something about the nature of the medium, or at least the nature of the medium when it's being exploited by a broad population.
- CivilianZero 9y ago
  I think telemarketing is annoying, it's also intrusive and requires effort on my part. Passive advertisement on the internet does not. Note I am not saying there are not annoying advertisements, but that's an issue of implementation, not the concept of targeted advertising. If anything, Google would know I will never click on an annoying ad if they "invaded my privacy" more than they do now.
robteix 9y ago
To be honest, I don't either. But the data is still there. You don't know if in ten years Google is going to start losing money and is forced (by its shareholders) to find alternative means of monetization. You can't really say Google is perfectly secure and will never ever ever be hacked and leak your data either. Maybe it will never happen, maybe it will. Therefore I believe I should have the right to say "hey, I don't want this private corporation to have my credit info".
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Or potentially worse, if they're compromised/hacked in some way and that data simply enters the wild ecosystem.

Piccollo 9y ago

The older we get, the less fks we give about privacy.

the_common_man 9y ago

> Google called its advertising approach "common" Tragedy of the commons. At this point in time, any and all forms of data collection have become common. When I visit a website, I expect them to collect everything about me - my IP, my mouse movements, what I clicked, how long I took to click it. Just a matter of time, that they start tracking audio and visual cues as well. It's unthinkable today but we will get there. It will enter slowly in the form of alexa and google home. then a browser plugin. Then a browser integration. Then a web api. And to cap it all, everyone will claim how it's made their life better.

whytaka 9y ago
I wonder if you're using the term as a poetic device, but as far as I know that's not what Tragedy of the Commons means. Commons are properties without private owners. The tragedy is that because no one individual owns it, the people that use it use it without care to its maintenance believing that it is not their responsibility.
- CardenB 9y ago
  This is still sort of the same thing. The blame can't be pinned on one single entity because it is so common.
cbr 9y ago
start tracking audio and visual cues as well Do you mean microphone and camera, or something else? (If you do mean mic/camera, sites can't access those without prompting the browser to show a permissions dialog and you clicking "ok".)
- waqf 9y ago
  How fortunate, then, that browsers never have security bugs.
drusepth 9y ago
>And to cap it all, everyone will claim how it's made their life better. You don't think it actually _will_ make some people's lives better? Do you think those people are being tricked into thinking their life is being improved? Or do you just think the downsides just outweigh those improvements?

jgalt212 9y ago

> To do this, Google said it had obtained access to the credit and debit card records of 70 percent of U.S. consumers. After reading the initial article in May, I called American Express and they swore up and own they don't sell my purchased data. I don't see how you get above 70% without data from American Express. So who's lying?

davidcbc 9y ago
American Express has a pretty small market share (7.5%) https://wallethub.com/edu/market-share-by-credit-card-network/25531/ https://wallethub.com/edu/market-share-by-credit-card-networ...
- jgalt212 9y ago
  Am I reading it wrong? The chart makes it look like Amex has 23%.
  - davidcbc 9y ago
    I'm referring to the cards in circulation number. The original claim was about a percentage of consumers, not a percentage of transactions so to me that is the more relevant number. Either way, 100% - 23% = 77% which is > than 70% so the point stands. Visa + Mastercard alone are over 70% using the purchase volume numbers
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Yeah, when Google said "over 70%", I basically just figured "Okay, so they have Mastercard and Visa." Amex and Discover are both tiny comparatively.
  - stordoff 9y ago
    Which means that 70% is possible without AmEx? I'd also wonder about how the numbers are computed - you can get incomplete records on a high percentage of consumers without the AmEx data as (people with AmEx) and (people with other card(s)) aren't disjoint sets.

code_duck 9y ago

I see ads on facebook related to purchases I make with a specific credit card. I have no indication which party is supplying this info to whom and how they made the connection to my facebook account.

EGO_DEATH 9y ago

Privacy centric Cryptocurrencies is the solution rearing it's head. Zcash. Btc.

simlevesque 9y ago

WaPo has the same power: they know what customers buy. They're owned by Bezos which owns Amazon. How are they different ? Why would Google's data be more prone to hacking than Amazon's ? This article is pretty hypocritical.

idlewords 9y ago
Bezos owns the Washington Post, but as far as I know there's no connection to Amazon or integration with Amazon. He owns it as an individual. Publishers in general have very little visibility into user behavior, since they rely on third-party tracking tools and third-party ad engines.
- vitus 9y ago
  For about 8 months (Dec 2015 to the end of July 2016) I got daily emails from Amazon with free articles from the Washington Post. Information on this is sparse, so I don't know why it started or stopped. Prime members also get a free six-month trial period, followed by a discount on a subscription -- $3.99 / month [0], as opposed to the standard $10 / 4 weeks (or $99/year) [1]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072MHQFJ1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072MHQFJ1 [1] https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com/ https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com/

Oletros 9y ago

Good, but it would be better if they ask what kind of data is sold to any party

sounders 9y ago

Credit card companies and retailers have sold anonymized purchasing data for years to help companies analyze online ad clicks to offline spend. Auto companies have used Polk vehicle registration data and data aggregators to match a vehicle purchase to the user's online ad clicks. They compare how showing ads for certain models influences your car purchase (ex. Honda CRV) from your initial search (best family sedan) and demographic info (FB data indicates you are an avid runner, 2 kids, 1 dog, etc..). Retailers employ a similar model for basket size. There are partners like Oracle Data Cloud, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Neustar and LiveRamp (ex. IdentityLink http://identity.liveramp.com http://identity.liveramp.com) that provide similar data for O2O measurement.

nibstwo 9y ago

One philosophical question I have been wondering recently is whether this problem could not be addressed by removing "real life" identity from the equation. I don't think personalized ads would be nearly as obnoxious if I knew that the ad matches my browsing history but has nothing to do what name shows up on my passport. Most of what people seem to take issue with is their personal identity in addition to the tracking. The tracking for the purposes of relevant ads would be identical from the perspective of the advertiser (efficient/profitable) but much more private for the user.

cgb223 9y ago

It's kind of ironic that a news paper owned by Amazon's CEO is publishing articles about Google violating customers privacy Not that it's not a valid complaint, just interesting