Google Now Tracks Your Credit Card Purchases and Connects Them to Its Online Profile

[Deleted]

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...rofile-of-you/

The search giant wants to know how online ads translate into offline sales, but says it is taking steps to ensure users’ privacy isn’t breached.

Google’s new ability to match people’s offline credit card purchases to their online lives is a stunning display of surveillance capitalism in action.

The capability, which Google unveiled this week, allows the company to connect the dots between the ads that it shows its users and what they end up actually buying. This is a crucial link for Google’s business that, for all of the company’s inventiveness, remains a matter of attracting users to its predominantly free services, collecting user data, and leveraging that data to sell advertising. If Google can show that someone who saw an ad for a furniture store in Google Maps, say, then went and made a big purchase at that store, the store’s owner is much more likely to run more ads.

Of course, Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.

So, if you buy stuff with a card, there’s a less than one-in-three chance that Google doesn’t know about it.

Google has talked a bit about the lengths it goes to in order to preserve user privacy. A piece in the Washington Post on the new service has the following:

Google executives say they are using complex, patent-pending mathematical formulas to protect the privacy of consumers when they match a Google user with a shopper who makes a purchase in a brick-and-mortar store.

The mathematical formulas convert people’s names and other purchase information, including the time stamp, location, and the amount of the purchase, into anonymous strings of numbers. The formulas make it impossible for Google to know the identity of the real-world shoppers, and for the retailers to know the identities of Google’s users, said company executives, who called the process “double-blind” encryption.

The companies know only that a certain number of matches have been made. In addition, Google does not know what products people bought.

Beyond that, us regular folks pretty much have to take it on faith that this system works. Given how few “anonymous” data points are required to identify an individual from credit card data, it’s hard to believe that linking people’s behavior on services as diverse as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and others to offline buying habits couldn’t result in someone’s privacy being compromised, especially if it ever fell into the hands of hackers.

But let’s not single Google out. For one thing, we users do willingly hand our personal data over to Google—that’s part of the service agreement (whether we have consented to let credit card companies hand our purchase records over in this way is potentially another matter). And for another, Google isn’t alone: Facebook is engaged in essentially the same practice of marrying online information with our offline lives.

So, you know, everyone’s doing it.

[P for Pancetta]

These companies should take a good look at themselves. They make a huge profit off peoples back but refuse to take any responsibility for their products and the massive amounts of racist non-sense and bullshit being plastered all over their products. The only reason they can make so much money is because they do not take the responsibility to run their platforms properly, because that would cost to much.

[Deleted]

More concerned about them holding my medical data.

[callipygoustp]

I want to be outraged, my 1990s self is certainly very outraged, but given the amount of information people already freely give over via their internet provider, cell phone service provider, cell phone apps, internet browsers, and credit card history, I cannot.

[bladeXcrasher]

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-W.../dp/081298160X

I suggest you read more, this isn't exactly new and refreshing.

[Collegeguy]

I saw a while back that google Chrome tries to save credit card data into the browser itself or with the browser?

Not sure but that seemed more troublesome than this.

[Tic Tacs]

I think people don't fully appreciate the importance of privacy over security.

[Acidbaron]

I assume google does this regardless of the user location, i'm fairly certain this is in breach with a few EU privacy laws.

[Independent voter]

Your ISP knows everything about your internet life.

[Allybeboba]

Online purchases have been tracked for a long long time. Everything you do online is tracked by marketers.
If you have a Facebook account you sold your soul to them because they sell you information to other people.

[Sunseeker]

I saw a while back that google Chrome tries to save credit card data into the browser itself or with the browser?

Not sure but that seemed more troublesome than this.

When you fill out any form, Google Chome will often give you the option to save that data as part of it's auto-fill function. It is generally able to recognize places where you enter your card information and yes, it has asked me before if I want to save it (Google Wallet I think?) to Google. I always tell it "no".

[Fencers]

I feel privacy is largely over to be honest. To be honest, I am not too caught up in Google knowing what brand of underwear I bought or where I get my morning coffee.

[Frolk]

Your ISP knows everything about your internet life.

I wonder how many watchlists ive gotten myself onto if they know everything about my internet life ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Puupi]

I feel privacy is largely over to be honest. To be honest, I am not too caught up in Google knowing what brand of underwear I bought or where I get my morning coffee.

Google already knows what kind of porn I watch and what kind of things I search with their search engine.

They could grab me by the balls any second.

[Deleted]

Quite handy feature tbh

[Venarik]

I've noticed this for a while, after going to the store the ads I see will be for things I just bought.

I don't really see the harm in it, and at this point it feels like it'd be more effort to get them to stop doing this sort of thing than it's worth.

[Puupi]

How the hell is it legal for companies to sell credit card purchase history data to other companies?

[Fencers]

Honestly, I don't think there was that much true privacy to begin with.

In my dad's day I think there was a measure of privacy. When my grandpas were born, they didn't even have birth certificates.

We had to try to find eyewitnesses for one of my grandpa's birth because he had always no records in his name. Actually the few records in his name were wrong- they were for his brother.

[Serpha]

People say get used to it like they say get used to terrorist attacks...how about big NO!!!
Don't use google, chrome, use vpn and extensions that protect your privacy.

[Puupi]

Honestly, I don't think there was that much true privacy to begin with.

It's rather terrifying that with the internet of things and all this surveillance we aren't quite far from the dialogue of "'is it in yet?' you ask in the bedroom, 'yes' the toaster shouts from the kitchen" being reality.