Post by Eλευθερί on Nov 3, 2018 0:14:20 GMT
When you go to the department store or your nearby pharmacy, don’t be surprised if they know who you are and are tracking you.
Maybe you're gazing at the shoe aisle inside Macy’s, and then the system spots you and immediately sends a shoe coupon to your phone....
Joseph Turow: We call it discounts, but it really is changing the price. So you may be in front of a diaper area, and the history of your purchases may be with another kind of diaper, and the diaper company that wants to get you might say, “Hey, we're going to give this person a lower price because they have three kids, live in an upscale area and they're gonna be good customers down the line.” Some people may get higher prices because they think, based upon their history, that they could stand paying higher prices....
Companies that are tracking you all range from Target, to Alex and Ani, to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's even testing doing it, from what I've read in the trades, with lighting systems. Lighting systems will connect with the camera in your phone as a way to track you. There are other stores that do it. Macy's is really big into it....
One thing that a person talked about in a meeting I was at was he feels that by about 2028, half of Americans will have implants in their bodies — in their arms, for example, so that when they walk through a store, they will be telling the store how they feel about the products they lift up....
The key is that it's a discrimination that is totally behind the scenes. Even when companies say they will tell you what they know about you, they only tell you little bits. And they don't tell you how they connect it and they don't tell you to whom they sell it. They don't tell you where they buy it from....
People are now getting mortgages based upon whether their friends pay back their mortgages and what graduate schools they went to. Now that may help a few people. It can hurt very many people. And again, much of this stuff is going on behind the scenes.
Maybe you're gazing at the shoe aisle inside Macy’s, and then the system spots you and immediately sends a shoe coupon to your phone....
Joseph Turow: We call it discounts, but it really is changing the price. So you may be in front of a diaper area, and the history of your purchases may be with another kind of diaper, and the diaper company that wants to get you might say, “Hey, we're going to give this person a lower price because they have three kids, live in an upscale area and they're gonna be good customers down the line.” Some people may get higher prices because they think, based upon their history, that they could stand paying higher prices....
Companies that are tracking you all range from Target, to Alex and Ani, to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's even testing doing it, from what I've read in the trades, with lighting systems. Lighting systems will connect with the camera in your phone as a way to track you. There are other stores that do it. Macy's is really big into it....
One thing that a person talked about in a meeting I was at was he feels that by about 2028, half of Americans will have implants in their bodies — in their arms, for example, so that when they walk through a store, they will be telling the store how they feel about the products they lift up....
The key is that it's a discrimination that is totally behind the scenes. Even when companies say they will tell you what they know about you, they only tell you little bits. And they don't tell you how they connect it and they don't tell you to whom they sell it. They don't tell you where they buy it from....
People are now getting mortgages based upon whether their friends pay back their mortgages and what graduate schools they went to. Now that may help a few people. It can hurt very many people. And again, much of this stuff is going on behind the scenes.
the IRS [US Internal Revenue Service--the federal government tax collection agency] may not have a whole lot of money or manpower, but it has a gold mine of data on you. A lot of it from... well... you....
Those fancy vacation photos you posted on Instagram? The Facebook status update about your new car? The tweets about your wildly successful side business?
All fair game for the IRS....
"If Nike is analyzing my information, the worst consequence is that they market stuff to me that I don’t want and it’s annoying," says [Behnam Dayanim, co-chair of the privacy and data practice at Paul Hastings]. "If the government does it, the worst consequence is there could be legal ramifications, whether it’s fines, penalties or imprisonment."
Those fancy vacation photos you posted on Instagram? The Facebook status update about your new car? The tweets about your wildly successful side business?
All fair game for the IRS....
"If Nike is analyzing my information, the worst consequence is that they market stuff to me that I don’t want and it’s annoying," says [Behnam Dayanim, co-chair of the privacy and data practice at Paul Hastings]. "If the government does it, the worst consequence is there could be legal ramifications, whether it’s fines, penalties or imprisonment."
Back in 2010, Stacey Vanek Smith got her data mined. Has the industry evolved [in 2013]?
One big change is the dramatic rise of data-profiling companies....
Using just her name, [Stephen Cobb of ESET, an online security company] set off on a kind of data scavenger hunt … to build a profile.
"I know when your birthday is, so I know you're 30-something," he told Stacey. "I had the building you’re in the unit that you’re in ... Then I looked into what you do online." ...
And it got creepier. Cobb was able to develop "a detailed map of who your friends are that you hang out with more often ... I know you like eating at the In-N-Out Burger you like Imogen Heap."
That information did not come up in 2010. But there’s a lot more data out there now and data profilers can now cross reference their data with data from other profilers, like Acxiom, one of the giants. Acxiom has slotted us all into one of 70 consumer groups -- Stacey is classified as a 'Middling Single.'
Cobb says Middling Singles are characterized by being "Markedly single, childless and urban...As residents of the nation’s biggest cities, this group enjoys a rich cultural existence. And you mix an extensive amount of travel, museum visits and the arts with bar hopping and dancing.
Data profiling is already a $30 billion-a-year business and it's growing fast.
One big change is the dramatic rise of data-profiling companies....
Using just her name, [Stephen Cobb of ESET, an online security company] set off on a kind of data scavenger hunt … to build a profile.
"I know when your birthday is, so I know you're 30-something," he told Stacey. "I had the building you’re in the unit that you’re in ... Then I looked into what you do online." ...
And it got creepier. Cobb was able to develop "a detailed map of who your friends are that you hang out with more often ... I know you like eating at the In-N-Out Burger you like Imogen Heap."
That information did not come up in 2010. But there’s a lot more data out there now and data profilers can now cross reference their data with data from other profilers, like Acxiom, one of the giants. Acxiom has slotted us all into one of 70 consumer groups -- Stacey is classified as a 'Middling Single.'
Cobb says Middling Singles are characterized by being "Markedly single, childless and urban...As residents of the nation’s biggest cities, this group enjoys a rich cultural existence. And you mix an extensive amount of travel, museum visits and the arts with bar hopping and dancing.
Data profiling is already a $30 billion-a-year business and it's growing fast.
Also linked to your Guest ID [at a retailer like the Target corporation] is demographic information like your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit. Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars you own....
As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy....
About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.
“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?” ...
On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”
As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy....
About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.
“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?” ...
On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”
emphasis added