Google Ad Sense is one thing....Obama Ad Sense..might be another...
Posted on 03/02/2014 6:00:40 AM PST by Vigilanteman
Giant Eagle won't say much about the information it collects on people who enroll in its rewards program to earn savings on food and fuel, but it knows who has a weakness for Goldfish crackers.
GNC can see when your New Year's resolution ended. And Dick's Sporting Goods has a pretty good idea who will return to its stores this spring to gear up for baseball or softball season.
Consumers willingly — if unwittingly — provide trillions of “data points” to companies about their purchases, intimate habits and even where a computer mouse hovers on a computer screen without clicking. Americans worried about government spying often have themselves to blame when it comes to private-sector monitoring, experts said.
Yes, the government has a lot of information about us, IBM Senior Vice President Jon Iwata said during a Yale University symposium this year, but so do Target, the phone company and a lot of other businesses.
“What bothers people is that you are no longer anonymous, potentially, because you can be easily identified based on all the information that's out there,” Ravi Dhar, director of Yale's Center for Customer Insights, told the Tribune-Review. “I think maybe it goes to something more fundamental: People feel they aren't in control anymore.”
(Excerpt) Read more at triblive.com ...
There is none.
Start with the motivation. Giant Eagle wants your data for the reason of selling you something else which you may freely choose or choose not to buy.
Government wants your data for far more sinister reasons ranging from denial of medical care, raising your taxes or something far worse.
Plus you are free to shop at Giant Eagle or, for that matter, take your business to Wal-Mart or Sav-a-Lot or anywhere else, without even signing up for or using a perks card. Sure, you won't get the gas points or the cents off a fruit cup or whatever, but try denying information to the government and see what happens.
You can end up with a massive fine, incarceration or even dead.
“What bothers me about this article is the “moral equivalency” tone between companies collecting your data and the government collecting your data.”
Exactly, Target hasn’t threatened my freedom.
Exactly, the writer is either stupid or intentionally dishonest.
The article exposes corporate data collection. This information is available to the government, perhaps freely, as has been proved with the telecom companies. The author doesn't even address the parallels between retailer data and telecom data.
Even though most users hide the details of their lives from all but friends or maybe themselves, Fitbit collects and keeps every piece of information. The company did not respond to Trib questions.
Companies don't like to talk about surveillance of shoppers because they fear consumer backlash. GNC, Dick's and other companies declined to comment for this story.
They don't want to discuss it. Gee, really?? /s
The 'tone' that alarms me is the increasing move to collect more data with the argument that the public want it, can be better served by it and that it's innocuous.
Governments and businesses can use aggregate data to make important decisions, such as how to intervene to prevent Type 2 diabetes, said Chris Kasabach, one of BodyMedia's founders.
“We're essentially beacons endlessly giving off information,” he said. “All of these signals can be collected, providing rich contextual information about what's really going on in the lives of individuals or populations.”The article started off as an 'alarm' piece over data privacy and closed saying 'it's ok...we're here to help you'.
This was a horribly-written piece of crap that muted its own message, which should have been how to avoid padding profits of large corporations in exchange for paltry pennies in discounts and that 'a database is a database'; opt in or opt out. Many have stated here they don't buy ammo on credit: Why? (rhetorical question...the answer is obvious)
It's this same sort of corporate thinking that's leading to 'Smart Meters' to potentially throttle your electricity.
I don't participate; no 'rewards', no 'in-store credit cards', no 'clubs', no 'paypal'. But I am in the minority.
.02
All I get whenever I'm using my open browser is ad after ad on like-items I searched for 'weeks prior'.
Companies that pay good $$ to Google for these services are fools. Analytics are one thing; the rotating ads based on cookies & searches are laughable.
Then again, maybe it's because I 'opt-out' of all the data metrics that would improve their services (I could care less).
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...
If everyone jumped off a cliff, so would you. What an idiot.
Vigilanteman’s words are exactly correct. Unfortunately, being thoughtful and using common sense is out of style these days
You can mute this to a large degree by:
I just use the open browser when I don’t care...a conscious choice. Likewise CCs.
Didn’t know about ‘Ghostery’; not sure how I missed them. I appreciate it.
Nobody has to use point cards. That’s a free choice right there. I’m offered the cards all the time, never use them.
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