Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Is Testing a Program That Tracks Your Purchases In the Real World

Posted by samzenpus on from the show-us-what-your-bought dept.

cold fjord writes "Business Insider reports, Google is beta-testing a program that tracks users' purchasing habits by registering brick-and-mortar store visits via smartphones, according to a report from Digiday. Google can access user data via Android apps or their Apple iOS apps, like Google search, Gmail, Chrome, or Google Maps. If a customer is using these apps while he shops or has them still running in the background, Google's new program pinpoints the origin of the user data and determines if the customer is in a place of business."

11 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Misleading title... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nowhere in the article does it say it can track what you buy, there's no way an app can track purchases you made outside of your phone unless it's somehow linked to your bank/credit card account... this is just to track where you were. Basically, Google is stalking you, nothing new there.

    1. Re:Misleading title... by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Nope, only the credit card companies do that...

      Why do you think the big push was made to give everyone a VISA or MC debit card? It provides the banks with an incredible amount of information about you that they can then sell.

      Given that my debt cards pay me rewards and I pay them nothing, frankly I don't mind, it isn't like my trips to Walmart are secret or anything.

      Another reason why Google should want their Wallet to become used everywhere. Imagine the treasure trove of information if they don't even have to get into the V/MC business, yet can see "everything" you buy because you use your phone as a wallet.

      Frankly, for them to have that much information about me, I'd like the phone for free. :)

  2. Dear Slashdot... by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you still think Google is trying to stop the NSA from spying on you, when they are gathering the exact same information, and unlike the NSA, don't have any rules restricting their use.

    When will we stop saying who can and cannot spy on us and steal our personal information, and start saying that the answer is nobody. Whether you're the NSA, or you're Google, you are evil. The end.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Dear Slashdot... by vidnet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You:

      they are gathering the exact same information, and unlike the NSA, don't have any rules restricting their use

      The article:

      Google gets permission to do this kind of tracking when Android users opt in

      Do you really not see a difference between an experimental, opt-in location system and an international, clandestine spy program?

    2. Re:Dear Slashdot... by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or you can not use any Google products. Gmail, google maps, search etc are free so that they can advertise to you and collect data on you.

      Funny story. In the early 90s a new network started being used regularily by hundreds of colleges, science labs, and educational facilities. It had been built up for military purposes as an experiment, but after building a new one, the military turned it over to the academic community. It was a global network, massively redundant, and was initially used to exchange files and e-mail. Researchers quickly developed some simple protocols to allow anyone on the network to exchange information freely with anyone else on the network. A need arose to catalog and organize the rapidly increasing number of nodes on this network, and the information just started pouring in. That network... was called the internet.

      It's original inventors hoped that this free and equal peer-based network they had built would be used to share human knowledge across cultures around the world, bringing together millions, and now billions, of people together. They never asked for money. They didn't believe in advertising revenue to support it... the people who built and maintained the network did so not out of greed, or desire for wealth, but because they genuinely believed in one of the foundational principles of science:

      Knowledge should be free.

      I know today it's just a historical footnote, that greed and the desire for wealth has created not one, but seven of the largest companies on the planet, whose sole business plans are to exploit the free exchange of information by putting up artificial barriers and charging for access to things, while spying on us and abusing the data flow... and that today, we just accept this.

      But those of us that built the network remember there are other motivations than greed... some of us still build things for others, because we want them to be free. Because we want them to have knowledge, and information -- because we understood, instinctively, that the biggest advances of the 21st century wasn't going to be in science or technology, but in an expanding concept of what it means to be human. We couldn't put it into those words, not then, but we knew it would be important that this resource remain free and open to all -- that the fastest route to human growth, worldwide, everyone, everywhere, would mean making sure knowledge was equally available. Because knowledge is power... and we knew, from tens of thousands of years of human history, that when you try to hold onto knowledge, to power, it corrupts you. It destroys you. It sucks your soul right out and pours in a neverending need for more... more what? More everything.

      And so those of us who were around back then recognize Google, and the NSA, and all these other organizations and governments for what they are: An unnatural restriction on the potential of the human race. They're strangling us with their greed. They're creating the next Dark Age... because the power imbalance between the information-rich and the information-poor is growing, exponentially. And Google is one of the central players.

      Google... is evil.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    3. Re:Dear Slashdot... by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it's not a footnote - it's a fairy tale. (Well, I guess legends and other fiction could appear in a footnote...)

      "In the earliest days, this was a project I worked on with great passion because I wanted to solve the Defense Department's problem: it did not want proprietary networking and it didn't want to be confined to a single network technology."
      -- Vinton Cerf

      "It's difficult to imagine the power that you're going to have when so many different sorts of data are available."
      -- Tim Berners-Lee

      "My goal wasn't to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers."
      -- Steve Wozniak

      "Artists usually don't make all that much money, and they often keep their artistic hobby despite the money rather than due to it."
      -- Linus Torvalds

      Shall I continue, or is it sufficiently obvious how wrong you are?

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  3. Why not just provide a "Tracking App" by guanxi · · Score: 3

    Why all this subterfuge? Why not just include an app called "Tracking App" on every Android phone, and include it with every iPhone download?

    If Google is right and the tracking is legitimate, what do they have to hide? Consumers will welcome it. If they (and all the other businesses and governments that track you) feel a need to keep it under the radar, then there must be a reason for that.

    1. Re:Why not just provide a "Tracking App" by faedle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny, I was aware that's exactly what was going on when I turned on the Android feature that sends location data to Google. They don't exactly hide it, either, which is why I'm wondering why this story is even news. When you "check-in" or somesuch, it's doing right what it says on the tin.

      This just in: Water is wet, dogs sometimes bite, and Comcast customer service sucks.

    2. Re:Why not just provide a "Tracking App" by feral-troll · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny, I was aware that's exactly what was going on when I turned on the Android feature that sends location data to Google. They don't exactly hide it, either, which is why I'm wondering why this story is even news. When you "check-in" or somesuch, it's doing right what it says on the tin.

      This just in: Water is wet, dogs sometimes bite, and Comcast customer service sucks.

      Funny, when I tell the average consumer that when they use Google Maps it streams information about their movements back to Google who archives that data and sells it, most of them are surprised. When you tell them that Google, Facebook, et al. track their browsing habits even when they are not logged in to those services... same reaction. You may be perfectly aware of the parasitic relationship you are getting into with Google but the average consumer is not, hence the outrage over the NSA surveillance. When the shitstorm over that dies down the media might just turn the spotlight on Google, Facebook et al. and people will be just as creeped out.

  4. Re:I for one welcome my Google overlords, by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Big Brother is here, and he's a Capitalist Tyrant.

    Isn't it terribly inconvenient how market research data, which is so commercially useful that companies collect it out of self interest, technological transaction data, which are necessary to do things like route packets, packages, and phone calls, and the data that would be of interest to a surveillance state are so very similar?

    That's really why capitalism has such a bright future as a surveillance dystopia. Anybody with enough cash can hire thugs and informants; but can your commie, or your fascist, operate a comprehensive network of informants at a profit, rather than as a massive drain on the consumer economy that might keep the mobs at bay? Anyone with enough thugs and informants can make tracking collars mandatory; but can they make wearers lovingly recharge them nightly, and pay for customized ringtones?

    Could even Big Brother get Winston to rack up some credit card debt to finance a 50" HD telescreen, out of a desire to consume premium content in greater comfort and luxury than his lesser neighbors? Bah. Amateurs, the lot of them.

  5. Re:why bother? by faedle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's the glory of what they're doing. They CAN make money off of you knowing that you bought work clothes at Goodwill and a sandwich at Char-hut. If you can't figure out how, you don't completely understand what they're actually doing.