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Apple Patents Bank Account Balance Snooping Tech
An anonymous reader writes: Apple's latest patent filings shows that the company is looking into displaying advertising based on your available bank balance. If Apple moves forward with this type of technology it would be a complete 360 on its previous direction to not monetize everything they know about customers. Tim Cook has even said multiple times that companies are targeting consumers on multiple fronts and that he's completely against using customer information in this manner and it's not the kind of company he wants Apple to be.
Seriously.
So they are back to where they started?
I read it not as reading your bank account, but as having access to your prepaid credit for the phone bill. Isn't that already a feature accessible for prepaid phone ? I may have misread naturally.
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There are multiple reasons why one wants to obtain a patent, including denying competitors use.
Read the actual patent, it's talking about available credit, not your actual bank balance. The only times banks are mentioned is in reference to them being a potential source of credit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
On the other hand, if Apple has a patent on this, it would prevent others from doing it. But what we really ought to do is just find a patent troll and only give them patents for things like this that are corporate-grade jackassary and turn them loose. We can even situate them in Texas for maximum effectiveness.
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That's a fair point. It very much feels like patent abuse to obtain if the sole purpose is to deny the technique to competitors but this is the good that comes with the bad of having such lax patent awarding requirements.
OMG facts!
From my perspective, there isn't anything truly innovative here. It's more like a business process that shouldn't be patentable. Banks already do some of this within their environments with targeted programs based on their customer's level of credit worthiness.
What's so different between the banks and Apple? Whereas banks only do it based on certain marketing programs, Apple would/could be doing it at a transaction level instead. That being said, they are very similar in concepts.
I think the bigger question is why can this be a patent?
From a high-level perspective, it's just a bunch of APIs that are integrated together to get the job done. Put in another way, if someone decides to integrate a set of APIs together, can that be patentable? Should we start to have a patent lawyer on speed-dial if we link different APIs together? Maybe we need to submit patent applications for our new API mashups before someone else or a corporation does it.
That's a fair point. It very much feels like patent abuse to obtain if the sole purpose is to deny the technique to competitors ...
Pardon me for being Captain Obvious here, but that is exactly what patents are intended to do! Patent confers intellectual property rights to the patent holder. What that patent holder chooses to (legally) do with those rights is completely up to the holder.
Haven't you ever heard the conspiracy theories about stuff like Goodyear buying the patent for a 100,000 mile tire? Or GM buying the patent for a 100 mpg car? Or the best yet, the Gubment buying patents to keep technologies out of the private sector?
Remember, before you say "pshaw!", I did qualify all of these as "conspiracy theories." The best conspiracy theory is one that is unprovable, yaknow.
Oh, and I do agree with your conclusion. Apple could be trying to keep this out of the hands of other "less ethical" companies (you know, ones that do no evil...)
That means other companies can't use this "technology".
Why is it even idea even patentable? It invents nothing.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
"he's completely against using customer information in this manner and its not the kind of company he wants Apple to be."
But not against patenting it and selling the license to others to use.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
how in the world can one get a patent on something like this......... this really shows how broken the patent system is.. But then again, Apple has given a lot of money to the patentofficers to get their patents approved...
You do know Apple also has their own Ad agency right? That on iOS you HAVE to use their Ad agency to put ads in your apps. They are already selling your info and have been for a long time.
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For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Maybe the companies will start sending me money!
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hmm.. the spiral stair case problem... I guess that is what we can call it.
What makes Apple think it would be any of their damned business what my available credit balance is?
Well, technically he has. There used to be an ice cream shop right on base. It sold burgers and shakes and stuff too. It was named Guantanamo. He shut it down and now the servicemen have to go into Cuba proper in order to get ice cream. That is why normalizing relations with Cuba was so damn important.
disenfranchising people of their own power to decide for themselves.
The decisions are already made _for_ people what to look, get offered and is "good" for THEM instead of allowing the individuals it themselves from a choice based on their own unique criteria on an unbiased search tool.
Wishful thinking, sure....
One example I came across recently in justifying the removal of Android App Ops quoting restaurant search and GPS location to serve the right result in one's area.
Total hogwash! If one wants a restaurant close by, one would type in "Greek restaurant" near - no GPS location for any search app would be needed.
Enabling the GPS location will allow other factors outside of the individual to influence the result.
What tis this Apple-Shit doing with one's bank balance info? Modifying based on criteria totally outside of one's control, creating and storing more complex data about one, for what?
Creating a totally hypnotized society since this reality is eaten with cell-web access nowadays from early childhood on without any critical thinking ability.
Welcome to the automaton anthill under construction!
There's a difference between 'having their own Ad agency' and 'selling information'. Do you have anything to back up your claim that the Apple Ad agency is selling data?
it is based on your CREDIT (which anyone can check) not *bank account balance*, which if the bank is doing its job is not possible to snoop. Typical attention whore headline.
Ok mod me to oblivion
IIRC, too many credit checks can impact a credit score; so what happens if an app checks it repeatedly to serve up adds? Not saying Apple will do this, but that could be a potentially problematic downside if someone's credit score goes down and result sin denied credit o higher interest rates.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It has the magic words 'on a computer'?
If you look at the Visio diagram in the patent document you'll see.
lucm, indeed.
the patent is for available credit, not bank account balance.
I thought if you were to query "available credit" on a debit card, you'd get the balance of the checking account it draws from.
Haven't you ever heard the conspiracy theories about stuff like Goodyear buying the patent for a 100,000 mile tire? Or GM buying the patent for a 100 mpg car?
How old are those theories? If they're more than 20 years old, then they should be running into one key difference between patents and copyrights: Unlike copyrights, patents expire.
The patent says that data could be sold. It's a substantial leap to say that Apple is currently selling data (independent of this patent.)
So is anybody still buying Apple products here? I never have and never will.
IIRC, too many credit checks can impact a credit score
A credit check can be a "soft inquiry" or a "hard inquiry". Pulling your own credit report through a service like Annual Credit Report, Credit Karma, or Discover FICO is a soft inquiry, as is a lender sending you a "pre-selected" offer. They do not affect credit score. A hard inquiry happens when you've already applied for a loan and the bank is making a final decision on whether to lend. Though hard inquiries spread out over the course of several months indicate a risky borrower who overrelies on credit, multiple hard inquiries for a secured loan within two weeks are scored as one inquiry because they indicate shopping around.
FRAND says 'Hi!'. Not all patents are allowed to be unilaterally controlled by their holders.
Good-bye
Big Brother is not the government but just a Harvard MBA.
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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Do you have anything to back up your claim that the Apple Ad agency is selling data?
Do you have anything to back up your claim that Google is selling data?
This is actually a real question--not entirely facetious.
It's my understanding that Google doesn't sell your data--it's actually pretty valuable stuff. They sell access to you, much like Apple does with iAd.
Because unlike Google, Apple has promised not to sell my info to advertisers.
Both Apple and Google don't sell eyeballs. They rent them out. That is far more lucrative that way.
Who gave them the right to view my bank account balance?
Probably will be hidden in one of their EULA's.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Would be by me using Apple Pay. So, what's in your iPhone?