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Google Bought Mastercard Data To Link Online Ads To Store Purchases, Says Report (bloomberg.com)
According to Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the deal, Google purchased "a stockpile of Mastercard transactions" that allowed Google advertisers to see whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. This arrangement was never shared with the public. From the report: Alphabet's Google and Mastercard brokered a business partnership during about four years of negotiations. The alliance gave Google an unprecedented asset for measuring retail spending, part of the search giant's strategy to fortify its primary business against onslaughts from Amazon and others. But the deal, which has not been previously reported, could raise broader privacy concerns about how much consumer data technology companies like Google quietly absorb.
Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars for the data [...] and the companies discussed sharing a portion of the ad revenue. A spokeswoman for Google said there is no revenue sharing agreement with its partners. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the partnership with Mastercard, but addressed the ads tool. "Before we launched this beta product last year, we built a new, double-blind encryption technology that prevents both Google and our partners from viewing our respective users' personally identifiable information," the company said in a statement. "We do not have access to any personal information from our partners' credit and debit cards, nor do we share any personal information with our partners." The company said people can opt out of ad tracking using Google's "Web and App Activity" online console. Inside Google, multiple people raised objections that the service did not have a more obvious way for cardholders to opt out of the tracking.
Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars for the data [...] and the companies discussed sharing a portion of the ad revenue. A spokeswoman for Google said there is no revenue sharing agreement with its partners. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the partnership with Mastercard, but addressed the ads tool. "Before we launched this beta product last year, we built a new, double-blind encryption technology that prevents both Google and our partners from viewing our respective users' personally identifiable information," the company said in a statement. "We do not have access to any personal information from our partners' credit and debit cards, nor do we share any personal information with our partners." The company said people can opt out of ad tracking using Google's "Web and App Activity" online console. Inside Google, multiple people raised objections that the service did not have a more obvious way for cardholders to opt out of the tracking.
It should always be assumed that Google is spying on anything they can, that they will lie about it when feasible, and that they have no shame in doing so. This is not new. It's up to you to protect yourself.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
get a SWAT team storming into your living room.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police-terrorism-pressure-cooker
In Europe selling transaction details to Google would be illegal for credit card companies, and for around 20 years. The USA is behind on consumer protection if it does not have similar laws in place.