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.

Comments

Whew

[TimMD909]

I use Visa only. Thankfully, I can rest easy knowing that'd never happen with anything but Mastercard. /s

Mastercard story or Google story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the story here that *MASTERCARD* sells all your financial transaction data around the world to lots of companies (think Cambridge Analytics etc.), or that Google buys them?

It seems to be a Mastercard story dressed up as a Google one.

Financial transactions should be covered by the same level of privacy as banking transactions, which would make this illegal to sell that data in EU, and it use to be USA had similar laws.

But given that they're selling the data, can we buy Trump/Trump family/Trump company/ card data? If he has nothing to hide, and I'm sure that's true because he keeps saying it on twitter, then he has nothing to fear.

Re: Mastercard story or Google story?

[Insanity Defense]

If we buy Trump data can we also buy and post Clinton data?

I want to know how much she paid the DNC who paid the company who paid the law firm who paid the sleazy British spy who paid the Russians for the fake material she had released through her minions at the corrupted FBI, DoJ, and the major media outlets.

Why stop there? All senators and congress critters, state legislators and senators and governors. Go for it. These are the guys pressing forward on their surveillance society under the "If you have nothing to hide why do you oppose losing your privacy?" banner.

?

But maybe first go for the boards of directors for Master Card and Google.

Google have been doing it for years

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Par for the course...

[ChatHuant]

This isn't some new behavior for Google - just an expansion of an already existing program. Google has been collecting your off-line purchases for years now. They're
boasting about it, too.

Here's a relevant quote: ...even if your business doesn't have a large loyalty program, you can still measure store sales by taking advantage of Google's third-party partnerships, which capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States. So, more than two thirds of your non on-line purchases are tracked by Google and sold to all and sundry.

Of course, as a simple citizen, you get no option or recourse. Even if you haven't ever signed on with Google, even if aren't using any of their properties, or if you tried to opt out of everything, you' still can't escape their stalking. Every breath you take, every move you make, they'll be watching you.

Re:Casus belli

[Opportunist]

Wrong. Poison their data.

As a statistician, I can tell you that there is something way, way worse you can do than not provide me with data. Provide me with false data that I cannot tell from genuine data. Because that devalues my whole data set. If enough poison is added, all of my data is worthless.