Google Collects 70 Percent Of U.S. Credit And Debit Purchases Thanks To Help From Secret Partners
Google reportedly has access to data on roughly 70 percent of debit and credit purchases made in the U.S., though it isn't clear which partners have helped them to obtain that data. Recent reports suggest that Mastercard might be one of them.
Google has reportedly spent millions of dollars on purchasing debit and credit card records from Mastercard in what's been described as a secret deal, that enables them to allegedly track much more than you might be aware of.
The data that they receive from the purchase helps them to get a better idea of whether or not an ad that was seen online, later turned into a sale in a physical store location. And they've allegedly had access to this data for some time now, after reaching a deal that allegedly took them several years to finalize.
Google has the ability to track you even if you turn off your location history.
Would most people care that they are being tracked?
One previous survey that was conducted by a research firm known as Forrester had discovered that roughly one third of Americans would stop shopping online with a company if they knew it was tracking their behavior, and even more, roughly half of them, would stop if they knew the company was monitoring their behavior in stores.
Mind you, this survey was conducted several years ago and perhaps there are many more people today who are aware of or who wouldn't mind being tracked. For those who take the effort to try and disable their tracking settings though, this might come as a surprise to them.
A separate study that was conducted by SurveyMonkey paints a different picture and suggests that we might not care as much about privacy as we think we do.
With the data collected, it's alleged that Google was able to put together a special tool for their advertisers that's known as the Store Sales Measurement tool. The tool as announced last year. It's reported that this tool is in testing phase with several advertises right now.
Both Google and Mastercard say that they might not have as much access to your data as you'd think, despite recent reports suggesting otherwise. Mastercard has stated:
“[they] do not know the individual items that consumer purchases in any shopping cart—physical or digital..... No individual transaction or personal data is provided. That delivers on the expectation of privacy from both consumers and merchants around the world. In processing a transaction, we see the retailer’s name and the total amount of the consumer’s purchase, but not specific items."
Same goes for Google, they also claim that they don't have the access to personal information from debit or credit card partners.
Pics:
Pixabay
I did up vote and reteem
This is exactly why you should pay with cash if you want to save money. They spend a lot of money figuring out what and why we buy and we think we can outsmart them.
I have the feeling that today we are being tracked all the time, by credit cards, in Argentina the colestivo ticket can not be accessed more in cash, unless you have coins and they do not have to fall to the cards and you are being monitored all the time where you travel, the GPS, cell phones, anyway. What google does not surprise me will do anything to have information and control
thank you very much for sharing this news
I wish you a great day
It seems unlikely that Mastercard doesn't have access to the metadata of its customers purchases such as the location where the purchase was made. But who knows; even if Mastercard's claim is true it doesn't offer the security of cryptocurrencies, and it still ultimately utilizes a currency that doesn't inflate based off the execution of a decentralized algorithm i.e. bureaucrats can manipulate the supply of currency to their benefit while the value of your savings is slowly destroyed.
google has a lot of control over all of us have monitoria two with all the cards, that's good if we always had cash to prevent these things from happening but it is impossible and especially here in Venezuela to have cash we have to buy it