Google’s plan to spy on your loyalty cards
CUSTOMERS with loyalty cards will soon have their purchases tracked by Google when they buy goods in shops.
In a move that will alarm privacy campaigners, the technology giant will use the information to work out when users who click on online adverts go on to buy in bricks-andmortar stores.
The technology has been described as the ‘holy grail’ for advertisers because companies will finally know exactly how effective their online adverts are.
The scheme is being launched in the US, where Google will be able to access people’s credit and debit card data to provide even more detailed information about their spending.
The company will not have quite that level of access in the UK, where privacy laws are much stricter. But it will be able to track purchases via the loyalty cards of any store that signs up for the scheme.
It again raises questions over privacy with Google, which has in the past shown a worrying disregard for users’ personal information.
Renate Samson, of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘The one thing people regularly state as “creepy” online is when an advert follows them around the internet. These plans appear to extend “creepy” into the physical world.
‘If people want to avoid having their shopping habits monitored on the high street by Google, by shops or by banks they should restrict
‘Holy grail for advertisers’
the amount of data they hand over.’ Google rakes in 40 per cent of the entire online advertising market.
Yesterday the company championed the technology at Google Marketing Next in San Francisco, its annual event where it reveals new advertising technologies. Google currently builds profiles of users based on every time they use a Google product, such as a search on Google.co.uk or a video they watch on YouTube. It uses this to target adverts based on what people look at.
It said that currently advertisers know how many times someone clicks on an advert and if that person buys something online, but they do not know if that person buys something in a bricks-andmortar store. The new system, called Google Attribution, solves this problem.
In the US, the company will now match up the profiles with credit and debit card information given to it by third party companies.
Google says it will not be able to identify who each person is because their Google profile is anonymous. The spending data from the third party companies is anonymous and encrypted.
Google says this means it will not be able to put a name to a transaction, but it will be able to tell advertisers what percentage of people who clicked on an advert went on to buy the item in a bricksand-mortar store.
Jerry Dischler, vice president of product management for AdWords, Google’s online advertising service, described it as ‘double-blind matching’. He said that ‘neither gets to see the encrypted data that the other side brings’.
The company was not able to provide information on how much store card data it would have in the UK.