This past week in class our instructor Daina Watts shared a story with us about an experience she had buying some shoes. She was originally searching for shoes on-line and shortly thereafter ads started popping up on her computer screen for those same shoes. This is not anything that is unfamiliar to any of us. Many of us are aware of he fact that our on-line habits are tracked and that different companies use that tracking data to personalize the ads that appear on our screens. The extra creepy part occurred a bit later when Dana bought the shoes in a store and suddenly the ads stopped appearing on her screen. In class several people chalked it up to a coincidence but maybe it isn’t a coincidence at all.
It turns out that if you own a smart phone then you might just be tracked during your real world shopping experiences. More and more retailers are investing in technology and surveillance cameras that will follow the wifi signal on your phone. This technology allows for stores to study your habits while you are shopping around in the same way that amazon does when you are shopping online. According to an article in the New York Times in some situations if you have provided any personal information to the store by giving them your email or downloading their app then they can even get access to what you were looking at on the web the night before. Stores use this data to study shopping habits that will help them to make decisions about products people are interested in and areas of the store that seem to be under or over utilized. Retailers can also use it to personalize your shopping experience and send you coupons for things you have been looking at.
A Washington post article from October of last year states that the Future of Privacy Forum is is developing an opt out list for people who wish to register their device on a sort of “do not track” list. Although the article stated that this registry would be launched in a few weeks it unfortunately has not yet been made available.
The question is would you sign up? Is the idea of your shopping habits being tracked in the real world more troublesome to you than your shopping habits being tracked online? I for one wouldn’t mind getting a coupon for the very item I’m thinking about buying. After all, the ads on Daina’s screen did go away after she bought the shoes. Now she can discover new deals not just based on her online shopping habits but her real world habits too.
Cassandra Pupovac 
Hi Cassie,
Thanks for your blog. I have to say that I do find it a little bit disturbing that we are constantly under watch when it comes to our online habits. Dana’s story was a little bit creepy! But we are part of a consumer society and the advance of technology had made it easier for companies to target and track our shopping habits and needs. Instead of getting ads in my mail box, they now appear on my computer screen. However, if I’m shopping in town, I can accept or refuse publicity handed to me in the street or in a shop. I think we should also be able to make the same choice online.
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Thanks for your thoughts on being tracked by our on-line big brother. You might be interested to know that Glendale School District (California) has hired a company to monitor its more than 13,000 students for activities related to cyberbulling, crime and cutting classes. Information is gathered on the basis of “key words” that flag the information for examination and presentation to school authorities. Similarly, the Canadian government is grappling with a proposed bill to allow on-line surveillance of potential cyberbullying activities but the bill gives authorities greater access to the personal information of its citizens.
What I find interesting as I read of these stories and talk with people around me is the lack of concern. Oh yes, there are critics and watchdogs working to protect privacy for all of us. But groups advocating greater privacy have an uphill fight because people are not outspoken enough when privacy is breached. Surveillance technology, in all forms, is far ahead of our legislative processes, thus the rate of privacy erosion is greater than the rate of privacy protection. Voices demanding privacy aren’t there. In 2013 the US government was caught snooping on Verizon accounts, and Edward Snowden revealed large scale international surveillance of Google and Yahoo emails. Is anyone complaining? If I can read between the lines of your post, I agree with you. I would like to see people make more of our loss of privacy by demanding that government write and enforce laws that protect us.
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This can be timeconsuming, but you are able to do it, when you truly desire that career.
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