Big Brother is spying on everyone’s ‘rewards card’ purchases

Joe Cadillic follows up on an article out of Seattle about how those who purchased pet food using a store loyalty card at their supermarket received reminders from the government about the requirement of pet licenses. I had noted the Seattle Times editorial on the issue.

Joe writes, in part:

Direct mailing companies are using Webtrend’s, Infintity Platform to create a real-time worldwide database of everyone’s purchases.

“We envision a world where people have meaningful experiences with the brands and organizations they trust, whether in person or online. One where every digital interaction counts – be it on a website, in an app or through email – because companies will know exactly how to engage with their customers.”

What they’re really saying is, “we envision a world where” where they can spy on everyone and sell it to governments and companies.

Webtrend’s Infinity Data Collector:

• All collected data is available for transfer immediately so you can integrate the most recent web behavior data with your customer profile.
• Visitor-level records are transferred so that an individual’s online behaviors can be connected with his/her offline behaviors.
• All data is encrypted for transfer to ensure data is secure between Webtrends and your on premise environment.
• Large amounts of data are transferred quickly due to the power of the Hadoop ecosystem
• Monitoring and restart services provide fault tolerance and ensure all data is delivered successfully.

“Currently, all data is available within one hour of collection, but will be within minute later in 2016.”

Read more on MassPrivateI.